Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 25 prisoners of war each after negotiations mediated by the United Arab Emirates, according to statements from both sides.
The US on Wednesday imposed hundreds of sanctions targeting Russia in an action that seeks to increase pressure on Moscow in the final days of the Biden administration and protects some of the sanctions it has already imposed ahead of Donald Trump’s second presidential term.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico looks set to survive an upcoming no-confidence vote after rebel legislators in one ruling coalition party said they would not support the motion.
Russia and Ukraine swap 25 POWs each in UAE-mediated exchange
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 25 prisoners of war each after negotiations mediated by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to statements from both sides.
“These are our military and civilians,” wrote Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X. He said many of the Ukrainian POWs had severe injuries and illnesses and would receive medical care.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said the two sides had swapped 25 prisoners each. The Russian POWs were currently in Belarus receiving medical and psychological support.
“All released servicemen will be transported to the Russian Federation for treatment and rehabilitation in medical institutions of the Russian Ministry of Defence,” it said.
Zelensky thanked the UAE, which has brokered similar swaps before, for its assistance “in making today’s event possible”.
Ukraine’s coordination centre for POW affairs said the youngest freed prisoner was 24, while the oldest was 60.
“The wounded are suffering from injuries, including loss of vision, limb amputations, complex bullet wounds and the consequences of explosion-related injuries,” said the centre in a statement on Telegram.
US issues round of ‘Trump-proof’ sanctions against Russia
The US on Wednesday imposed hundreds of sanctions targeting Russia in an action that seeks to increase pressure on Moscow in the final days of the Biden administration and protects some of the sanctions it has already imposed ahead of Donald Trump’s second presidential term.
The US State and Treasury departments imposed sanctions on more than 250 targets, including some based in China, taking aim at Russia’s evasion of US sanctions and its military-industrial base.
As part of the action, the Treasury imposed new curbs on almost 100 entities that were already under sanctions in a move that potentially complicates any future efforts to remove the measures ahead of Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
Russia’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Treasury in a statement said Washington was imposing fresh sanctions on almost 100 critical Russian entities — including Russian banks and companies operating in Russia’s energy sector — that were previously sanctioned by the US in a move it said increases secondary sanctions risk for them.
The new sanctions were issued under an executive order that a senior Treasury official said required Congress to be notified before any of the actions could be reversed.
Jeremy Paner, a partner at the law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed, said the actions were “Trump-proofed”, preventing reversal of the additional sanctions without congressional approval.
Washington also took action against a sanctions evasion scheme established between actors in Russia and China, targeting regional clearing platforms in the two countries that it said had been working to allow cross-border payments for sensitive goods. The Treasury said several Russian banks under US sanctions were participants.
Also hit with sanctions on Wednesday was Keremet Bank, a Kyrgyzstan-based financial institution the Treasury accused of coordinating with Russian officials and a bank designated by the US to circumvent sanctions.
The US State Department also imposed sanctions on the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.
The plant, located in Ukraine’s southeast, was captured by Russia shortly after it launched the invasion in 2022. It is shut down but needs external power to keep its nuclear material cool and prevent a meltdown.
The sanctions will not affect its operations, Russian news agencies reported on Wednesday, citing the plant’s spokesperson.
Slovakia’s Fico set to survive no-confidence vote
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico looks set to survive an upcoming no-confidence vote after rebel legislators in one ruling coalition party said they would not support the motion.
Opposition parties said on Tuesday they were initiating a no-confidence vote against Fico’s leftist-nationalist government, accusing him of dragging the country’s foreign policy closer to Russia while doing little to fix problems at home.
The government has shifted its foreign policy focus since coming to power late in 2023 by ending state military aid to Ukraine as it fights a full-scale Russian invasion and renewing ties with Moscow, including Fico’s visit there last month.
Fico has faced dissent from four legislators from Hlas (Voice), one junior party in the ruling coalition, whose support in the no-confidence vote — likely to take place next week — had been seen as critical.
“We are part of the ruling coalition and we do not have a reason to support the opposition in dismissing the prime minister,” said one of the rebel lawmakers, Jan Ferencak, on the broadcaster TA3.
Ferencak added that changing the direction of foreign policy in a way that would affect the country’s firm roots in the EU and Nato — which Fico has not suggested doing — would be a red line, however.
New sanctions ‘could significantly disrupt Russian oil supply chains’ - IEA
The latest round of US sanctions against Russia could significantly disrupt the country’s oil supply chains, said the International Energy Agency (IEA) in a monthly report on Wednesday, potentially tightening the global market.
Even so, the outlook from the IEA, which advises industrialised countries, still suggests the market will be in surplus this year as supply growth led by countries outside the Opec+ producer group exceeds subdued expansion in world demand.
New US sanctions on Iran and Russia cover entities that handled more than a third of Russian and Iranian crude exports in 2024, said the IEA, but it held off on factoring the measures into its supply forecasts for now.
“We maintain our supply forecasts for both countries until the full impact of sanctions becomes more apparent, but the new measures could result in a tightening of crude and product balances,” said the IEA.
Russia planned ‘acts of terrorism’ in the air, says Polish PM
Russia planned “acts of terrorism” in the air against Poland and other countries, said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday after meeting Zelensky in Warsaw.
Security officials have said that parcels which exploded at logistics depots in Europe were part of a test run for a Russian plot to trigger explosions on cargo flights to the US. The explosions occurred in depots in Britain, Germany and Poland in July. Russia has denied involvement in the incidents and Tusk did not mention them specifically.
“The latest information can confirm the validity of fears that Russia was planning acts of terrorism in the air not only against Poland,” Tusk told a news conference.
He did not say what acts he was referring to or elaborate on the contents of the information.
The Russian embassy in Warsaw and the Russian foreign ministry did not reply to requests for comment on Tusk’s statement.
Moscow has regularly denied any involvement in the courier depot explosions, as well as break-ins, arson and attacks on individuals which Western officials say were carried out by operatives paid by Russia.
Russia launches new missile barrage at Ukraine
Russia launched scores of missiles and drones at Ukraine on Wednesday, targeting gas infrastructure and other energy facilities in western regions in a new barrage against the struggling power system in the depths of winter.
Zelensky said that the Russian forces launched more than 40 missiles during the morning attack and used more than 70 drones overnight.
Ukrainian air defences shot down 30 missiles and 47 drones, said the air force. Another 27 drones were “lost”, in reference to Kyiv using electronic warfare to redirect them.
“Another massive Russian attack. It’s the middle of winter, and the target for the Russians remains unchanged: our energy infrastructure,” said Zelensky in a social media post on X.
The capital, Kyiv, also came under attack, with hundreds of residents taking shelter in underground metro stations across the capital, sleeping on yoga mats and sitting on folded chairs with their pets.
The governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region said two energy facilities, in the Drohobych and Stryi districts, were damaged. In neighbouring Ivano-Frankivsk, the governor said air defences were fending off Russian attacks on facilities.
The air force also said that gas infrastructure facilities in the Kharkiv region in the northeast were attacked.
The Russian Defence Ministry said that its forces conducted strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, successfully hitting all designated targets.
Ukraine’s oil and gas company Naftogaz said there were no outages, adding that “gas supplies to population were uninterrupted”.
Trump advisers concede Ukraine peace deal is months away
Advisers to Trump now concede that the Ukraine war will take months or even longer to resolve, a sharp reality check on his biggest foreign policy promise — to strike a peace deal on his first day in the White House.
Two Trump associates, who have discussed the war in Ukraine with the president-elect, told Reuters they were looking at a timeline of months to resolve the conflict, describing the Day One promises as a combination of campaign bluster and a lack of appreciation of the intractability of the conflict and the time it takes to staff up a new administration.
Those assessments dovetail with remarks by Trump’s incoming Russia-Ukraine envoy, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who said in an interview with Fox News last week that he would like to have a “solution” to the war within 100 days, far beyond the president-elect’s original timeline.
Yet even Kellogg’s extended deadline was “way, way too optimistic”, said John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Ukraine who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.
“For this to work, Trump has to persuade Putin that there’s a downside for being intransigent,” said Herbst.
In the run-up to his 5 November election victory, Trump declared dozens of times that he would have a deal in place between Ukraine and Russia on his first day in office, if not before.
In late October, however, he made a subtle shift in his rhetoric, and began saying he could solve the war “very quickly”.
Since the election, Trump has walked back his rhetoric further, often simply saying that he would “solve” the conflict, without offering a timeline. And the president-elect has said ending the war in Ukraine will be harder than reaching a ceasefire in Gaza. DM