Ukraine war latest: Putin hints Russia may launch strikes on government buildings in Kyiv (2024)

A Russian court has today jailed a lawyer who has represented critics of Moscow's war inUkraine.

Dmitry Talantov was sentenced to seven years in prison after he was convicted him of spreading false information about the Russian army and of "inciting hatred."

The charges against the 63-year-old stem from several Facebook posts in which he called the actions of Russian soldiers inUkraine"extreme Nazi practices", according to the Mediazona outlet, which has itself been designated "a foreign agent" by Russian authorities.

Talantov denied any wrongdoing, the court in Udmurtia, east of Moscow, said in a statement.

Russian politicians say Russians must be as united as possible in the face of what they cast as an existential struggle with the West and have cast people who criticise the military as fifth-columnists.

But the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Russia yesterday called for Talantov's acquittal.

"Talantov must be released immediately and exonerated of all criminal responsibility, as acts such as expressing a non-violent opinion or peaceful dissent against the war are protected by international human rights law," Mariana Katzarova said.

Prior to his arrest in June 2022, Talantov was the president of the bar association in the Udmurtia region.

He had also served as a legal counsel for Ivan Safronov, a former military affairs correspondent for Russian newspapers who was jailed for 22 years on treason charges in September 2022 after being convicted of transferring confidential information to Western intelligence agencies.

Safronov's supporters say the case was retribution for his reporting on Russia's international arms deals.

Katzarova, the UN special rapporteur, cast Talantov's trial as part of an "appalling broader pattern of repression in Russia" against legal professionals.

Donald Trump's election win earlier this month has prompted a stream of speculation around what it might mean for the war in Ukraine - which the president-elect had promised to end within a day of taking office.

His victory has raised fears that the US might cut off funding to Kyiv, with the Republican having repeatedly voiced doubts about Washington's continued support.

Now, a new report suggests Trump's soon-to-be national security adviser, Mike Waltz, has been mulling several proposals over recent days for bringing the war to an end.

According to CNN, one is from General Keith Kellogg, who Trump announced yesterday as his pick to be special envoy to the countries.

The network reports that his plan calls for continued US military aid to Ukraine to be contingent on Kyiv taking part in peace talks with Russia and "a formal US policy to seek a ceasefire and negotiated settlement of the Ukraine conflict".

It is also said to include the shelving for an extended period of any discussion around Ukraine joining NATO, in an effort to draw Russia to the negotiating table.

A separate proposal also reportedly reviewed by Waltz has been endorsed by Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell.

Grenell has previously expressed support for the creation of "autonomous regions" inside Ukraine, though he has not offered details as to what that would look like.

"Autonomous regions can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but you got to work through those details," hetold Bloombergin July.

CNN reports that another idea being floated is to allow Russia to keep the territory it currently holds in exchange for Ukraine getting NATO membership.

However, the report adds, few people in Trump's circle appear keen to allow Ukraine into NATO anytime soon.

"We need to bring this to a responsible end," Waltz told Fox last weekend.

"We need to restore deterrence, restore peace, and get ahead of this escalation ladder, rather than responding to it."

As we have been reporting this morning, Russia carried out a series of strikes on Ukraine overnight, with energy infrastructure among the targets.

Images emerging from the country in the last hour show the aftermath of the attacks in some parts, along with picture of families taking refuge from the bombing in capital city, Kyiv.

Russia is selecting targets inUkrainethat could include "decision-making centres" in Kyiv in response to Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian territory with Western weapons, Vladimir Putin has said.

Attacks launched by Moscow have not so far struck government buildings in the Ukrainian capital, which is heavily protected by air defences.

Putin says Russia's Oreshnik hypersonic missile, which it fired for the first time at a Ukrainian city last week, is incapable of being intercepted - although that claim has been questioned by at least one expert (see 7.55 post).

"Of course, we will respond to the ongoing strikes on Russian territory with long-range Western-made missiles, as has already been said, including by possibly continuing to test the Oreshnik in combat conditions," Putin told a meeting of a security alliance of ex-Soviet countries in Kazakhstan.

"At present, the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff are selecting targets to hit on Ukrainian territory. These could be military facilities, defence and industrial enterprises, or decision-making centres in Kyiv."

Russia saysUkrainefired ATACMS ballistic missiles supplied by the US into western Russia for the first time on 19 November, prompting it to respond two days later by firing the Oreshnik, a new intermediate-range missile, at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Since then, Russia saysUkrainefired more ATACMS at its Kursk region on 23 and 25 November.

Putin claimed Russia's production of advanced missile systems exceeds that of the NATO military alliance by 10 times, and that Moscow plans to ramp up production further.

By Stuart Ramsay, chief correspondent, in Kyiv

This is the second time in the three weeks I have been in Ukraine that Russia has carried out major nationwide strikes on the country's energy infrastructure.

In many ways it felt like it was building. Since Saturday night, the air raid sirens have been going off more regularly. And last night the air raid notifications on our phones were more regular than usual.

Air defence units across the country had already been bolstered in all the major cities, with special units assigned to protect the capital Kyiv, which the military said has always been a prime target for Russia.

Today's attacks were nationwide, affecting all of Ukraine's major cities, bringing about the loss of power to one million in the country's west, and rolling power cuts elsewhere.

The Russian strategy is to undermine morale and wear down the Ukrainian people.

Targeting energy infrastructure doesn't necessarily have any military advantage for the Russians, but it is an attack on Ukraine's psyche.

Speaking to people who live here in the capital over the last few days, they say the combination of the power cuts and the threat of drones and missiles from the skies has a big impact on them, and in particular on children, some of whom have found themselves in air raid shelters for yet another night.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been responding to the major attack launched on Ukraine overnight.

The Ukrainian president said Russia used cruise missiles with cluster munitions to attack Ukrainian energy infrastructure this morning - calling it a "despicable escalation".

"In total, approximately 100 strike drones and over 90 missiles of various types were launched," he said.

"Several regions reported Kalibr missile strikes with cluster munitions, deliberately aimed at civilian infrastructure. The use of these cluster elements significantly complicates the work of our rescuers and power engineers in mitigating the damage, marking yet another despicable escalation in Russia's terrorist tactics."

He also reiterated his call to Kyiv's Western allies to provide more air defence and ensure timely deliveries, especially during critical winter months asUkraine struggles to protect its energy infrastructure from the strikes.

By James Sillars, business and economics reporter

The Russian rouble has been attracting attention over the past 24 hours.

The currency slipped to its weakest level versus the dollar since the early months of the Ukraine war yesterday.

A senior Russian bank boss was quoted as blaming the plunge on new US sanctions against the country's third largest bank, Gazprombank, which is a key player in Russia's energy trading.

The rouble touched 110 versus the US currency.

It meant that it had lost a third of its value since August.

The rouble clawed back some ground after Russia's central bank responded by saying it would temporarily halt foreign currency purchases.

Russia cannot buy dollars or euros due to sanctions so it has been looking to China's currency to service its needs in recent years.

Currency weakness is a problem for any economy as it makes purchases abroad more expensive, stoking domestic inflation.

The annual pace of price growth in Russia's economy is 8% and being further fuelled by a similar figure for wages.

The central bank interest rate, aimed at tackling inflation, stands at 21%.

Footage released by Russia's Defence Ministry shows a Su-34 bomber from the country's air force launching strikes on what it says are Ukrainian forces in the border area of the Kursk region.

The ministry said the crew "carried out a strike on a concentration of personnel, armoured and automobile military".

"The strike was carried out with aerial bombs with a universal planning and correction module," it added.

Russia's large-scale attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure this morning "dealt a hard blow" and "used a lot of cluster munitions", a source inUkraine's energy industry has said.

The attack cut power to at least one million people across three western regions of the country, local officials reported earlier today.

The use of cluster munitions is limited under a 2008 convention, although neither Russia nor Ukraine are signatories.

Vladimir Putin said last week that Russia would start mass-producing a new hypersonic, non-nuclear ballistic missile that it fired at Dnipro.

In a televised address, the Russian president said the intermediate-range missile, which he called Oreshnik, the Russian word for hazel tree, had been used in response to US and UK weapons being used by Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia.

Following the strike, Putin said the Oreshnik was hypersonic and could not be intercepted - a claim that prompted some alarm in the West, particularly when the leader subsequently approved changes that lowered the threshold for Russia to launch a nuclear strike.

However, Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California, cast doubt on those claims.

He noted that all ballistic missiles of that range were hypersonic, and that missile interceptors such as Israel's Arrow 3 and the US SM-3 Block 2A were designed to destroy them.

None of the technology in the new Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that hit Ukraine is novel but getting a close, hands-on look could yield interesting insight into the latest Russian missile designs, Lewis added.

"This is a new capability, but this is not a new capability that represents a dramatic change in the way that conventional weapons are developed," he said.

"It's a series of old technologies that have been put together in a new way."