Here are the key developments on the 1,046th day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Here is the situation on Sunday, January 5:
Fighting
Russia has pledged to respond after it claimed to have shot down eight US-supplied ATACMS missiles fired by Ukraine at its border region of Belgorod.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has declared that Russian and North Korean forces suffered heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. He said up to a battalion of North Korean soldiers were killed in Makhnovka village.
Zelenskyy also said guided Russian bomb strikes hit two villages in Sumy region and the neighbouring Kharkiv region.
A Russian guided bomb attack wounded 10 people, including two children, in a village in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, near the Russian border.
Ukraine’s air force said its air defence shot down 61 out of 103 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack. It said that 42 other drones were “lost”.
The Russian media outlet Izvestia said a Ukrainian drone attack killed its freelance correspondent Alexander Martemyanov. Data previously provided by the Committee to Protect Journalists counted at least 15 journalists killed since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, writing on her ministry’s website, denounced the death of Martemyanov as a “deliberate murder”.
Russia’s RIA news agency said two of its correspondents travelling with Martemyanov were injured in the incident, along with two journalists working for a publication in Donetsk.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had taken control of the village of Nadiya in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region and had shot down eight US-made ATACMS missiles.
The ministry also said its air defence systems had shot down 10 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory, including three over the northern Leningrad region.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had taken control of the village of Nadiya in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, Russian news agencies reported.
Politics and diplomacy
The pro-Russian breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria has been left without Russian gas supplies transiting through neighbouring Ukraine, forcing it to implement rolling power cuts, local authorities said.
Oil from two ageing and damaged Russian tankers was detected off the coast of Sevastopol, the largest city in Moscow-annexed Crimea, a Moscow-installed official said.
