Ukraine said on Tuesday its forces were ‘commencing new offensive actions’ in Russia’s western Kursk region, in its first substantive remarks two days after Russian reports of a renewed Ukrainian thrust in the area.
Austria’s OMV has struck a deal to supply Germany’s Uniper with gas from its Black Sea project from 2027, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Europe seeks new ways to boost energy security after cutting ties with Russia.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will discuss the end of Russian gas transit through Ukraine with representatives of the European Commission on 9 January in Brussels, said Slovakia’s government office on Tuesday.
Ukraine forces conduct ‘new offensive actions’ in Russia’s Kursk region
Ukraine said on Tuesday its forces were “commencing new offensive actions” in Russia’s western Kursk region, in its first substantive remarks two days after Russian reports of a renewed Ukrainian thrust in the area.
Ukraine first seized part of the Kursk region in a surprise incursion last August, and it has held territory there for five months despite losing some ground. The Russian defence ministry said on Sunday that Kyiv had launched a new counter-attack.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s general staff, which keeps a tight lid on information out of the area for the security of its operation there, said Kyiv’s military had hit a Russian command post near the Kursk region’s settlement of Belaya.
The strike and other recent operations in the region were coordinated with Ukrainian ground forces who “are currently commencing new offensive operations” against Russian troops, it said.
The military later edited out any mention of a new attack in the Telegram statement, replacing the phrase with the much vaguer “combat operations”. It provided no explanation.
Russia’s defence ministry, which has characterised the Ukrainian counter-attack as bungled over the last two days, said in a statement that its troops had carried out strikes on Ukrainian units in the Kursk region.
It listed six locations where it said its forces had defeated Ukrainian brigades, and seven more — including one on the Ukrainian side of the border — where it said it had carried out strikes on Ukrainian troops and equipment.
Capturing and retaining a slice of Russian territory in the Kursk region has given Ukraine a bargaining chip in potential peace talks, as both sides fight to improve their battlefield positions before Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The US president-elect, who will be sworn in on 20 January, has repeatedly said he will end the nearly three-year-old war quickly, but without saying how.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War said geolocated footage from the region published on Sunday and Monday indicated recent Ukrainian advances in three areas northeast of the town of Sudzha.
It said Russian forces were trying to attack elsewhere in the region. Russian military bloggers reported fighting in Malaya Loknya, northwest of Sudzha.
Ukraine’s offensive in the Kursk region has come at a cost. Late in 2024 Russian forces advanced in eastern Ukraine at the fastest pace since 2022. Their troops control about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory.
Western and Ukrainian assessments say Russia also has about 11,000 troops from its ally North Korea fighting with its own forces in the region. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
Ukraine and the US say large numbers have been killed, with US Secretary Antony Blinken giving a figure on Monday of more than 1,000 North Koreans dead or wounded.
Ukraine’s special forces said on Tuesday they had killed 13 North Korean soldiers and posted photos on Telegram which they said showed their bodies and ID documents.
In a regular update, Kyiv’s general staff said there had been 27 Russian attacks in the Kursk region on Tuesday so far.
The apparent escalation in the fighting in the Kursk region comes at a critical time for Ukraine, whose outnumbered and outgunned troops are struggling to repel Russian advances in the east.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had made important gains in eastern Ukraine, capturing the town of Kurakhove, 32km south of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian logistics hub toward which Russian forces have been advancing for months.
The ministry said taking Kurakhove, which had held out for many weeks, would enable its forces to boost the pace of their advance in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. It also said it had captured Dachenske, a village 8km from Pokrovsk.
Viktor Trehubov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Khortytsia group of forces, told Reuters that, as of Monday morning, Kyiv’s forces were still engaging Russian troops inside Kurakhove.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s military, in a late evening report, said Russian forces had launched 25 attacks on Ukrainian positions around Kurakhove, but said nothing about the town changing hands.
Ukrainian bloggers said servicemen were subjected to constant fire from multiple rocket launchers and guided, or glide, bombs. One report said that Kurakhove had been “practically lost”.
Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, which tracks the front line using open sources, showed most of Kurakhove under Russian control.
Austria’s OMV agrees to supply Romanian gas to Germany
Austria’s OMV has struck a deal to supply Germany’s Uniper with gas from its Black Sea project from 2027, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Europe seeks new ways to boost energy security after cutting ties with Russia.
The five-year deal for 15 terawatt hours of natural gas from the Neptun Deep project, which has not previously been disclosed, comes after Russia last month stopped delivering gas via Ukraine and a broader winding down of European Union energy purchases from Moscow due to its invasion of Ukraine.
The total contract volume represents about 1.5% of Germany’s gas imports in 2024 and would be the first deal underpinning the long-awaited deepwater project, more than a decade after gas was first discovered in Romania’s section of the Black Sea.
Neptun Deep, which is expected to start producing in 2027, holds an estimated 100 billion cubic metres (bcm) of recoverable gas, making it one of the EU’s most significant natural gas deposits.
Once it comes online, Romania will become the EU’s largest gas producer and a net gas exporter for the first time.
OMV Petrom, which is majority-owned by OMV, with Romania holding a 20.7% stake, first announced it had discovered 42-84bcm of gas in the Black Sea in 2012.
Production at the plateau will be about 8bcm annually for about 10 years, nearly doubling Romania’s gas output.
Slovak PM to discuss gas transit with European Commission
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will discuss the end of Russian gas transit through Ukraine with representatives of the European Commission on 9 January in Brussels, said Slovakia’s government office on Tuesday.
Supplies through Ukraine stopped on 1 January after a transit agreement between Ukraine and Russia expired, but Fico had been keen to continue receiving Russian gas through that route and threatened to retaliate against Ukraine for what he said were large economic losses for Slovakia.
Russia’s Orthodox patriarch says West trying to smother Russia
The patriarch of Russia’s Orthodox Church, celebrating Christmas alongside Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, said on Tuesday that the Western world despised Russia and its “alternative path of civilised development”.
Orthodox Christians in Russia celebrate Christmas on 7 January, according to the Julian calendar
Patriarch Kirill, an enthusiastic backer of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, blessed icons and crosses that were to be engraved with the president’s initials and sent to servicemen in the 34-month-old war in Ukraine, Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.
Russia presented a challenge to powerful countries not because of its nuclear capabilities or strength, said Kirill, according to the news agencies.
“They hate us because we are offering a different, alternative path of civilised development,” he said at Christ the Saviour cathedral, which was rebuilt on the site of a swimming pool in the 1990s after Soviet dictator Josef Stalin levelled it in the 1930s.
The West was in moral collapse, he said, but Russia showed the world how to blend science, culture, education and faith.
“Physically, they cannot really smother us, though they try through different types of slander and the creation of blocs of some sort intended to weaken Russia,” he said. “Nothing will work because God is with us.”
Putin has looked to the church for support in Ukraine and denounced what he sees as a decline in Western morals, including the movement to protect gay and transgender rights.
In his Christmas message, the Russian president praised the church for “strengthening the institution of the family, the upbringing of young people and the affirmation of moral ideals”.
Trump’s Ukraine envoy postpones Kyiv trip until after inauguration
Trump’s incoming Ukraine envoy has postponed a fact-finding trip to Kyiv and other European capitals until after Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, according to four sources with knowledge of the trip’s planning.
Retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who is set to serve as Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, had initially planned a mission to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian leaders in early January, Reuters reported last month. His team was also setting up meetings with officials in other European capitals, including Rome and Paris.
But the trip, which would have marked the first time incoming Trump administration officials headed to Kyiv since the 5 November election, has been pushed back, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private matters.
Kellogg is now expected to travel to Ukraine after Trump takes office, though no date has been set, the sources said.
It was not immediately clear why Kellogg was delaying the trip.
Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he could solve the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office, but he has made little progress toward that end. Still, attempting to quickly wind down the conflict remains a key priority of his incoming administration. DM