A new attack by a Ukrainian drone against an airbase in southern Russia killed three people on Monday, a day in which Kyiv intends to request the exclusion of Moscow from the UN Security Council.
Russian air defenses shot down the Ukrainian drone as it approached the Engels base in the Saratov region overnight, Russian news agencies reported on Monday. Located more than 600 km from Ukraine, it has already been attacked earlier this month.
“As a result of the falling debris of the drone, three Russian technicians who were at the airfield were fatally injured,” the TASS news agency reported, citing the Defense Ministry.
“Does Russia have the right to remain a permanent member of the UN Security Council?”
Ukraine, which has not commented on the attack, plans to ask for Russia’s exclusion from a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council on Monday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Sunday.
“We will officially declare our position. We have a very simple question: does Russia have the right to remain a permanent member of the UN Security Council and to be in the UN?” she said, speaking late on Christmas Eve during a national television marathon.
“We have a compelling and reasoned answer: no, it doesn’t.”
“Historical Russia”
The day before, the Russian president tried to justify the Kremlin’s military offensive against Ukraine, which has been going on for more than 10 months, but which has not yet allowed Russia to achieve its objectives.
“Everything is based on the policy of our geopolitical adversaries, who seek to divide Russia, historical Russia,” denounced Vladimir Putin in an interview made public this Sunday on public television.
The Russian president regularly uses the concept of “historic Russia” to justify military intervention in Ukraine due to the need to unite Ukrainians and Russians, who would form the same people.
“‘Divide and rule’: they have always tried to do it, they are trying to do it now, but our goal is quite different: to unite the Russian people,” he said.
“Good address”
According to Vladimir Putin, the Russian army is “moving in the right direction” in Ukraine. And he promised that Russian troops would take out the Patriot air defense system, which Kyiv obtained this week from the Americans.
“Of course we are going to destroy it, 100%!” Vladimir Putin launched, three days after affirming that his army would find “an antidote” to counteract “this rather old system”.
In addition to the Patriot system, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, left his visit to the United States with the promise of an endowment of 45,000 million dollars in aid planned in the next US federal budget.
If the Russian General Staff has confirmed that it intends to conquer the entire Donetsk industrial region, Volodymyr Zelensky has sworn to it that he wants to recover the four Ukrainian regions annexed by Russia at the end of September: Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporijjia, Kherson -, as well as the peninsula of Crimea, annexed in 2014.
End of the “dark” year
He rebuked Russian “terrorists” who carried out bomb attacks on Saturday against the city center of Kherson, a southern Ukrainian city retaken on November 11 after eight months of occupation by Moscow troops. The central market and surrounding streets were shelled, killing at least 10 and injuring 55, an “act of terror”, according to the Ukrainian president.
Volodymyr Zelensky called on the Ukrainians to prepare for new attacks at the end of the year.
“We must be aware that our enemy will try to make this moment dark and difficult.”
Vladimir Saldo, the head of the pro-Russian administration in Kherson, blamed the attack on the Ukrainian army and criticized “a sick provocation aimed, of course, at accusing the armed forces of the Russian Federation.”
Rejection of “Russian influence”
On Sunday in Kyiv, the Orthodox celebrated Christmas alongside Catholics, a strong sign of defiance of Russian religious authorities, who will celebrate the birth of Jesus in two weeks’ time.
“The war has brought us so much pain,” faithful Olga Stanko said at a downtown church. “We cannot remain under Russian influence,” she added, as the military conflict has moved onto religious ground in recent weeks.
Ukraine, a country whose population is mostly Orthodox, is effectively divided between a Church dependent on the Moscow Patriarchate – which announced its break with Russia at the end of May due to the Russian offensive – and a Church independent of Russia oversight. Created at the end of 2018, the latter has sworn allegiance to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is based in Istanbul.
Source: BFM TV
