Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russia ‘drafts 180,000 convicts’

Russian forces in 2024 advanced in Ukraine at the fastest rate since 2022, the war’s first year, and control about a fifth of the country. But the gains have come at the cost of heavy, though undisclosed, losses in men and equipment.

In 2024, Russia was invaded for the first time since the Second World War as Ukraine grabbed a slice of its western Kursk region in a surprise counter-attack on 6 August.

Russia has yet to eject Ukrainian forces from Kursk despite bringing in more than 10,000 troops from its ally North Korea, according to Ukrainian, South Korean and US assessments. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.

“To sustain even the very slow advance in Ukraine, Russia has been forced to ignore the months-long occupation of part of its own territory by Ukrainian forces,” British security expert Ruth Deyermond said.

“Taking a ‘nothing to see here’ attitude to the loss of its own land is not what great powers do, particularly one so preoccupied with the idea of state sovereignty.”

Deyermond, in a long thread posted on X, suggested Putin’s efforts to portray Russia as a leading world power were also undermined by the toppling of its chief Middle East ally, former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and its increasing dependence on China.

Mr Putin, the longest-serving ruler of Russia since Josef Stalin, said on 19 December that under his leadership the country had moved back from “the edge of the abyss” and rebuffed threats to its sovereignty.

With hindsight, he said, he should not have waited until February 2022 before launching his “special military operation” in Ukraine, the term he still uses for the full-scale invasion of Russia’s neighbour.

Ukraine’s navy has destroyed more than 37,000 Russian drones in the year 2024, it said.

The downed platforms include Russian strike drones, operational and tactical unmanned aerial vehicles, first-person-view drones, and Shahed-type attack drones, the navy said in a Facebook post. Ukrainian naval forces also destroyed five Russian ships and 458 watercraft, it added.

Russia’s drone losses included 35,670 destroyed FPV drones and 1,140 strike drones, the navy said. Ukraine’s naval units also eliminated 192 operational and tactical drones and another 164 Shahed-136/131 drones.

President-elect Donald Trump could be decisive in the outcome of the 34-month-old war with Russia and help stop Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Mr Zelensky, facing advances by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, said in an interview with Ukrainian television that Mr Trump had told him he would be one of the first to visit Washington after the presidential inauguration this month.

The Ukrainian president also said a priority was to stabilise the frontline early in the new year. Mr Putin, he said, feared negotiations as they would be tantamount to a defeat for Russia.

“He’s very strong and unpredictable, and I would really like to see President Trump’s unpredictability apply to Russia. I believe he really wants to end the war,” he said. “Trump can be decisive. For us, this is the most important thing,” he said in a televised interview.

“His qualities are indeed there,” Mr Zelensky said of Mr Trump. “He can be decisive in this war. He is capable of stopping Putin or, to put it more fairly, help us stop Putin. He is able to do this.”

Russia has enlisted between 140,000 and 180,000 prison inmates to fight in the war against Ukraine, Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SZRU) said, according to the Kyiv Independent. 

There were about 300,000-350,000 prisoners in Russian prisons in 2024, which is half as many as in 2014, according to the Ukrainian intelligence agency.

Russia launched a barrage of drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine on Friday, killing one civilian and injuring four others in the Kyiv region, the military and regional officials said.

Ukrainian air defences shot down 60 out of 93 Russian drones, the air force said. It also said that 26 drones were “lost”, in reference to Ukraine‘s use of electronic warfare to redirect Russian drones.

One Russian drone was still in the air, the air force added.

Mykola Kalashnyk, acting governor for the Kyiv region, said that a truck driver was killed by drone debris. The debris also damaged several private houses, injuring four people, including a 16-year-old boy, he said.

Russian gas is no longer flowing to EU states through Ukraine following the expiration of a five-year deal, closing an energy route that has existed since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the move means Russia can no longer “earn billions on our blood”.

His energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, confirmed on Wednesday morning that Kyiv had stopped the gas flows “in the interest of national security”.

“This is a historic event,” he wrote on the social media platform Telegram. “Russia is losing markets and will incur financial losses.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he was preparing to re-establish diplomatic ties with Syria, less than a month after the overthrow of the Russia-backed government in Damascus.

Zelensky spoke after a visit to Syria by his Foreign Minister, Andrii Sybiha, and by Agriculture Minister Vitaliy Koval who said earlier Ukraine had already sent a shipment of food aid.

“We are preparing to resume diplomatic relations with Syria and cooperation in international organisations,” Zelenskiy said.

Ukraine cut diplomatic ties with Syria in June 2022 after the then government in Damascus said it recognised the “independence” of the Russia-occupied territories in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Since rebels overthrew Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad last month, Ukraine has been moving to build ties with the new Islamist rulers there. Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, was a staunch ally of Assad and has given him political asylum.

Moscow has also said it is in contact with the new administration in Damascus, including over the fate of Russian military facilities in Syria.