Russia-Ukraine War: List of key events, day 1,044 | Russia-Ukraine war News

Here are the key events on the 1,044th day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Here is the situation on Friday, January 3:

Fighting

• Ukraine’s military said it carried out a precision strike on a Russian military base in Maryino, in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces seized parts of the area after a major border attack.
• Russia’s military said its air defense unit shot down four Ukrainian missiles in the Kursk region, and the governor of Kursk region said the strikes destroyed a high-rise and other buildings.
• The Ukrainian military released a video on social media showing the damage that occurred in the Russian area of ​​Ivanovskoye, near Maryino, in the Kursk region.

• Russia’s Defense Ministry said its defense aircraft shot down a series of drones on Thursday targeting areas near the Ukrainian border, including two in the Belgorod region, two in the Bryansk region and one in the Kursk region. The governor of Russia’s Oryol region said four drones were downed in the area.
• Moscow also claimed that Russian forces shot down a Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jet, 97 drones and HIMARS rocket launchers supplied by the United States.
• Ukraine said its forces shot down 47 of 72 Russian drones targeting the country overnight, with another 24 drones lost – due to electronic jamming.
• Ukraine has opened a criminal investigation into people’s desistance and “abuse of force” after hundreds of soldiers reportedly defected from a French-trained military unit. The 155th Mechanized Brigade, nicknamed “Anne of Kyiv”, was one of several military units established last year as Ukraine sought to strengthen preparations for a possible new Russian attack.
• A Ukrainian court has sentenced a man to 15 years in prison for passing on information to Moscow that would have helped it launch a missile attack.

Politics

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that US President-elect Donald Trump could decide on the outcome of the war with Russia. “He can decide in this fight. He can stand [Russian President Vladimir] Putin or, to put it better, help us stop Putin. He knows how to do this,” said Zelenskyy in the interview.

The economy

• Gas supplies to Europe remain stable, except for Moldova, the European Union said after Russian gas stopped flowing through Ukraine.
• The cutoff of Russian gas to Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniestria has forced the shutdown of all industrial companies except for food producers, Sergei Obolonik, the region’s first deputy prime minister, told a local news station.

• A Russian tanker accident in the Black Sea last month resulted in the spill of 2,400 tonnes of oil, not the 3,000 tonnes originally thought, authorities in Moscow said. The accident occurred in mid-December when two Russian tankers crashed in a storm in the Kerch Strait.
• Ukraine aims to increase exports as the country enters its fourth year of war with Russia in 2025, Zelenskyy said. The country has succeeded in increasing its exports by 15 percent by 2024, he said.

Regional tension

• Infuriated by Russia’s gas blockade to Ukraine, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said he will look into whether it is possible to reduce the support of Ukrainians in Slovakia and repeat the threat to stop the supply of electricity to their big neighbor.
• The Lithuanian government has said that the recent failure of the Estlink 2 undersea cable, which has been blamed on a Russian ship, does not affect the planned synchronization of the electricity grid of the Baltic states and Western Europe.
• Finland’s national electricity grid operator said it has asked a Helsinki court to seize the Eagle S oil tanker in order to defend the company’s claim for damages related to the disconnection of the Estlink 2 undersea power link. The cable between Finland and Estonia was damaged on December 25 along with four telecommunications lines.