Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russian helicopter shot down in historic strike

Explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv overnight amid a Russian missile attack.

A ballistic missile threat was reported by Ukraine’s air force at 3am, and at least two explosions were heard in Kyiv just minutes later.

Another alert was issued at 8am, before another explosion in the capital. Missile debris fell in the Darnytskyi district but there have been no reports of casualties or damage, the local administration said.

One Russian helicopter has been destroyed and another damaged by Ukrainian naval drones, Kyiv’s military intelligence said on Tuesday.

In a battle on Crimea’s west coast, a Magura V5 maritime drone armed with missiles hit a Russian Mi-8 helicopter, Ukraine’s GUR spy agency said on Telegram.

It is the first time a Ukrainian naval drone has downed an air target, the spy agency said.

There has been no comment from Russia and the report has not been independently verified – but it was also reported by prominent Russian military blogger Voenny Osvedomitel.

It is 25 years since Vladimir Putin was handed power on 31 December 1999 when Boris Yeltsin resigned, and it is something he has kept an increasingly iron grip on ever since.

While the Russian leader has repeatedly clashed with the West, Putin’s near three-year invasion of Ukraine – and the staunch support allies like Britain and the US have given Kyiv – has only intensified his threats and bellicose rhetoric.

As we move into 2025, the West has to be prepared to keep drawing Putin’s ire. Donald Trump, the US president-elect, has suggested he wants a swift resolution to the war in Ukraine once he takes office in January, and both Kyiv and Moscow have opened the door to peace talks. The UK and nations across Europe are aware that if Putin is given an inch, he will try to take a mile – so continued support for Ukraine on the battlefield is crucial.

Read The Independent’s editorial:

Volodymyr Zelensky said the two countries exchanged 189 prisoners of war each in an exchange mediated by the United Arab Emirates.

China’s president Xi Jinping said China and Russia have always moved forward “hand in hand” along the right path of non-alliance, non-confrontation, and not targeting any third party, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday.

In an exchange of New Year greetings with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Mr Xi also said that mutual trust and strategic coordination between both countries continues to reach higher levels under their leadership.

If the last 25 years have taught us anything, it is exactly who the Russian president is – and what he is capable of:

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates, officials said Monday.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that 150 Russian soldiers were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people.

Explosions were heard in Kyiv, Ukraine, during an air raid alert on Tuesday, according to a Reuters witness.

The then prime minister Vladimir Putin’s media operation had already begun to portray the ex-KGB operative in stark contrast to the moribund Yeltsin as an action man. That same year the second Chechen war on the country’s southern border raged. Twenty-five years later, Vladimir Putin is still in the Kremlin but Russia is again in the grip of war on its post-Soviet periphery after last week’s downing of an airliner over Chechen airspace.

Add to the tension that Putin’s Russia has been engaged in a covert war against Ukraine since 2014, which he had turned into a full-scale invasion by early 2022 – a conflict that remains at an impasse today. As with his earlier war against Chechnya, Putin’s obduracy turned an opening military fiasco into a brutal war of attrition which Russia’s resources could win at a huge price.

Born in post-war Leningrad amid the grim legacy of the Nazi siege, the young Vladimir Putin learnt survival arts more appropriate to the chaotic post-Soviet dog-eat-dog society of the 1990s than the shining utopian future promoted by communist propaganda.

Read the full piece by Mark Almond here: