Here are the main developments on the 1044th day of the Russian occupation of Ukraine.
This is the situation as of Friday, January 3:
Fighting
- The Ukrainian military said it carried out a high-precision attack on a Russian command post in Maryino, in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces hold swathes of territory after a major cross-border incursion.
- The Russian military said air defense units shot down four Ukrainian missiles in the Kursk region, and Kursk’s regional governor said the strikes damaged a high-rise apartment and other buildings.
- Ukraine’s military released a video on social media of what it said was damage to a Russian base in Ivanovskoye, near Maryino, in the Kursk region.
- Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses had shot down a number of drones late Thursday targeting regions near the border with Ukraine, including two in the Belgorod region, two in the Bryansk region and one in the Kursk region. The governor of Russia’s Oryol region said four drones had crashed in the area.
- Moscow also said Russian troops had shot down a Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jet, 97 drones and six HIMARS missile launchers supplied by the United States.
- Ukraine said its forces shot down 47 of 72 Russian drones targeting the country overnight and another 24 were lost – due to electronic jamming.
- Ukraine has opened a criminal investigation into desertion and “abuse of power” after hundreds of soldiers were reported to have deserted from an army unit partly trained by France. The 155th Mechanized Brigade, dubbed the “Kiev Side”, was one of several military groups formed last year as Ukraine tried to boost preparations for possible new Russian offensives.
- A Ukrainian court has sentenced a man to 15 years in prison for passing information to Moscow that could have helped it target missile attacks.
Politics
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that US President-elect Donald Trump could be decisive in the outcome of the war with Russia. “He can be decisive in this fight. He is able to stop (Russian President Vladimir) Putin or, to put it more correctly, help us stop Putin. He is able to do this,” Zelenskyy said in an interview.
The economy
- Gas supplies to Europe remain stable, with the exception of Moldova, the European Union said after halting the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine.
- The disruption of Russian gas supplies to Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region has forced the shutdown of all industrial companies except food producers, Sergei Obolnik, the region’s first deputy prime minister, told a local news channel.
- A Russian tanker accident in the Black Sea last month resulted in the spill of 2,400 tonnes of oil rather than the 3,000 tonnes initially assumed, authorities in Moscow said. The accident happened in mid-December when two Russian tankers capsized in a storm in the Kerch Strait.
- Ukraine aims to boost exports as the country enters its fourth year of war with Russia in 2025, Zelenskyy said. The country had already managed to increase exports by 15 percent in 2024, he said.
Regional tension
- Angered by Ukraine’s ban on Russian gas, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he would consider reducing support for Ukrainians in Slovakia and repeated his threat to cut off electricity supplies to its biggest neighbor.
- The Lithuanian government said the recent failure of the Estlink 2 undersea cable, blamed on a Russian ship, does not affect the planned synchronization of the Baltic states’ electricity grid with Western Europe.
- Finland’s national power grid operator said it had asked a Helsinki court to seize the Eagle S oil tanker in an attempt to secure the company’s claim for damages related to the outage of the Estlink 2 undersea electricity interconnector. The cable between Finland and Estonia was damaged on December 25 along with four telecommunication lines.
