Transnistria eases blackouts amid gas shortage
Authorities in Moldova's Russian-controlled region of Transnistria announced on Jan. 11 that energy-saving measures have allowed them to ease restrictions caused by a halt of Russian gas supplies.
Team
Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.
Authorities in Moldova's Russian-controlled region of Transnistria announced on Jan. 11 that energy-saving measures have allowed them to ease restrictions caused by a halt of Russian gas supplies.
Russia's Foreign Ministry argued the U.S. sanctions represented "an attempt to inflict at least some damage to the Russian economy, even at the cost of the risk of destabilising world markets."
The European Commission plans to begin drafting new sanctions against Russia next week, with the goal of approving the package on Feb. 24 — the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has endured over 700,000 casualties since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022—more than in all of Moscow’s conflicts since World War II combined, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Jan. 9.
The announcement includes $138 million (CAD $200 million) allocated to Czechia’s initiative for procuring and delivering large-calibre ammunition to Ukraine.
"The whole [Trump] team is obsessed with strength and looking strong, so they’re recalibrating the Ukraine approach," one European official told the Financial Times.
Lithuania has announced plans to enhance security measures around its power grids with Poland in preparation for next month's decoupling from the Russian energy system.
North Korea "is significantly benefiting from receiving Russian military equipment, technology, and experience, rendering it more capable of waging war against its neighbors," the deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N. said on Jan. 8.
"We are supporting Ukraine's NATO membership further down the line and hopefully not in (the) too-distant future," Finland's Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said on Jan. 8.
Shandong Port Group has prohibited U.S.-sanctioned tankers from accessing its ports in the eastern Chinese province, three traders familiar with the issue told Reuters. This region, home to many independent refiners, is a significant importer of oil from countries under U.S. embargoes.
Defense officials speaking to the Associated Press said the upcoming aid package, scheduled to be announced on Jan. 9, will draw from existing stockpiles with the intent of delivering most of the pledged weapons to Ukraine before Trump takes office.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky said during his evening address that Ukraine "continues to maintain a buffer zone on Russian territory, actively destroying Russian military potential there."
"There are increasing indications that Chancellor Scholz will travel to Moscow and meet Putin before February 23," Roderich Kiesewetter, defense spokesperson for Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said on X.
Russia’s Izvestia newspaper reported on Jan. 4 that a Ukrainian "kamikaze" drone attack killed one of its freelance reporters, Alexander Martemyanov, while he was traveling on a highway in occupied eastern Ukraine.
"In battles yesterday and today near a single village, Makhnovka, in Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroops," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address on Jan. 4.
Russian forces carried out the strike using glide bombs that were dropped directly on the building and destroyed one of its blocks.
"The governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns," said the U.S. Treasury Department's acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
Over the past year, Ukraine conducted 11 prisoner exchanges and secured the return of 356 more people than in 2023.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his New Year video greeting late on Dec. 31 that no one would give peace to his country as a gift, but he believed the United States would stand together with Ukraine as it fights to stop Russia's full-scale invasion.
Since the beginning of 2024, at least 246 children native to Kherson Oblast have been returned from Russian occupation, governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Xi emphasized that China and Russia consistently advance together on a "path of non-alliance, non-confrontation, and not targeting any third party," according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
An oil depot in the Yartsevo district of Russia's Smolensk region caught fire following a drone attack overnight on Dec. 31, according to regional authorities.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine has a chance to contribute to restoring stability in Syria following years of Russian interference, emphasizing that this effort will also bolster Ukraine’s own pursuit of peace.
NATO allies met on Dec. 30 to address the security of critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, following damage to undersea cables connecting Estonia and Finland several days earlier.
The U.S. government has officially classified Marc Fogel, an American schoolteacher jailed in Russia on drug charges, as wrongfully detained, the State Department announced on Dec. 27.
A number of major Russian news outlets had their Telegram channels blocked across several European Union countries on Dec. 28. Users attempting to access these channels now see a notice saying that the content has been restricted and is no longer available.
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Europe is unlikely to ramp up weapons and ammunition production for Ukraine in the coming years, according to Andrius Kubilius, the newly appointed EU Commissioner for Defense and Space.