What has happened in the last few hours
On the 314th day of the war against Ukraine started by Russia, these are the key data at 8:00 p.m. this Tuesday, January 3rd:
Ukraine claims it has shot down 500 Iranian-made Russian drones since September. Ukrainian authorities confirmed this Tuesday that they have shot down about 500 Iranian-made drones launched by the Russian army since last September. Yuriy Ignat, spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force Command, has stated that the Ukrainian armed forces “will be ready”. “We shot down the drones,” he said, before declaring that 84 drones “were intercepted and shot down within two days,” according to the Ukrinform news agency.
Putin wants to speak to Erdogan this Wednesday. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to speak to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to the Interfax news agency. The Islamist leader, who has tried to mediate between Moscow and Kyiv to end the war in Ukraine, is one of the leaders who has met the Russian president most often since Russia’s war in Ukraine began in February last year.
Sunak reaffirms his long-term commitment to Zelensky in their first call of the year. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday that the Ukrainian president can count on the UK’s long-term support. The first conversation in 2023 between the two leaders was marked by recent drone attacks. “Both leaders have been discussing the heinous drone strikes in Ukraine in recent days,” Downing Street said in a statement after Sunak-Zelenskyy’s talks. “We agreed to intensify our efforts to bring victory closer this year,” the Ukrainian president has hinted via his Telegram account. “We already have concrete decisions in this regard.”
The UN reports that 6,919 civilians have died in Ukraine due to the war. The United Nations Office for Human Rights has reported that 6,919 civilians were killed and 11,075 injured in Ukraine from the start of the war to January 2. The organization has explained in detail that the real numbers are certainly much higher, especially in regions where fighting is more intense and where the monitoring work of the organization’s observers is more difficult. So far, 2,737 men, 1,842 women, 216 boys and 175 girls have been identified among the deceased.
Ukraine claims to have discovered another torture chamber in Mykolaiv province. The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine on Tuesday reported the discovery of another torture chamber in the Mikolaiv region, in the town of Oleksandrivka, liberated from Russian occupation. “According to the investigation, representatives of the aggressor country have seized a house in the city. They unlawfully detained and brutally tortured local residents who refused to cooperate with the enemy,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement quoted by Ukrinform agency.
Kuleba invites the President of the International Olympic Committee to look at the impact of the war on Ukrainian sport. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Tuesday invited the President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, to the city of Druzhkivka in Donetsk province to learn about the impact of the Russian war of aggression on Ukrainian sport. “I invite all sports officials who want to allow Russian athletes to compete internationally because ‘sport is above politics’, including IOC President Thomas Bach, to visit ‘Altair’ and speak from Russia’s ‘sporting neutrality’ convince,” he wrote in a message on Instagram.
In this photo by Dmitri Lovetsky for AP, a poster in St. Petersburg celebrating a fallen Russian soldier in Ukraine.