Slovakia confirmed on Friday December 27 that it agreed to host peace talks on Ukraine. “If anyone wants to hold peace talks in Slovakia, we will be ready and we will be welcoming,” Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Facebook, almost three years after the start of the Russian assault. For its part, the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that this dialogue should take place “with the participation of Russia”, unlike the summit organized in June 2024 in Switzerland.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Slovakia, whose “neutral position” he praised, had offered itself as a sort of “platform” for possible negotiations. “We consider the Russian president’s statement as a positive signal to end this war, bloodshed and destruction as quickly as possible,” Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar wrote on Facebook.
Information to remember
⇒ “More than 1,000” soldiers deployed by Pyongyang in Russia to fight against Ukraine were killed or injured, according to the United States
⇒ Azerbaijani plane crash due to “external interference”, investigation says
⇒ A Russian court sentenced a Russian singer to five and a half years in prison for criticizing the offensive against Ukraine
North Korean soldiers used as cannon fodder, says Washington
Wounded North Korean soldiers died in Ukraine after being taken prisoner, Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Friday. They are suffering “a lot of losses. A lot. And we see that the Russian army and the North Korean supervisors are not at all interested in the survival of these Koreans”, declared the Ukrainian president in his daily address. On Monday, Volodymyr Zelensky said that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or injured” since their engagement alongside Russian forces, when Seoul gave the figure of 1,100.
For its part, Washington affirmed this Friday that the soldiers dispatched by Pyongyang were only considered as cannon fodder. The United States has assured that “more than a thousand” soldiers deployed by Pyongyang in Russia to fight against Ukraine had been killed or injured during “hopeless” assaults in the Kursk border region. “It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders view them as troops that can be sacrificed,” added John Kirby, the spokesperson for the US National Security Council. “North Korean forces carry out massive assaults […] against Ukrainian positions in Kursk. These human waves were not very effective,” he said.
Azerbaijani plane crash due to ‘external interference’, investigation finds
The crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines airliner, which killed 38 people on Wednesday, was due to “external interference”, according to the preliminary conclusions of the investigation announced on Friday, while experts and Western media favor the track of a Russian anti-aircraft missile to explain this tragedy. “The preliminary results of the investigation into the Embraer 190 crash” indicate “external, physical and technical interference,” Azerbaijan Airlines said on Telegram. The company also announced the suspension of flights to several Russian cities.
Russia, for its part, confirmed that Grozny, the capital of Chechnya where the aircraft attempted to land twice without success before being redirected towards Kazakhstan, was the target of an attack on the day of the tragedy. Ukrainian drones against the backdrop of thick fog. Seeing Russia’s “obvious” responsibility for the images of the crashed plane, Volodymyr Zelensky called for a “thorough investigation to establish the truth.” Grozny has been attacked by Ukrainian drones several times since Russia’s assault on Ukraine began in 2022.
Russia: five and a half years in prison for criticizing the offensive in Ukraine
A Russian court on Friday sentenced a Russian singer, Edouard Charlot, to five and a half years in prison for criticizing the offensive against Ukraine in videos posted online. The court in the 26-year-old’s hometown of Samara on the Volga River found him guilty of “publicly insulting the religious feelings of believers” and “rehabilitating Nazism”, the news agency reported state Ria Novosti.
This singer, popular among young people, published a video in June 2023 in which he burned his Russian passport, as a sign of protest against the Russian offensive in Ukraine. In other videos, he tore an orange and black striped ribbon in the shape of a “Z”, the symbol of the Russian armed forces, or nailed to a crucifix a photograph of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, who supported the offensive. After the start of the conflict in 2022, the young man left Russia for Armenia, but then returned and was arrested in November 2023 upon arrival at St. Petersburg airport.