With both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war preparing for further fighting, Ukraine was test-launching a new long-range cruise missile, Zelenskyy said. Ukraine’s president announced the huge missile, known as Flamingo, could strike targets as far as 3,000km (1,864 miles) away. “The missile has undergone successful tests. It is currently our most successful missile,” Zelenskyy told reporters. Mass production could begin by February, he added.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday that large Russian attacks in various parts of Ukraine showed Moscow was avoiding negotiations about ending the more than three-year-old war. The latest offensive included 574 drones and 40 missiles, said Ukraine’s president, and was one of the largest yet.
A missile strike on the US-owned electronics firm Flex in Ukraine’s far-west Zakarpattia region was a “telling” indicator of Russian intentions in peace initiatives led by Donald Trump, Zelenskyy said. “Now the signals from Russia are simply, to be honest, indecent. They are trying to back away from the need to hold meetings. They don’t want to end the war. They carry on with massive strikes.”
“We believe [the Flex attack] was a deliberate strike precisely on US property here in Ukraine, on American investment,” Zelenskyy said. “A very telling strike … at the very time when the world waits for a clear answer from the Russians on their move in talks to bring an end to the war.” Nineteen people were injured in the attack. Zelenskyy said both sides were preparing for further fighting, citing Russian troop build-ups and Ukraine’s own preparations including the Flamingo missile rollout.
While he has upended a years-long western policy of isolating the Russian leader, Trump has made little tangible progress towards a peace deal. On Thursday, the US president appeared to vent his frustration at Russia’s obstruction, and suggested Ukraine should long since have been armed to “fight back” against Russia, writes Pjotr Sauer. In a ramble on social media blaming his predecessor, Joe Biden, Trump said: “It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader’s country … There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia.” Trump signed off that there were “interesting times ahead!”.
Moscow attempted on Thursday to further deeply caveat any prospects for talks with Putin, or for peace on any terms other than Russia’s. Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister, said putting European troops in Ukraine to guarantee its security was “foreign intervention” and absolutely unacceptable for Russia. He insisted the Kremlin must have a veto over any postwar support for Ukraine.
Trump set another timeframe – two weeks again – for assessing peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. “After that, we’ll have to maybe take a different tack,” Trump told the rightwing media outlet Newsmax. Trump has not met any of his promised or threatened deadlines for securing peace or acting against Russia, which have ranged everywhere from 24 hours to 10 weeks.
In an attack on Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, one person was killed, three wounded and 26 homes damaged, said the governor, Maksym Kozytskyi. Authorities in south-eastern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region reported damage to businesses, homes and gas lines. A later shelling of the city of Kherson killed one person and wounded more than a dozen, a local official said.
In the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, two people were killed and at least 21 wounded after a Ukrainian shelling, said a Russian-installed official.
Kim Jong-un held a ceremony decorating North Korean troops who fought for Russia, state media KCNA said on Friday. The North Korean ruler has sent about 15,000 troops into the war, according to South Korea, with about 600 of them killed.
