Ukraine war: Zelensky reveals frontline losses as Trump calls for immediate ceasefire

Ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad fled to Moscow and received asylum from his longtime ally, Russian media said yesterday, hours after a stunning rebel advance seized control of Damascus and ended his family’s 50 years of iron rule.

The arrival of Assad and his family in Moscow was reported by Russian agencies Tass and RIA, citing an unidentified source at the Kremlin. A spokesman there didn’t immediately respond to questions. RIA also said Syrian insurgents had guaranteed the security of Russian military bases and diplomatic posts in Syria.

Earlier, Russia said Assad left Syria after negotiations with rebel groups and that he had given instructions to transfer power peacefully.

Thousands of Syrians poured into streets echoing with celebratory gunfire and waved the revolutionary flag in scenes that recalled the early days of the Arab Spring uprising, before a brutal crackdown and the rise of an insurgency plunged the country into a nearly 14-year civil war.

The swiftly moving events raised questions about the future of the country and the wider region.

Hopes for victory, a swift end to the war and prayers for their loved ones’ survival or return from Russian captivity are among the wishes scattered throughout letters sent to a volunteer group by Ukrainian children living in frontline areas.

While the volunteers, who are named reindeer after the magical beasts that pull Santa’s sleigh, cannot fulfill many of these dreams, they strive to deliver on the simpler ones, such as requests for power banks to help families endure outages, bicycles, books, and even pets.

Every winter, the volunteers travel to heavily damaged cities to deliver gifts and ensure that, despite the war, Ukrainian children can celebrate the holiday season just like their peers around the world.

This year, the group received 2,310 letters, according to project manager Inna Achkasova from the NGO Ukrainian Frontiers, who launched the St. Nicholas’ Reindeers initiative in 2015.

The children’s wishes are published on the project’s website. Donors affectionately known as magicians then choose a letter and buy the requested gift to make that child’s dreams come true. The reindeer then deliver those gifts.

Scientists have sounded a warning about the alarming rise of “extremely pathogenic” multi-drug resistant bacteria in war-torn Ukraine.

They narrowed in on samples of the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae to assess if it had the ability to cause disease in a wider context.

Klebsiella causes a range of diseases like pneumonia and infections of the urinary tract, skin and wounds, and is responsible for about a fifth of all deaths attributed to drug-resistant superbugs.

Ukrainian naval drones have struck and destroyed surveillance systems on Russian-controlled gas platforms in Crimea, vice-admiral Oleksii Neizhpapa said.

“The hunt for the enemy in the Black Sea continues. The occupiers will not stay on our territory — we will get them everywhere,” Neizhpapa said on Saturday in a post on Facebook.

“Naval (drones) delivered precise strikes on Russian targets.”

Recent weeks have seen intensified attacks on Russian assets in Crimea. Strikes have targeted radar stations, and explosions were also reported in Sevastopol and near the Belbek airbase in November.

Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Blahodatne in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s RIA state news agency reported, citing the defence ministry. The territorial capture has not been confirmed by Ukrainian military officials.

Experts monitoring the war did not confirm the Russian advancement on the battlefield. “The Russian ministry of defence (MoD) claimed on 8 December that Russian forces seized Blahodatne (south of Velyka Novosilka), but ISW has not observed confirmation of this claim,” the Institute for the Study of War said.

Russian forces control just under 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory and have advanced through the Donetsk region over the past two months at their fastest rate since March 2022, according to open source data.

Denmark has delivered a second batch of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky said over the weekend as he travelled to Paris to meet with top politicians and dignitaries.

In a message on Telegram, Mr Zelensky praised Denmark and lamented a lack of dedication from other allies.

“The first batch of planes provided by the Danes are already shooting down Russian missiles: rescuing our people and our infrastructure. Now our air shield is reinforced even further,” he said. “If all partners were so determined, we would have been able to make Russian terror impossible.”

The fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad underscores Russia’s weakness and inability to fight on two fronts, Ukraine‘s foreign ministry said.

Russia had bolstered Mr Assad’s government by staging air strikes against opposition targets beginning in 2015 and had operated out of two bases on Syrian territory.

But Moscow’s 33-month-old invasion of Ukraine has sapped considerable military resources.

“Events in Syria demonstrate the weakness of Putin’s regime, which is incapable of fighting on two fronts and abandons its closest allies for the sake of continued aggression against Ukraine,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Russia said earlier that Mr al-Assad had left office and departed his country after giving orders for a peaceful transfer of power, but did not say where he was now or whether the Russian military planned to stay in Syria.

The HUR intelligence directorate, posting on the Telegram app, said Russian forces in Syria “had withdrawn its warships from the naval base in Tartous which Assad had allowed Moscow to use as payment for his security”.

Donald Trump has pushed Russian leader Vladimir Putin to act to reach an immediate ceasefire with Ukraine, describing it as part of his active efforts as president-elect to end the war despite being weeks from taking office.

“Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness,” Mr Trump wrote on social media, referring to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

In a television interview that aired yesterday, Mr Trump also said he would be open to reducing military aid to Ukraine and pulling the United States out of Nato. Those are two threats that have alarmed Ukraine, Nato allies and many in the US national security community.

Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if he were actively working to end the nearly 3-year-old Ukraine war, Mr Trump said, “I am.”

He refused to say if he had spoken to MR Putin since winning election in November. “I don’t want to say anything about that, because I don’t want to do anything that could impede the negotiation,” the incoming US president said.

Canada has said it is outlawing another 324 firearm varieties — guns the public safety minister said belong on the battlefield, not in the hands of hunters or sport shooters.

Ottawa also said it is working with the government of Ukraine to see how the guns can be donated to support the fight against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The move follows the May 2020 ban of 1,500 makes and models of firearms, a number that grew to more than 2,000 by November of this year as new variants were identified.