‘Baku Expects the Russian Side to Confess’ – Ukraine at War Update for Dec. 27

After Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico’s visit to Moscow, Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin told a press conference that “if there are any negotiations, [Slovakia] would be happy to provide their country as a platform.”

Putin claimed that Slovakia held a “neutral position” in the Russo-Ukrainian war and so Moscow was not opposed to the idea of holding talks in Bratislava. Slovakia is a member of the European Union, but Fico’s government has balked at the 27-member bloc’s regular appropriations of military aid to Kyiv during the nearly three-year full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

As his country is almost exclusively dependent on Russian energy, and as his fuel-related visit to Moscow attests, Fico is seen as something of a Kremlin ally within an otherwise anti-Putin European community. Along with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the occasional overture from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Fico is one of few European leaders to keep the lines of communication open with Putin.

A group of activists in Bratislava, including two former prime ministers, protested Fico’s Moscow trip earlier this week in front of parliament, calling Fico a “traitor.”

AFP reported that Ukraine will not renew a contract expiring at the end of this year to allow Russian gas to transit its country toward Europe, and no feasible alternative has yet been found.

Other Topics of Interest

How Poland’s Trade with Russia Undermines EU Sanctions and Support for Ukraine

Polish officials have struggled to rein in companies that are suspected of sanctions-busting, according to economic watchdog reports.

Ukrainians “are already punishing Europe by ending the contract to supply our gas,” Putin said, adding that no new contract could be reached “in three or four days” and proposed the Yamal-Europe pipeline that transits Poland instead.

As Putin talks peace, Russian air attacks kill two more civilians, injure others in Donetsk region

On Thursday, Moscow’s forces launched a drone attack on Chasiv Yar, near the occupied city of Bakhmut. Two civilians were killed and two others have been wounded as a result of the first-person view (FPV) drone strike on a multi-story building, the regional prosecutor’s office reported on Telegram.

The ages of the murdered civilians were 60 and 64.

“On Dec. 26, 2024, the occupation forces attacked the city of Chasiv Yar using an FPV drone. A residential building was hit,” the prosecutor’s office relayed.

Two other residents, aged 27 and 55, were also injured, authorities reported. They were diagnosed with injuries to their limbs, and one of them was taken to the hospital.

As of the end of last month, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 40,176 civilian casualties in Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24, 2022: 12,340 killed and 27,836 injured.

This figure included 33,431 (9,715 killed and 23,716 injured) on territories officially controlled by Ukraine and 6,745 (2,625 killed and 4,120 injured) on territories controlled by Russian armed forces. Some 11,000 of those deaths were caused by explosive weapons “with wide area effects,” the OHCHR recorded, while 412 of those civilian deaths were reportedly caused by mines and “explosive remnants,” and 1,351 of them by small arms, including from crossfire, or road accidents.

Crashed flight from Baku to Grozny, killing 38 civilians, reportedly was taken down by Russian defense mechanisms

An Azerbaijan Airlines plane flying from Baku to Grozny that crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan was believed to have been downed by a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system, with its communication paralyzed by the Pantsir’s electronic warfare measures, Reuters reported on Thursday.

The commercial flight was carrying 68 passengers, and 38 of them have been confirmed dead. The other severely wounded travelers managed to walk away from the debris, with the plane’s fuselage cut in half.

“One of the sources familiar with Azerbaijan’s investigation into the crash told Reuters that preliminary results showed the plane was struck by a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system. Its communications were paralyzed by electronic warfare systems on the approach into Grozny,” the wire service reported.

The Embraer EMBR3.SA passenger jet had flown from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, on Christmas night to Grozny, in Russia’s southern Chechnya region, before veering off hundreds of miles across the Caspian Sea. It crashed on the opposite shore of the Caspian after what Russia’s aviation watchdog earlier said was an emergency that may have been caused by a bird strike, Reuters reported.

No one claims that the Russians shot down the plane intentionally, international sources told the wire service, “however, taking into account the established facts, Baku expects the Russian side to confess to the shooting down of the Azerbaijani aircraft,” the unidentified source told Reuters.

Three other sources confirmed that the Azerbaijani investigation had reached the same preliminary conclusion.

Reuters reported that flight J2-8243 crashed in a firestorm after it veered off course from the southern region of Russia, where Moscow has repeatedly used air defense systems against Ukrainian drones.