French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that Ukraine needed to have a realistic position on territorial issues as part of efforts to bring about a negotiation with Russia.
A Russian drone attacked a civilian passenger bus in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson on Monday, killing at least one person and injuring nine more, said the Kherson regional governor.
A meeting between Slovak, Ukrainian and European Commission officials over gas supplies planned for Tuesday was cancelled because Kyiv would not participate, said Slovakia on Monday.
Ukraine needs ‘realistic’ stance on territorial issues, says Macron
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that Ukraine needed to have a realistic position on territorial issues as part of efforts to bring about a negotiation with Russia.
Speaking at an annual conference to French ambassadors to outline their strategy for the year, Macron’s comments were the first time he had suggested that Kyiv should consider a position beyond seeking to regain all territory seized by Russia.
Moscow, which annexed Crimea in 2014, launched a full-blown invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and currently controls about a fifth of the country, including most of the eastern Donbas region.
“The Ukrainians need to hold a realistic discussion on the territorial questions and only they can do that, and the Europeans are counting on building security guarantees that will be their responsibility,” said Macron.
The US’s role should be to convince Russia to come to the negotiation table, he said, while adding that no solution to the conflict could be agreed without the direct involvement of Ukraine and Europe.
Speaking at a news conference in Paris, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski made it clear his country’s position had not changed and said only Ukraine could decide on the future of its borders.
“Poland thinks that the most natural and lasting solution would be a return to the recognised borders,” he said alongside his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot.
“Let us recall that it was President Vladimir Putin who personally negotiated and ratified the border treaty between Russia and Ukraine in 2004.”
Macron reiterated that Ukraine’s allies needed to ensure that Kyiv had enough backing so that it could enter any negotiations from a position of strength. He made no specific new commitments to help Ukraine.
“There will not be a quick and easy solution,” said Macron, referring to US President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to end the war quickly.
Russian drone kills one, injures nine in bus in Ukraine’s Kherson
A Russian drone attacked a civilian passenger bus in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson on Monday, killing at least one person and injuring nine more, said the Kherson regional governor.
The bus with shattered windows and pools of blood on its floor could be seen on a video from the site, shared by the governor alongside his statement on Telegram.
A 49-year-old man was killed, said the regional prosecutor’s office.
Civilians in the Kherson region, which Russian forces partially occupy, and its capital constantly come under Russian drone attacks. Local authorities report casualties from such strikes on an almost daily basis.
Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians but thousands have been killed and injured after Moscow’s troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Slovakia’s gas supply meeting with Ukraine, European Commission cancelled
A meeting between Slovak, Ukrainian and European Commission officials over gas supplies planned for Tuesday was cancelled because Kyiv would not participate, said Slovakia on Monday.
The commission was seeking a new date for a meeting, said the government of Slovakia’s pro-Russian Prime Minister Robert Fico in a statement.
Fico has accused Kyiv of damaging Slovakia by not extending a transit deal for Russian gas and has threatened to cut electricity flows to Ukraine and reduce aid for its refugees.
Kyiv has said the end of gas transit deprives Moscow of revenue as long as Russia continues to attack Ukraine.
Slovakia has arranged alternative gas sources and routes, but Fico has argued that the end of Ukraine’s transit of Russian gas meant that Slovakia lost its own transit revenue and had to pay more to bring gas from elsewhere.
Fico put the cost for Slovakia at €500-million and said he would seek the restart of the flows or compensation. The Slovak government caps gas prices, so may face increased costs if it pays more for gas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Fico of opening a “second energy front” against Ukraine on the orders of Russia.
Ukraine, whose power infrastructure has suffered from Russian bombing, has synchronised its grid with the European Union and has been trading electricity through high-voltage connections with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
Thousands left without heat or gas in Moldova’s pro-Russian separatist region
More than 51,000 households were left without gas and 1,500 apartment buildings had no winter heat in Moldova’s pro-Russian separatist enclave, said authorities on Monday, as Moldova and Russia traded blame for an escalating energy crisis.
Transdniestria, a mainly Russian-speaking breakaway region along the Ukrainian border, had received Russian gas via Ukraine for decades, using it to generate electricity also sold to the rest of Moldova, providing 80% of the country’s power.
But that gas was cut off along with flows to Central and Eastern Europe that stopped on New Year’s Day, after Kyiv refused to extend a transit deal that had persisted through nearly three years of all-out war between Russia and Ukraine.
The Transdniestrian government said on Telegram that a total of 122 settlements had lost gas supplies as of Monday morning and only small amounts were being supplied to some apartments for cooking. Authorities ordered schools not to reopen after the winter holidays, with at least 131 schools and 147 kindergartens left without heat.
Gas piped via Ukraine has long been the main way Russia supported the separatist region, which broke free of the control of Moldova’s central government in a brief war in 1992 and still hosts 1,500 Russian soldiers.
Moldova summoned a Russian diplomat on Monday and accused Moscow of falsely blaming it for the Transdniestria crisis, which it said Moscow was artificially stoking to undermine its government before parliamentary elections this year.
Moldova, which has a pro-European government that seeks membership in the European Union, has alternated between pro-Western and pro-Russian governments since it gained independence during the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.
Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean told a briefing of reporters that disruptions of water supply in Transdniestria had begun on Monday.
“The meaning of all of this is for Russia to create instability in the region but also very importantly to influence the results of the parliamentary elections in Moldova... They want to achieve a pro-Russian government,” said Recean.
Russia’s foreign ministry said it was following the deteriorating situation in Transdniestria with alarm, and accused Moldova and the West of artificially creating the crisis and falsely blaming Moscow for it.
Since Russian gas was halted with the new year, Moldova has met its power needs by importing about 60% of its energy requirement from neighbouring Romania. It says it has offered to assist the separatists, but that the offer was rejected.
The Moldovan government blames the energy crisis on Russian gas export giant Gazprom, which it said refused to supply contracted gas to Moldova via an alternative route.
Gazprom said it would suspend exports to Moldova on 1 January because of unpaid Moldovan debts Moscow says total $709-million. Moldova disputes that and puts the figure at $8.6-million.
Central Europe gas flows adjusted after Ukraine transit ends
Central European gas flows have adapted to the halt of Russian supplies through Ukraine on 1 January, as increased shipments to the region from Germany and Italy make up the shortfall, data from network operators showed on Monday.
Austria received gas through Slovakia until the year-end even though its contracted supplies from Russian gas giant Gazprom had stopped in November.
Austrian Grid Management said in a daily report on Monday the country boosted imports from Germany and Italy when flows from Slovakia were halted following the expiry of a transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine that Kyiv refused to extend.
Gas also stopped flowing through Slovakia and on to the Czech Republic, while Slovakia has drawn on a connection with Hungary as its only source of imports so far this year.
Deliveries from Gazprom for Slovakia’s own use under a long-term contract with the main Slovak supplier SPP, which covers around two-thirds of the Slovak market, also stopped as the Ukraine transit ended.
Slovak gas transmission network operator Eustream data showed nominations for daily flows to Slovakia from Hungary were at 87 gigawatt hours (GWh) for Monday, the highest since the start of January.
The Czech Republic, whose importers have no direct contracts with Gazprom, has switched back to taking gas from the German network.
Battle rages in western Russia as Moscow reports gains in Ukraine
Russia said on Monday its forces had made important gains in eastern Ukraine while continuing to fend off a new Ukrainian offensive inside the Kursk region of western Russia, where a second day of fierce fighting was under way.
The Russian defence ministry said its forces had captured the town of Kurakhove, 32km south of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian logistics hub towards which Russian forces have been advancing for months.
The ministry said taking Kurakhove, which had held out for many weeks, would enable Moscow’s forces to step up the pace of their advance in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. It also said it had captured Dachenske, a settlement within five miles of Pokrovsk.
Viktor Trehubov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Khortytsia group of forces, told Reuters that, as of Monday morning, Kyiv’s forces were continuing to engage with Russian troops inside Kurakhove.
Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, which tracks the front line using open sources, showed most of Kurakhove under Russian control.
Both sides are fighting to improve their battlefield positions before Trump, who has pledged to bring a quick end to the nearly three-year-old war, takes office as US president on 20 January.
Ukraine’s main achievement in the past five months of fighting has been to capture and hold territory inside Russia’s Kursk region that could prove a bargaining chip in possible peace talks.
Independent military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady said Ukraine was trying to hold its pocket of Kursk for as long as possible, even as Russia continued to push deeper into eastern Ukraine.
“There’s a likelihood that we haven’t seen the main thrust of this Ukrainian offensive operation just yet,” he told Reuters. “We are essentially talking about platoon-sized, company-sized assaults with fairly limited gains thus far.”
It remained to be seen if Kyiv’s forces could open up another axis of advance, Gady added.
Ukrainian and Western assessments suggest about 11,000 troops from Russia’s ally North Korea have been deployed in the Kursk region to support Moscow’s forces. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that more than 1,000 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded. DM