Here are the main developments on the 1043rd day of the Russian occupation of Ukraine.
This is the situation as of Thursday, January 2:
Fighting
- Russia launched an early morning drone strike on New Year’s Day in the Ukrainian capital Kiev that killed two people, wounded at least six others and damaged buildings in two districts.
- Two floors of a residential building in central Kyiv were partially destroyed in the strike, according to the State Emergency Service.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that as the New Year began, all Moscow could think about was harming Ukraine: “Even on New Year’s Eve, Russia was only concerned with how to hurt Ukraine.”
- Ukraine’s military said it shot down 63 of 111 drones launched by Russia overnight Wednesday, while 46 were downed by electronic jamming.
- Several residential buildings in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia caught fire overnight after the attacks and a woman was rescued, according to local authorities.
- Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii visited Ukrainian forces in the Russian border region of Kursk and said the Russian military had lost more than 34,000 soldiers, either dead or wounded, in their efforts to drive Ukrainian soldiers from Russian territory.
- Over the past five months, about 700 Russian prisoners of war have been captured, which Ukraine can exchange for its own people held in Russian captivity, Syrskii said.
The economy
- The transit of Russian gas through Ukraine to Europe has been suspended, Russian and Ukrainian authorities said.
- Russia’s Gazprom said it had no legal or technical means to pump gas through Ukraine after Kiev allowed the gas transit contract to expire.
- President Zelenskyy said that the decision to stop the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine was “one of Moscow’s biggest defeats”.
- Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko called the transit ban a “historic event” and a decision made “in the interest of national security.”
- Poland also welcomed the end of Russian gas transit through Ukraine with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski saying the cut marked “a new victory after NATO’s enlargement to Finland and Sweden”.
Putin spent billions building Nordstream to bypass Ukraine and blackmail Eastern Europe by threatening to cut off gas supplies. Today Ukraine cut off its ability to export gas directly to the EU.
Another victory after the expansion of NATO by Finland and Sweden.— Radek Sikorski (@radeksikorski) January 1, 2025
- Russia’s Gazprom has suspended gas supplies to Slovakia after ending a transit agreement to transport gas through Ukraine.
- Slovak gas importer SPP said it was prepared for such a situation and would supply all its customers via alternative routes, mainly pipelines from Germany and Hungary, but would face additional costs in transit fees.
- The Slovak government criticized Ukraine’s decision, with the country’s pro-Russian Prime Minister Robert Fico threatening in turn to cut off electricity supplies from Slovakia to Ukraine.
- The disruption of the gas flow was immediately felt in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, which was forced to cut off heating and hot water supplies to households. The mainly Russian-speaking territory of about 450,000 people broke away from Moldova in the early 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed and still has about 1,500 troops stationed there.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his government and the country’s largest bank, Sberbank, to build cooperation with China on artificial intelligence. Putin’s instructions were published on the Kremlin’s website, three weeks after he announced that Russia would join BRICS partners and other countries to develop AI.
