International Glance
Russian forces on Jan. 2 launched a missile attack on a residential neighborhood in the city of Kharkiv, killing a child and injuring at least 19 people, including a six-month-old baby, regional authorities said.
The body of a three-year-old boy was recovered from the rubble of a destroyed apartment building after the attack, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov reported. The boy's mother is considered missing. Search and rescue operations are ongoing at the site.
Sixteen of the wounded were hospitalized, including a woman in serious condition, Syniehubov said. He added that the baby did not require hospitalization.
In total, 28 people sought medical assistance following the attack, which included at least six people who suffered from severe stress due to the attack, according to Syniehubov.
The attack destroyed a five-story apartment and damaged other civilian infrastructure, a shopping center, and cars, according to the local authorities. The entrance to another four-story apartment building was damaged, as were contact networks, traffic signals, and power lines.
Russian missile attack on Kharkiv kills 3-year-old-child, injures at least 19 people
Kapustin Alive After Foiled Russian Hit Plot, HUR Says
Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) helped Denis Kapustin, the founder of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) who was announced dead last week, to fake his death before claiming the bounty placed on his head by Russian security services, it said on Thursday.
Kapustin, 41, was previously reported killed by a Russian drone whilst carrying out a combat mission in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region overnight on Saturday, Dec. 27.
On Jan. 1, HUR said in a post on Telegram that a Russian special service operation ordering his murder, which had allocated a $500,000 bounty to carry out the crime, had successfully been foiled.
It added that it had procured the sum offered to “liquidate” Kapustin by Russia and this money would be used to strengthen Ukrainian drone capabilities against Russian forces.
HUR said that the murder of Kapustin – considered a “personal enemy” by Russian President Vladimir Putin – had been “commissioned by the special services of the aggressor state Russia, which allocated half a million dollars to carry out the crime.”
It added that a special operation lasting more than a month had successfully duped Russian intelligence services into believing that Kapustin was dead.
Zelenskyy heads to Florida for talks with Trump amid fresh strikes on Kyiv
A third of Kyiv is without heating after a Russian drone and missile barrage on the Ukrainian capital cut off power supplies, leaving hundreds of thousands of people facing freezing temperatures.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Moscow had used nearly 500 drones and 40 missiles, including ballistic missiles, in the overnight attack. “The primary target is Kyiv – energy facilities and civilian infrastructure,” he said in a post on X.
The intense overnight strikes lasted 10 hours and killed one person and wounded two dozen others. They came as the Ukrainian leader headed to Florida for a face-to-face meeting on Sunday with Donald Trump, who has proposed a plan to end nearly four years of fighting that has killed tens of thousands.
Zelenskyy stopped in Canada, where he met the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, who announced an additional $2.5bn (£1.85bn) of economic aid for Ukraine.
Carney condemned the “barbaric” overnight attack on Kyiv. He said: “We have the conditions, the possibility, for the just and lasting peace,” adding this requires a “willing Russia”.
Israel investing over $100 billion in homegrown arms production, Netanyahu reveals
Israel is working to gain as much independence as possible in its weapons production, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday, in a development he said was the result of the lessons learned during the past two years of war on multiple fronts.
“I approved, along with the defense minister and finance minister, a sum of NIS 350 billion [$108 billion] over the next decade to build an independent Israeli munitions industry,” Netanyahu said in an address at a graduation ceremony for Israeli Air Force pilots.
The move, he said, stemmed from a desire to “reduce our dependence on all players, including friends,” after allies including the US, UK, and Germany all imposed various restrictions on weapons sales to Israel since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
Still, he noted, many countries around the world, including Germany, “want to buy from us more and more systems.”
The premier has long been calling for Israel to develop its own self-reliant military industry, and in January 2024 announced that the government would invest in a “multi-year plan to free Israel from dependence on external purchases.”
TVNL Comment: Why has the US given billions of dollars to Israel every single year? It's a rhetorical question. It's also insane.
“This Has Redefined Israel's Global Identity”: Israeli Weapons Industry Bullish After Genocide
At a recent military technology conference in Tel Aviv, Israeli weapons companies made some of their most explicit remarks yet connecting the value of their products to the real-world testing of that firepower on Palestinians in Gaza.
A recording of the conference remarks was obtained by Drop Site News and includes comments from the president and CEO of the Israel Aerospace Industries as well as executives at Elbit Systems, RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems, and others. The conference was called DefenseTech Week and was held in early December. Drop Site shared the audio with independent news outlets in Brazil, Ireland, Australia, and elsewhere; those outlets will be producing their own investigations.
The Israeli weapons industry has previously come in for criticism for its willingness to boast that its products are “lab tested” on human beings under occupation, most prominently by Australian journalist Anthony Lowenstein. His book, The Palestine Laboratory, was adapted into a Drop Site podcast last year.
The newly uncovered remarks suggest that, rather than having been chastened by global condemnation for the genocide in Gaza, the nation’s weapons industry is emboldened by it. “The war that we faced in the last two years enables most of our products to become valid for the rest of the world,” boasted Boaz Levy, head of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), on day one of the conference. “Starting with Gaza and moving on to Iran and to Yemen, I would say that many, many products of IAI were there.”
Zelenskyy Says He's Open to Creating Demilitarized Zone in Ukraine's Industrial Heartland
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would be willing to withdraw troops from the country’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end Russia’s war, if Moscow also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
The proposal offered another potential compromise on control of the Donbas region, which has been a major sticking point in peace negotiations.
Zelenskyy said the U.S. proposed the creation of a “free economic zone," which he said should be demilitarized. But it was unclear what that idea would mean for governance or development of the region.
A similar arrangement could be possible for the area around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently under Russian control, Zelenskyy said. He said any peace plan would need to be put to a referendum.
Zelenskyy spoke to reporters Tuesday to describe an overarching 20-point plan that negotiators from Ukraine and the U.S. hammered out in Florida in recent days, though he said many details are still being discussed.
Russia offers no hint it will agree to withdrawal
Trump news at a glance: EU could respond to ‘unjustified’ US visa bans, official says
The EU could “respond swiftly and decisively” against the “unjustified” US visa bans on five Europeans involved in combating online hate and disinformation, a European Commission spokesperson has said.
European leaders including Emmanuel Macron accused Washington of “coercion and intimidation”, after the visa ban on the figures who have been at the heart of campaigns to introduce laws regulating American tech companies.
Justifying the visa bans, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, wrote on X: “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organised efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.
European leaders condemn US visa bans as row over ‘censorship’ escalates.
Germany, Spain, the UK and a chorus of EU officials joined the French president in condemning the move.
The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two in the UK.
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