Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed his condolences to the president of Azerbaijan over the Azerbaijani plane crash and called on Russia to provide a clearer explanation. “The top priority now is a thorough investigation to answer all questions about what actually happened. Russia must provide a clear explanation and stop the spread of disinformation.” President Zelenskyy spoke on “X” after a phone call with Ilham Aliyev. On Friday, White House Press Secretary John Kirby said the United States was seeing “early indications” that Russia may have been involved in the crash that killed 38 people. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologized to the Azerbaijani leader for what the Kremlin called a “tragic incident in Russian airspace.” The Kremlin statement did not say Russia shot down the plane, but said Russian air defense systems were activated at the time and repelled the Ukrainian drone attack.
Kiev’s president said Ukraine’s attack on a warehouse of long-range Shahid drones in Russia’s Oryol region had “significantly reduced” Moscow’s ability to launch mass drone strikes. Ukraine’s Armed Forces General Staff announced in a statement to Telegram on Saturday that its air force carried out the attack on Thursday. “As a result of the airstrike, a warehouse for the storage, maintenance and repair of Shahed kamikaze drones, made of several protected concrete structures, was destroyed. “We have significantly reduced the enemy’s chances of carrying out air attacks.” Ukraine’s air force announced early Saturday that it had shot down 15 of the 16 Russian-launched drones overnight, and that one had disappeared from radar.
Russia’s Gazprom announced on Saturday that it would suspend gas supplies to Ukraine’s neighbor Moldova starting January 1, citing a debt dispute. The gas outage will cut off supplies to the Kuchurgan power plant in the separatist, pro-Russian Transnistria region between Moldova and Ukraine. This power plant supplies electricity to a significant part of mainland Moldova. The country’s Prime Minister Dorin Lesian accused Russia of using “energy as a political weapon.” He said the government did not acknowledge that the debt cited by Gazprom had been “annulled by an international audit.” Moldovan parliament voted earlier this month to impose a state of emergency in the energy sector over concerns that Russia could leave the country without enough energy this winter. Several countries in Eastern Europe are bracing for a disruption in Russian gas supplies, as Kiev plans to cut off the flow of Russian gas through its territory within days.
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Saturday that it had responded to the new EU sanctions by significantly expanding the list of officials from the EU and EU member states banned from entering Russia. The European Union on Monday imposed its 15th round of sanctions against Russia, including tougher measures against Chinese companies and adding ships from Moscow’s so-called “shadow fleet.” The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that unnamed “representatives of security services, state and commercial organizations of EU member states responsible for providing military aid to Kiev, as well as nationals of EU member states,” will be added to the suspension list. announced that it had been addressed.
Finnish police on Saturday removed a Russian-linked vessel detained on suspicion of sabotaging an undersea power cable between Finland and Estonia to assist in the investigation. Since Thursday, Finnish authorities have been searching the tanker Eagle S, which was carrying Russian oil, as part of an investigation into “aggravated sabotage” of the Estlink 2 submarine cable in the Baltic Sea. The cable cut on Christmas Day was the latest in a series of incidents that Western authorities believe to be sabotage related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Finnish police said the Cook Islands-flagged tanker was transferred under escort from the coast to an inner berth 40 kilometers east of Helsinki on Saturday. The reason is that “the new location offers better options for carrying out investigative measures.”
