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

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The HUR intelligence directorate, posting on the Telegram app, said Russian forces in Syria “had withdrawn its warships from the naval base in Tartous which Assad had allowed Moscow to use as payment for his security”.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

The US will provide $988m more in longer-term weapons support to Ukraine, defence secretary Lloyd Austin said.

“The baton will soon be passed,” Austin said. “Others will decide the course ahead. And I hope that they will build on the strength that we have forged over the past four years.”

The latest package will include more drones and munitions for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS.

This package is in addition to the $725m military assistance that the US announced on Monday.

A leading Estonian defence firm has said it will start testing anti-drone missiles in Ukraine in 2025.

The tests intend to check the system’s effectiveness in real combat conditions, Frankenburg Technologies said.

Recognised as Europe’s top technology startup, Frankenburg Technologies has developed missiles to intercept Iranian Shahed dronesat altitudes of two kilometres using artificial intelligence for autonomous targeting.

“The technology is promising, and we will start testing it in Ukraine in the new year,” the company’s CEO Kusti Salm told Estonia’s public broadcaster ERR.

Production will start increase from a few dozen units per week to hundreds by the third quarter of 2025.

Russia is open to talks with US President-elect Donald Trump but will use “any means” to prevent Washington and its allies from defeating it in Ukraine, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told US journalist Tucker Carlson.

In an 80-minute interview released late on Thursday, Mr Lavrov spoke positively of Mr Trump, who returns to the White House next month, despite urging the West to take Russia’s “red lines” seriously.

Mr Lavrov said Mr Trump was “a very strong person, a person who wants results” and said he saw no reason why the two countries could not “cooperate for the sake of the universe”.

Mr Lavrov’s comments were part of a pattern of Russian signals designed to deter Washington from further escalation in support of Ukraine while displaying openness to negotiations.

Around 32.5 per cent of the budget posted on a government website earlier this month has been allocated for national defence, amounting to 13.5 trillion rubles (over £107 bn), up from a reported 28.3 per cent this year.

Lawmakers in both houses of the Russian parliament, the State Duma and Federation Council, approved the plans.

President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia could deploy its new Oreshnik intermediate-range hypersonic missile on the territory of its ally Belarus in the second half of next year.

Putin was responding to a request from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at a summit in Minsk, where the two leaders signed a mutual defence pact.

“… since we have today signed an agreement on security guarantees using all available forces and means, I consider the deployment of such systems as the Oreshnik on the territory of the Republic of Belarus to be feasible,” Putin said.

“I think this will become possible in the second half of next year, as serial production of these systems in Russia increases and as these missile systems enter service with the Russian strategic forces,” he added in televised comments.

Russia first fired the Oreshnik at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on 21 November, in what Putin cast as a response to Ukraine’s first use of US ATACMs ballistic missiles and British Storm Shadows to strike Russian territory with Western permission.

The Kremlin has said Russia was open to talks on Ukraine after US President-elect Donald Trump called for “an immediate ceasefire and negotiations”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said peace negotiations had to be based on agreements reached in Istanbul in 2022 and on the current battlefield realities.

Peskov noted that Ukraine has banned contact with the Russian leadership through a special decree which he said would have to be revoked if talks were to proceed.

“Our position on Ukraine is well known; the conditions for an immediate stop of hostilities were set out by President Putin in his speech to the Russian Foreign Ministry in June of this year. It is important to recall that it was Ukraine that refused and continues to refuse negotiations,” Peskov said.