Ukraine-Russia latest: Zelensky says ‘decisive’ Trump can help stop Putin as Kyiv hits Kursk command post – UK Times

President-elect Donald Trump could be decisive in the outcome of the 34-month-old war with Russia and help stop Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Mr Zelensky, facing advances by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, said in an interview with Ukrainian television that Mr Trump had told him he would be one of the first to visit Washington after the presidential inauguration this month.

The Ukrainian president also said a priority was to stabilise the frontline early in the new year. Mr Putin, he said, feared negotiations as they would be tantamount to a defeat for Russia.

“Trump can be decisive. For us, this is the most important thing,” he said in a televised interview.

“His qualities are indeed there,” Mr Zelensky said of Mr Trump. “He can be decisive in this war. He is capable of stopping Putin or, to put it more fairly, help us stop Putin. He is able to do this.”

Russian investigators have determined that an oil spill from two tankers in the Black Sea last month was smaller than initially thought, the transport ministry said.

The oil leaked from two ageing tankers that were hit by a storm on 15 December. One sank and the other ran aground.

More than 10,000 people have been working to shovel up viscous, foul-smelling fuel oil from sandy beaches in and around Anapa, a popular summer resort. Environmental groups have reported deaths of dolphins, porpoises and sea birds.

The ministry said experts had established that approximately 2,400 metric tons of oil products had spilled into the sea.

“This is significantly less than the initial estimate, which was based on the account of one of the tanker captains,” it said.

When the disaster struck, state media reported that the stricken tankers, both more than 50 years old, were carrying some 9,200 metric tons (62,000 barrels) of oil products in total.

Currently, Russian forces are advancing in the east, slowly but surely, and they are shrinking Ukraine’s partial hold of the border region of Kursk.

That the Russians haven’t been more successful is a testament, above all else, to the resilience of Ukraine’s troops on the ground, many of whom have been fighting continuously for years. Dysfunction in the Russian military, with Mr Putin as its de facto commander-in-chief, is another.

The Ukrainian military said it had carried out a high-precision strike on a Russian command post in Maryino, in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces hold chunks of territory after a major incursion.

The Russian military said air defence units had downed four Ukrainian missiles in the region, and the regional governor said the strikes had damaged a high-rise apartment building and other buildings in an adjacent village.

Ukrainian forces remain in the Kursk region five months after sending troops across the border, though the Russian military says much of the lost territory has been recaptured.

“These strikes disrupt the ability of the Russian Federation to conduct terrorism against innocent Ukrainian civilians,” the Ukrainian military said in a statement.

Another post showed a video of what the military said was damage to a Russian base in Ivanovskoye, next to Maryino.

Kursk regional governor Alexander Khinshtein said the strike on Ivanovskoye had shattered windows in a multi-storey apartment building and in private homes. Also damaged were a school, a pharmacy and a shop.

A video showed work under way to repair damage to a facade.

The Russian drone attack on Kyiv killed a prominent scientist couple, education and scientist minister Oksen Lisovyi said.

Prominent neurobiologist Ihor Zyma and doctor of biological sciences Olesia Sokur were killed in the attack, the minister said.

“The family devoted almost their entire lives to science,” Lisovyi said.

The minister said Zyma was a senior researcher and associate professor at the Institute for Biology and Medicine at the Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv, while Sokur worked at the Institute as a deputy director of scientific work and a member of the Academic Council.

“My deepest sympathies to the relatives and loved ones of those killed, as well as to all those who suffer from today’s terrorist terror. Russia – absolutely evil, bringing death and destruction. The world must react harshly and principledly,” the minister said on Facebook.

Ukraine’s navy has destroyed more than 37,000 Russian drones in the year 2024, it reported yesterday.

The downed platforms include Russian strike drones, operational and tactical unmanned aerial vehicles, first-person-view drones, and Shahed-type attack drones, the navy said in a Facebook post. Ukrainian naval forces also destroyed five Russian ships and 458 watercraft, it added.

Russia’s drone losses included 35,670 destroyed FPV drones and 1,140 strike drones, the navy said. Ukraine’s naval units also eliminated 192 operational and tactical drones and another 164 Shahed-136/131 drones.

Russian forces in 2024 advanced in Ukraine at the fastest rate since 2022, the war’s first year, and control about a fifth of the country. But the gains have come at the cost of heavy, though undisclosed, losses in men and equipment.

In 2024, Russia was invaded for the first time since the Second World War as Ukraine grabbed a slice of its western Kursk region in a surprise counter-attack on 6 August.

Russia has yet to eject Ukrainian forces from Kursk despite bringing in more than 10,000 troops from its ally North Korea, according to Ukrainian, South Korean and US assessments. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.

“To sustain even the very slow advance in Ukraine, Russia has been forced to ignore the months-long occupation of part of its own territory by Ukrainian forces,” British security expert Ruth Deyermond said.

“Taking a ‘nothing to see here’ attitude to the loss of its own land is not what great powers do, particularly one so preoccupied with the idea of state sovereignty.”

Deyermond, in a long thread posted on X, suggested Putin’s efforts to portray Russia as a leading world power were also undermined by the toppling of its chief Middle East ally, former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and its increasing dependence on China.

Mr Putin, the longest-serving ruler of Russia since Josef Stalin, said on 19 December that under his leadership the country had moved back from “the edge of the abyss” and rebuffed threats to its sovereignty.

With hindsight, he said, he should not have waited until February 2022 before launching his “special military operation” in Ukraine, the term he still uses for the full-scale invasion of Russia’s neighbour.

There are several variants of Army Tactical Missile Systems, a long-range missile system that often carries varying amounts of cluster bomblets.

Ukrainian forces used the US-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles for the first time in October 2023, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy saying the weapons had “proven themselves.”

Ukraine likely has what are known as M39A1 Block IA ATACMS that are guided in part by Global Positioning System and have a range of 40 to 190 miles. They can carry a payload of 300 bomblets. The M39 Block IA were used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to Army documents, and were added to the US arsenal in 1997.