Ukraine’s air force says one of its F-16 fighter jet pilots shot down six missiles during a Russian aerial attack last month. Meanwhile, Moscow says its troops have inflicted a series of defeats on Ukrainian units in Kursk. Submit your questions for our correspondents in the box below.
Tuesday 7 January 2025 16:00, UK
Our coverage today has focused on Ukraine’s renewed offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv first launched an offensive in August.
We’ll be back tomorrow with more updates on the war in Ukraine.
In the meantime, here are the key lines from today:
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will discuss the end of Russian gas transit through Ukraine with representatives of the European Commission on Thursday in Brussels, Slovakia’s government office said on Tuesday.
Supplies through Ukraine stopped on 1 January after a transit agreement between Ukraine and Russia expired.
Fico had been keen to continue receiving Russian gas through that route, and has criticised Ukraine’s decision not to renew the agreement.
The Slovakian leader became just the third EU leader to visit Vladimir Putin in Moscow last month, where he said gas transit was among the topics discussed.
Hungarian PM Viktor Orban – another Putin ally – and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer are the other two European leaders to have broken ranks with their EU counterparts to travel to Moscow.
Iceland’s foreign minister met her Ukrainian counterpart in Kyiv today.
Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir paid tribute at the Memorial Wall in the city outside Saint Michael’s Cathedral.
It is her first overseas trip after she became Iceland’s foreign minister last month.
Andrii Sybiha said on X that he and Gunnarsdottir discussed cooperation between Ukraine and Iceland, as well as investment in Kyiv’s defence industry.
Ukraine’s army says it is still holding its positions in the western outskirts of Kurakhove, a strategic town in the country’s eastern Donetsk region that Russia claims to have captured.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s Khortytsia unit, which is fighting in the area, said a “significant part of the city” has been destroyed and that the situation is “quite difficult”.
“Ukrainian troops are holding on in the western part of the town, on the western outskirts of the town,” he said.
Kurakhove has become one of the focal points in the Russian offensive in the Donetsk region in recent months.
It sits 32km (20 miles) south of Pokrovsk, with the two towns linked by key roads that help Ukraine move its troops and supplies along the frontline.
Yesterday, Russia said it had captured Kurakhove, with images verified by the Reuters news agency showing Russian troops raising flags in the town.
Some 52% of Ukrainians trust Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a drop of 12 points from the start of 2024, according to a new survey.
The poll, conducted between 2-17 December by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, comes as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nears its third anniversary.
The poll shows Zelenskyy is seen more favourably in the western (60%) and central (52%) regions of the country, and less so in the southern (46%) and eastern (42%) regions, which have been most affected by Russia’s war.
The survey’s results were based on telephone interviews with 2,000 respondents residing in Ukraine-controlled territories.
Zelenskyy’s position ‘increasingly fragile’
Earlier, we spoke to Robert Clark, a fellow at the US thinktank Yorktown Institute, who said there are rumours of a rift within Zelenskyy’s government.
“It’s been widely rumoured for the last couple of months that it’s increasingly fragile, his situation in Kiev,” Mr Clark said.
“Publicly, he still retains a lot of support amongst the Ukrainian population. But there are rumours around particularly in his government, there’s a split, there’s a rift.
“This war has been dragging on now for three years – three painful years for Ukraine. We can see the toll that it’s taking on President Zelenskyy.”
A Boeing 737 passenger jet flying from Russia to Uzbekistan has been forced to make an emergency landing in Moscow, according to the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
The plane, carrying 173 passengers, landed at Vnukovo Airport due to a stabiliser malfunction, emergency services told RIA.
It had reportedly been travelling from the Russian port city of St Petersburg to Samarkand in the south of Uzbekistan.
Last month, 38 people died when an Azerbaijan Airlines flight, which had been due to land in Russia, crash-landed in Kazakhstan.
The circumstances around the crash remain unclear, but limited evidence so far suggests it may have been damaged by missiles fired by a Russian air-defence system as it tried to land in Chechnya.
UK Defence Intelligence (DI) says Russia is “highly likely” to continue experiencing high casualty rates this month.
It says December was the sixth straight month that Russian forces suffered an increase in monthly total losses.
The month also set a new war high of 2,200 losses in a single day on 19 December.
Looking ahead to 2025, DI says Russia will continue to experience high casualty rates over January due to “continued dismounted infantry attacks on multiple axes”.
Donald Trump has said ending the war in Ukraine is one of his top international priorities when he takes office in less than two weeks.
The US president-elect said during his campaign trail that he could end the war in 24 hours, though he hasn’t elaborated on how he might do that.
Trump has appointed retired US general Keith Kellogg as his special envoy to work towards peace, and Robert Clark, a fellow at the US thinktank Yorktown Institute, says a deal could emerge by Easter.
“This is going to be incredibly difficult for Ukraine,” Mr Clark tells Sky News. “I think people really have to respect the fact that this is Ukraine’s decision. Ultimately, it’s not America’s and it’s not [Britain’s].
“I think the American side is going to be looking at some kind of deal certainly by Easter.
“It just comes down to how much President Putin is willing to sacrifice, particularly in areas like Kursk, and also, unfortunately, how much President Zelenskyy is willing to sacrifice as well.”
Russia’s main offensive in Ukraine has long focused on the eastern Donetsk region, but intense battles continue to take place in the Kharkiv area, home to Ukraine’s second-largest city.
The images below show Ukrainian soldiers preparing to fire artillery towards a Russian position on the frontline in the region.
Ukraine’s air force says one of its F-16 fighter jet pilots completed a “world first” last month by shooting down six Russian missiles during a single deployment.
The pilot shot down the cruise missiles during a Russian aerial attack on 13 December that involved more than 200 missiles and drones, the air force said.
It said there was “100% confirmation” that the feat was carried out “for the first time in history in anti-air combat”.
It added that the unnamed pilot received “applause and ovations” when he returned to the ground, and that US officials “were pleasantly surprised” by the news.
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