A new attack by a Ukrainian drone against an air base in southern Russia killed three people on Monday, a day during which kyiv intends to call for the exclusion of Moscow from the UN Security Council. Russian air defenses shot down the Ukrainian drone as it approached the Engels base in the Saratov region overnight, Russian news agencies reported on Monday.
Located more than 600 km from Ukraine, this base was already hit by an attack earlier this month. “As a result of the fall of the wreckage of the drone, three Russian technicians who were on the airfield were fatally injured,” according to the TASS news agency citing the Ministry of Defense.
The main information:
– Ukraine calls for Russia’s exclusion from the UN
– Three dead in a Russian air base after an attack by a Ukrainian drone
Ukraine calls for Russia’s exclusion from the UN
Ukraine called on Monday for the exclusion of Russia from the United Nations, more than ten months after the start of the invasion of Russian troops, a request with little chance of success, Moscow having a right veto in the UN Security Council.
“Ukraine calls on UN member states (…) to deprive the Russian Federation of its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and to exclude it from the UN as a whole” , the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The FSB eliminates a Ukrainian “group of saboteurs”
The Russian security services (FSB) said on Monday that they had killed four Ukrainian “saboteurs” the day before as they tried, according to this source, to enter the Russian region of Bryansk, bordering Ukraine. “Following armed clashes on December 25, four saboteurs were eliminated during an attempt to penetrate the territory of the Bryansk region from Ukraine,” the FSB said, quoted by news agencies. Russians.
According to the FSB, this group, accused of wanting to “commit terrorist acts and sabotage”, was equipped with German-made SIG Sauer submachine guns, communication devices, as well as “four improvised explosive devices”. A video, broadcast by the Ria-Novosti news agency and attributed to the FSB, shows four bloodied corpses, surrounded by weapons and dressed in winter camouflage uniforms.
Ukraine calls for Russia’s exclusion from UN Security Council
Ukraine, which has not commented on the attack on the Engels base, plans to call on Monday for the exclusion of Russia as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council , Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Sunday.
“We will officially state our position. We have a very simple question: does Russia have the right to remain a permanent member of the UN Security Council and to be in the UN?” he said, speaking late on Christmas Eve during a national TV marathon. “We have a compelling and reasoned answer: no, she doesn’t.”
Risk of division of Russia, argues Putin
The day before, the Russian president sought to justify the Kremlin’s military offensive against Ukraine, which has lasted for more than ten months, but which has still not enabled Russia to achieve its objectives. “Everything is based on the policy of our geopolitical adversaries, who aim to divide Russia, historic Russia,” Vladimir Putin denounced in an interview made public on Sunday by public television.
The Russian president regularly uses the concept of “historical Russia” to justify the military intervention in Ukraine by the need to bring together Ukrainians and Russians, who would form one and the same people. “‘Divide and conquer’: they have always tried to do it, they are trying to do it now, but our goal is quite different: to unite the Russian people,” he said.
Putin confident about the destruction of the Patriot system
According to Vladimir Putin, the Russian army is “moving in the right direction” in Ukraine. And he promised that Russian troops would take out the Patriot air defense system, which kyiv got this week from the Americans. “Of course, we are going to destroy it, 100%!”, Launched Vladimir Putin, three days after affirming that his army would find “an antidote” to counter “this fairly old system”.
In addition to the Patriot system, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky left his visit to the United States with a promise of an envelope of 45 billion dollars in aid provided for in the next American federal budget.
Zelensky wants to take back the four annexed regions and Crimea
If the Russian general staff has confirmed that it aims to conquer the entire industrial region of Donetsk, Volodymyr Zelensky has sworn to him that he wants to take back the four Ukrainian regions annexed at the end of September by Russia – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporijjia, Kherson -, as well as the Crimean peninsula, annexed in 2014.
He castigated the Russian “terrorists” who carried out bombings on Saturday against the city center of Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine retaken on November 11 after eight months of occupation by troops from Moscow. The central market and adjacent streets were bombed, killing at least 10 and injuring 55, an “act of terror”, according to the Ukrainian president.
Volodymyr Zelensky called on Ukrainians to prepare for new attacks by the end of the year. “We must be aware that our enemy will try to make this moment dark and difficult.” Vladimir Saldo, the head of the pro-Russian administration in Kherson, blamed the attack on the Ukrainian army, castigating “a sickening provocation aimed of course at accusing the armed forces of the Russian Federation”.
Ukraine, a country divided between
Sunday in kyiv, Orthodox celebrated Christmas, alongside Catholics, a strong sign of defiance towards the Russian religious authorities, who will celebrate the birth of Jesus in two weeks. “The war has brought us so much grief,” faithful Olga Stanko told AFP in a downtown church. “We cannot remain under Russian influence,” she added, as the military conflict has shifted to religious terrain in recent weeks.
Ukraine, a country whose population is predominantly Orthodox, is indeed divided between a Church dependent on the Patriarchate of Moscow – which announced that it was severing its ties with Russia at the end of May due to the Russian offensive – and an independent Church of Russian supervision. Created at the end of 2018, the latter has pledged allegiance to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which has its headquarters in Istanbul.