Zelensky calls on allies to honour arms supply promises; Russian shelling of Kherson leaves thousands without power

About 23,000 households were left without electricity after Russian shelling of Kherson in southern Ukraine damaged power equipment in the city, said the local military administration on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of Romanians angered by the cancellation of a presidential election marched through Bucharest on Sunday to demand that the ballot should go ahead and that outgoing centrist President Klaus Iohannis should resign.

Zelensky calls on allies to honour promises on arms supplies to Ukraine

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday called on allies to honour all promises to supply Ukraine with weapons, including those to counter Russian air attacks.

Zelensky said that over the past week Russian forces had launched hundreds of strikes on Ukraine, using nearly 700 aerial bombs and more than 600 attack drones.

Ukrainian air defences downed 60 out of 94 drones launched by Russia overnight, said the air force on Sunday. It said that 34 drones were “lost”, in reference to Ukraine’s use of electronic warfare to redirect Russian drones.

“Every week, the Russian war continues only because the Russian army retains its ability to terrorise Ukraine and exploit its superiority in the sky,” said Zelensky on the Telegram messaging app.

He called on Ukraine’s allies to fulfil agreements already made.

“The decisions made at the Nato summit in Washington, as well as those adopted during the Ramstein meetings regarding air defences for Ukraine, have still not been fully implemented,” said Zelensky.

Ukraine’s leader this week said he had discussed with partners and the US the possibility of granting Ukraine licences to produce air defence systems and missiles.

Thousands without power after Russian strike on Kherson

About 23,000 households were left without electricity after Russian shelling of Kherson in southern Ukraine damaged power equipment in the city, said the local military administration on Sunday.

The attack targeted the Dniprovskiy district along the Dnipro River, an area of Kherson that is regularly shelled by Russian troops on the opposite bank.

Kherson’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said Kherson city and around 50 settlements in the surrounding region had been shelled by Russian troops over the past 24 hours.

“The Russian military shelled social infrastructure and residential areas of the region’s settlements, in particular, damaging 2 multi-storey buildings and 8 private houses,” said Prokudin on Telegram.

Romanian protesters demand cancelled presidential election goes ahead

Tens of thousands of Romanians angered by the cancellation of a presidential election marched through Bucharest on Sunday to demand that the ballot should go ahead and that outgoing centrist President Klaus Iohannis should resign.

In a move that polarised voters, Romania’s top court voided the presidential election on 6 December, two days before the second round.

The cancellation came after state documents showed frontrunner Calin Georgescu, a critic of Nato, had benefited from an unfair social media campaign likely to have been orchestrated by Russia, accusations Moscow has denied.

The court ordered that the election be rerun in its entirety. The pro-European coalition government has yet to approve a calendar for the election, although party leaders agreed to hold the two rounds on 4 and 18 May.

Iohannis, whose term expired on 21 December, will stay on until his successor is elected.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of protesters, including left-wingers and those angered by the way the election was cancelled, joined the protest organised by the opposition hard-right Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR), Romania’s second-largest party.

“We ask for a return to democracy by resuming the election with the second round,” AUR leader George Simion told reporters.

Organisers said 100,000 people were at the protest, but riot police along the march estimated the numbers at around 20,000.

Trump’s Ukraine envoy calls for ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran

The world must return to a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran to turn it into a more democratic country, US President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, told an Iranian opposition event in Paris on Saturday.

Trump has vowed to return to the policy he pursued in his previous term that sought to wreck Iran’s economy to force the country to negotiate a deal on its nuclear programme, ballistic missile programme and regional activities.

“These pressures are not just kinetic, just not military force, but they must be economic and diplomatic as well,” retired Lieutenant-General Kellogg, who is set to serve as Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, told the audience at Paris-based Iranian opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran.

He said there was an opportunity “to change Iran for the better” but that this opportunity would not last forever.

“We must exploit the weakness we now see. The hope is there, so must too be the action.”

Tougher US sanctions to curb Russian oil supply to China, India

Chinese and Indian refiners will source more oil from the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, boosting prices and freight costs, as new US sanctions on Russian producers and ships curb supplies to Moscow’s top customers, said traders and analysts.

The US Treasury on Friday imposed sanctions on Russian oil producers Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas, as well as 183 vessels that have shipped Russian oil, targeting the revenues Moscow has used to fund its war with Ukraine.

Many of the tankers have been used to ship oil to India and China as Western sanctions and a price cap imposed by the Group of Seven countries in 2022 shifted trade in Russian oil from Europe to Asia. Some tankers have also shipped oil from Iran, which is also under sanctions.

Russian oil exports will be hurt severely by the new sanctions, which will force Chinese independent refiners to cut refining output going forward, said two Chinese trade sources.

Among the newly sanctioned ships, 143 are oil tankers that handled more than 530 million barrels of Russian crude last year, about 42% of the country’s total seaborne crude exports, said Kpler’s lead freight analyst, Matt Wright, in a note.

Of these, about 300 million barrels were shipped to China while the bulk of the remainder went to India, he added.

“These sanctions will significantly reduce the fleet of ships available to deliver crude from Russia in the short term, pushing freight rates higher,” said Wright.

Hungary planned to hold talks with regional allies to counter the impact of higher oil prices resulting from the new round of US sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas sector, said Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto on Sunday.

Slovak Parliament’s Deputy Speaker arrives in Moscow

Slovak Deputy Speaker of Parliament Andrej Danko arrived in Moscow on Sunday, reported Russian state-run Tass news agency, as Bratislava seeks a solution following Ukraine’s decision to halt Russian gas pipeline deliveries to Europe.

Danko’s visit, planned before the gas dispute, would continue until Wednesday, reported Tass and Slovak news agency TASRd.

On Friday, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said that Russian President Vladimir Putin promised that Russia’s state gas company Gazprom would find alternative ways to deliver contracted gas to Slovakia after the end of transit through Ukraine.

Ukraine, which has been at war with Russia since Moscow’s 2022 invasion, refused to renew a transit deal with Russia as it seeks to cut revenues going to Moscow to fund the war.

Russia says it takes control of two villages in eastern Ukraine

Russian troops had taken control of the villages of Yantarne in the Donetsk region and Kalynove in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, said the Russian Defence Ministry on Sunday.

Reuters could not immediately confirm battlefield reports.

Separately, the ministry said that over the past 24 hours, Russian forces had carried out strikes on Ukrainian military airfields, personnel and vehicles in 139 locations using its air force, drones, missiles and artillery.

Ukraine captures two North Korean soldiers in Kursk

Ukraine had captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk region, said Zelensky on Saturday, the first time Ukraine has announced the capture of North Korean soldiers alive since their entry into the war last autumn.

North Korean regular troops entered the war on Russia’s side in October, according to Kyiv and its Western allies, who initially estimated their numbers at 10,000 or more.

In a post on X, Zelensky said that the soldiers had been brought to Kyiv and were communicating with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the country’s domestic intelligence agency.

“As with all prisoners of war, these two North Korean soldiers are receiving the necessary medical assistance,” said Zelensky. He said that journalists would be given access to speak to them.

Kyiv says that North Korean troops are fighting in the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an incursion in August. Kyiv says it still controls several hundred square kilometres of territory there. DM