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It comes Russian missile killed at least four people in Zaporizhzhia over night
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Russia could launch another hypersonic ballistic missile in Ukraine in the coming days, but Washington does not consider the Oreshnik weapon a game-changer in the war, a US official has said.
Russia first fired the Oreshnik missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on 21 November, in what President Vladimir Putin cast as a response to Ukraine’s first use of US ATACMs ballistic missiles and British Storm Shadows to strike Russian territory with Western permission.
“We assess that the Oreshnik is not a game-changer on the battlefield, but rather just another attempt by Russia to terrorize Ukraine, which will fail,” the official said.
Putin has claimed that the Oreshnik, or hazel tree, is impossible to intercept and that it has destructive power comparable to that of a nuclear weapon, even when fitted with a conventional warhead.
But the US official downplayed the usefulness of the missiles, calling them “experimental” in nature and said that “Russia likely possesses only a handful” of them.
There was no immediate response from Russia.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said that Ukraine had attacked a military airfield in the southern Russian city of Taganrog with six US-supplied ATACMS missiles and promised retaliation.
The ministry said in a statement that all six missiles had been shot down or intercepted, but that falling missile debris had caused injuries among some personnel.
“There was no damage, two buildings on the technical territory of the airfield and three military vehicles, as well as civilian cars in the parking lot adjacent to the airfield were slightly damaged (by shrapnel),” the ministry said.
“This attack by Western long-range weapons will not go unanswered and appropriate measures will be taken,” it said.
President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia would develop artificial intelligence with BRICS partners and other countries, a bid to challenge the dominance of the United States in one of the most disruptive technologies of the 21st Century.
“I am confident that the international alliance of national associations and development institutes in the field of AI of BRICS countries and other interested states will give a significant boost to such cooperation,” Putin told an AI conference in Moscow.
“We will launch this alliance today,” he said.
Russia’s largest lender Sberbank said that the new AI Alliance Network would include national AI associations from China, ranked as one of the world’s top two AI powers, along with Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa, in a partnership.
Indian defence minister presses Moscow for timely delivery of air defence missile system
Russian troops destroyed or captured several Ukrainian positions near the eastern city of Pokrovsk, Kyiv’s military has said, as Moscow bears down on the strategic logistics hub that is home to a unique Ukrainian coking mine.
After months of accelerating advances towards Pokrovsk, Moscow’s forces are now as close as 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) from the southern outskirts of the city, according to Ukraine‘s DeepState, which maps the front lines using open sources.
“As a result of prolonged clashes, two of our positions were destroyed, one was lost. Currently, measures are being taken to restore positions,” Nazar Voloshyn, Ukraine‘s military spokesman for the eastern front, said in televised comments.
Pokrovsk, situated about 18 kilometres (11 miles) from the boundary of Ukraine‘s Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, has for months been the area of the fiercest battles in Russia’s 33-month-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In October and November, the Russian military advanced towards the city at its fastest rate since the early months of the war, analysts said. Ukraine, which has been on the back foot since its failed 2023 counteroffensive, says Russia has been sustaining some of its heaviest losses of the war to date.
Russia could launch another experimental hypersonic ballistic missile in Ukraine in coming days, but Washington does not consider the Oreshnik weapon a game changer in the war, a US official has said.
“We assess that the Oreshnik is not a game-changer on the battlefield, but rather just another attempt by Russia to terrorize Ukraine, which will fail,” the official told Reuters. Russia previously used the new weapon on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, according to two senior Ukrainian government sources.
Ukraine‘s course of European integration is irreversible, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said, adding Russian President Vladimir Putin had not achieved a single war goal.
Speaking at a German-Ukrainian economic forum, Scholz also said a lot of private investment was needed in Ukraine‘s energy sector.
European Union ambassadors have agreed to a 15th package of sanctions on Russia over its war against Ukraine, the Hungarian EU presidency said.
The presidency said in a post on X that the sanctions would limit the activity of vessels of third states operating in ways that supported Russia’s actions against Ukraine and added more people and entities to the sanctions list.
The sanctions package is likely to be formally adopted at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday.
Rescue crews working through the night pulled two women from rubble more than seven hours after a Russian missile struck a private medical clinic in a southern Ukraine city, killing six people and wounding 22 others, authorities have said.
The women called rescue services on their cellphones to say they were buried under the rubble after the attack late Tuesday in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s Emergency Services said.
Deadly Russian strikes on civilian areas have been a feature of the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s Western allies are sending more aid to help it keep fighting Russia’s invasion, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Zaporizhzhia strike showed that his country still needs more air defence systems.
Read the full report below:
The women called rescue services on their mobile phones to say they were buried
Russia has said that relations with the United States were so confrontational that Russian citizens should not travel to the United States, Canada and some EU countries because they were at risk of being “hunted” by US authorities.
Maria Zakharova, foreign ministry spokeswoman, said that relations with the United States were teetering on the verge of rupture.
“In the context of the increasing confrontation in Russian-American relations, which are teetering on the verge of rupture due to the fault of Washington, trips to the United States of America privately or out of official necessity are fraught with serious risks,” Zakharova told a news briefing.
“We urge you to continue to refrain from trips to the United States of America and its allied satellite states, including, first of all, Canada and, with a few exceptions, European Union countries, during these holidays,” she said.
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