Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin’s ship fires at German helicopter

Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) carried out a successful cyber-attack against one of Russia’s largest banks, disrupting services for hundreds of thousands of customers, a source in the agency told the Kyiv Independent.

The website for Gazprombank was reportedly inaccessible in France and Germany, and the mobile application also experienced outages. Russian state media on Wednesday confirmed problems accessing the bank’s website.

The source said the agency directed excessive traffic to the bank’s website and mobile application, overloading its servers in what is known as a distributed denial of service attack.

Both Ukraine and Russia have used cyber warfare during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Western countries including the United States assailed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov over the war in Ukraine at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Malta.

“My message to the Russian delegation is the following: We are not taken in by your lies. We know what you’re doing. You’re trying to rebuild the Russian empire and we will not let you. We will resist you every inch of the way,” Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said.

Poland and Ukraine’s foreign ministers were amongst those who left the room for Mr Lavrov’s speech, which is common for international meetings. Mr Lavrov was also absent when US secretary of state Antony Blinken spoke.

The Kremlin is using state media, fake news sites and social media accounts to push divisive narratives about the war and US president-elect Donald Trump before he returns to the White House next month.

Analysts said the content is aimed at turning sentiment against Ukraine at a crucial time, to reduce US military aid and ensure a Russian victory.

Clips from fake videos purporting to show Ukrainian soldiers burning effigies of Trump and his supporters have circulated among Trump supporters and believers in QAnon, a conspiracy theory that claims Trump is waging war against a satanic cabal of powerful world leaders.

Russia has increased its naval and civilian presence in the Baltic Sea, German defence minister Boris Pistorius told German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.

“This demonstrates the strategic importance of the Baltic Sea for many, especially for Russia and China, including circumventing sanctions,” he said.

The comments came after a Russian ship shot at a German military helicopter over the Baltic Sea.

Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha has strongly opposed any deals similar to earlier Yalta or Minsk agreements, which could legitimise Russian aggression.

“Russia wants a second Yalta or at least a third Minsk. It wants a world of zones of influence where power dictates the rules, changes borders, and deprives people of their right to freedom. But we are clear: there will be no Yalta-2 or Minsk-3,” Mr Sybiha said at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Malta.

The Minsk I and II agreements of 2014-15 attempted to end the war in Donbas, while the Yalta conference in 1945 divided spheres of influence in Europe between the USSR and the Western powers after the Second World War.

Analysis of Russia’s federal budget shows that a recent drop in the recruitment of soldiers is outpacing losses on the battlefield despite hikes in sign-on bonuses, claimed the Meduza news outlet.

Meduza estimated that Russia was losing between 600 and 750 troops per day, but was signing just 500 and 600 new contracts per day in the third quarter of 2024, citing expenditures for sign-on bonuses and earlier research.

But more liberal estimates suggest Russia may have enlisted 82,000 new contracts in the third quarter if there were delays in bonuses for budgeting purposes.

The UK Ministry of Defence separately tweeted that the average daily Russian casualties reached a monthly high in November.

Ukraine has seen no signs that Russia is ready for meaningful peace talks, the head of its presidential office Andrii Yermak said on Wednesday (4 December).

“They only want to dictate and speak the language of ultimatums,” Mr Yermak told The Telegraph.

A Russian man has gone on trial in Finland on charges of war crimes allegedly committed against Ukrainian forces in a Russia-backed separatist region of Ukraine in 2014.

Prosecutors are seeking life imprisonment for the defendant at the trial which opened Thursday at the Helsinki district court, public broadcaster YLE reported.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was in Malta for the annual meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in his first visit to a European Union nation since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. US secretary of state Antony Blinken and the Ukraine‘s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha were also attending the meeting, where Ukraine was high on the agenda.

It has been relatively rare for Mr Lavrov to attend forums with senior Western officials, although he recently attended the United Nations General Assembly and the G20 summit in Brazil.

Thousands of North Korean soldiers have been stationed at checkpoints in Russia’s embattled Kursk Oblast but are not involved in direct combat, according to Ukraine’s military-run National Resistance Center.

Between 10,000-12,000 troops sent are being used as a “second echelon”, the Center added, deepening ties between the two countries.