Every day Midi Libre takes stock of the situation in Ukraine. This Thursday, January 25, 2024, discover the latest news surrounding this conflict.
11 Russian drones shot down
Russia fired 14 drones and five missiles at Ukraine on the night of Wednesday and Thursday, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Thursday, naming the air defense systems that destroyed 11 drones. The Air Force said in Telegram that Russia had primarily targeted southern Ukraine. Two people were injured in an attack in Odessa, Oleh Kiper, the region's governor, said on Telegram.
“Despite the effective and successful work of the air defense in repelling enemy attacks, unfortunately an industrial facility was hit in Odessa and civilian infrastructure and residential buildings were damaged,” he said. Portal could not independently verify this information. Russia had no immediate comment.
Zelensky calls for an international investigation
Russia accused Ukraine on Wednesday 24 of shooting down a military transport plane with 65 Ukrainian soldiers on board intended for a prisoner exchange and decried a barbaric act of terrorism that killed a total of 74 people in the Belgorod region, near the Ukrainian border became.
Ukraine remained silent on the issue for several hours, citing the need to take time to clarify the situation. Officials in Kiev subsequently neither confirmed nor denied the downing of the Russian plane.
At Moscow's request, an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council will take place this Thursday, January 25th, in the evening. For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for an international investigation into the matter on Wednesday evening.
Nationalist Guirkine sentenced to four years in prison
Russian nationalist activist Igor Girkin was sentenced this Thursday to four years in prison for inciting extremism after several months of sharply criticizing President Vladimir Putin and the General Staff over the conduct of the war in Ukraine.
The former FSB official, who was involved in the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and was then building pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, also mentioned the possibility of running in next March's presidential election. He was arrested last July after forming a “club of angry patriots” with the stated aim of protecting Russia from the risk of chaos caused by military setbacks in Ukraine.
On July 18, in a message on his Telegram account that was followed by more than 760,000 people, he personally insulted Vladimir Putin by calling on him to transfer power to “someone truly capable and responsible.”
Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment in the Netherlands in 2022 for his role in the 2014 shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines plane over eastern Ukraine that killed 298 people.
He denied any involvement. Igor Girkin was sentenced to four years in a penal colony by a Moscow court on Thursday.
Russian woman convicted of murdering war blogger Tatarski
Daria Trepova, a 26-year-old Russian woman arrested last year in connection with the murder of nationalist blogger Vladlen Tatarski, was sentenced this Thursday to 27 years in prison for terrorism.
The young woman was found guilty of offering the victim a statuette with her image in April 2023 with a bomb that exploded in the activist's hands as he spoke in a cafe in Saint Petersburg. Daria Trepova said she was manipulated into believing that the statuette contained a listening device to obtain more information about the war, which she opposed.
At her trial, she said she had acted on the orders of a man from Ukraine whom she knew by the German pseudonym “Gestalt” and who had been sending her money and instructions for several months before the attack.
Prosecutors accused her of “deliberately acting with the aim of destabilizing the Russian Federation and discrediting the special military operation,” as Moscow called the invasion of Ukraine. Daria Trepova's lawyer also portrayed his client as a victim because he was sitting just a few meters away from Vladlen Tatarski when the bomb exploded.
Kiev has never claimed responsibility for the murder or denied involvement. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, called the case “domestic terrorism.”