Drone attacks on Moscow and Ukraine, Trump talks with Putin

(Moscow) Drone attacks on an unprecedented scale targeted Ukraine and the region of the Russian capital Moscow during the night from Saturday to Sunday, both camps denounced, despite the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, who would have asked him not to provoke an escalation in Ukraine according to the Washington Post.

They discussed the goal of peace on the European continent and Donald Trump said he hoped to have follow-up conversations to discuss “the resolution of the war in Ukraine soon”, according to the American daily’s anonymous sources.

Questioned by AFP, Donald Trump’s entourage did not confirm this first telephone conversation between the two men since Mr. Trump won the American presidential election last Tuesday.

While the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow still rages, the Kremlin said it saw “positive signals” coming from American President-elect Donald Trump. “The signals are positive. Trump, during his election campaign, said that he collects all this through agreements. And that he can obtain an agreement that leads to peace,” said the spokesperson for the Russian presidency, Dmitri Peskov, in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

“He talks about peace, not confrontation, not the desire to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, which distinguishes him favorably from the current administration,” he continued.

According to Mr. Peskov, it remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump “will stick to his campaign statements.”

Donald Trump, who will return to the White House on January 20, has regularly claimed to be able to end the war “in one day”, without ever detailing how he would go about it. But this could probably involve a deal that would require Kyiv to cede part of its territory to Moscow.

Russia will have to answer for the war crimes committed in Ukraine and pay for the destruction committed, whatever the future peace agreement, said the head of diplomacy of the European Union Josep Borrell on Sunday. “Peace, for it to be peace and not just a ceasefire, must be just and lasting,” stressed Mr. Borrell, the first senior European leader to visit Ukraine since the election in the United States. United of Donald Trump.

With Donald Trump’s American presidential victory, the question arises of the sustainability of American support, which has enabled Ukraine to resist Russian troops since February 2022.

The United States will spend the remaining six billion dollars dedicated to Ukraine before Donald Trump comes to power, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday, warning of the risks linked to stopping the American support for Kyiv.

Attack on Moscow

On the ground, fighting continues.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it had neutralized 34 drones in the Moscow region in the morning, a record number in the area of ​​the Russian capital since the start of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in 2022.

According to this source, 36 other Ukrainian drones were shot down in two regions bordering Moscow and in three others bordering Ukraine.

The governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobiov, said that the interceptions took place in particular over the towns of Ramenskoye and Domodedovo, about 40 kilometers southeast of the center of Moscow and near airports. .

He said a 52-year-old woman was injured by shrapnel, burned to the face, neck and hands, and two houses were set on fire.

This operation in the suburbs of Moscow comes four days after a massive Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian capital, targeted almost daily for a month.

During the night from Saturday to Sunday, a new “record” attack by 145 Russian drones targeted Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced on X. The Ukrainian Air Force said 62 of the 145 drones had been neutralized.

For the moment, the Ukrainian authorities have not claimed responsibility for the drone strikes targeting Moscow.

Russian progress in the East

On the front, Ukrainian troops are becoming exhausted, suffering from their inferiority in weapons and personnel, and retreating in multiple sectors in eastern Ukraine, where Russian troops have been advancing more rapidly in recent weeks.

Russia claimed on Sunday the conquest of a new village, that of Vovtchenka, in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk (east).

Furthermore, thousands of North Korean soldiers are, according to Kyiv and the West, deployed in the Russian region of Kursk, where the Ukrainian army has controlled a few hundred square kilometers since its surprise operation launched on August 6. Kyiv assures that they have already been engaged in combat.

The West, however, refuses to allow Kyiv to strike deep into Russian territory with the weapons it supplies and to shoot down Russian missiles targeting Ukrainian cities, for fear that this could lead to an escalation.