Stay on top of Russia-Ukraine war 01-14-2025 developments on the ground with KyivPost fact-based news, exclusive video footage, photos and updated war maps.
Consumer inflation accelerated further to 12.0% in December, beating expectations. Demand for bonds fade, and reserves increase by 8%. Weekly Insight for Jan. 13
Last year, Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) refinanced all FX-denominated redemptions while borrowing in hryvnia significantly more than it repaid. This year’s budget envisages tiny net borrowings.
The MoF borrowed UAH617bn from the domestic bond market in 2024, including UAH139bn in hard currency (US$2.7bn and EUR0.75bn), while repaying UAH382bn, including UAH134bn in foreign currency (US$2.4bn and EUR0.9bn).
The Kremlin and now-exiled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2017 agreed Russia should have long-term access to Tartus naval port, but the new leadership in Damascus seems not so sure.
The Kremlin can’t evacuate troops and equipment from its only overseas base, Tartus, because Syria’s new rulers won’t let Russia’s five naval vessels enter the port, Tuesday news and shipping industry reports said.
Local information platforms identified the five ships currently sailing in a holding pattern in international waters to the west of Tartus, Syria as the military-use cargo ships Sparta I, Sparta II, and General Skobolev, and the amphibious assault ships Ivan Gren and Alexander Otrakovsky.
Russia will no longer be able to ‘blackmail’ the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Petr Fiala told reporters.
The Czech prime minister said Tuesday his country no longer needed to import Russian oil, following the completion of an expansion of the Transalpine Pipeline (TAL) from Italy.
The contract to expand the pipeline was signed in May 2023, more than a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to sanctions on Russian energy imports.
Ukraine’s largest telecom company and mobile operator Kyivstar signed a memorandum that starts preparations for the company’s IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Veon Ltd., the owner of Ukraine’s largest mobile operator Kyivstar, signed a memorandum of understanding with the American investment company Cohen Circle. The companies plan to merge their businesses to indirectly list Kyivstar’s shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the US.
Kyivstar CEO Oleksandr Komarov announced the news in a Facebook post.
Feshchenko, who was also a Russian kettlebell-lifting champion, reportedly died from a gunshot wound to the head after a heated argument with another man.
An officer from the FSB counterintelligence department, Vladimir Feshchenko, was shot and killed in a building belonging to the Ministry of Defense in central Moscow – his body discovered early Tuesday morning, Jan. 14, Russian media reported.
Sources, cited by the Russian “RBK” media outlet, say the incident happened after a heated argument with another man.
Russian forces rely on the station support its military logistics needs on the peninsula, but they face a “catastrophic shortage of resources” to adequately secure it.
Russian forces are deploying military equipment from the Yevpatoria-Tovarnya freight railway station in occupied Crimea, according to a report by the Atesh guerrilla movement via Telegram, which cited its agents.
Originally built to service freight tracks for Yevpatoria enterprises, the station is now actively used by Russian forces for logistics. However, Atesh claims the Russians are “catastrophically short of resources” to effectively secure the facility.
A Ukrainian soldier has described North Koreans fighting in the Kursk region as “disciplined, determined and fearless,” in a post on social media on Saturday.
Yuriy Bondar, who served in Ukraine’s 80th separate airborne assault “Galician Lions” brigade, writing on Facebook said his unit was one of the first of Ukraine’s armed forces (AFU) to engage with North Korean troops in the Kursk region, adding that Pyongyang’s troops should not be underestimated:
“They are extremely resilient, extremely well-trained, and morally stable.”
Stefan Korshak, Kyiv Post’s military correspondent, shares his perspective on the developments in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
I took a couple of weeks off for the holidays but the war sure didn’t. There have been all manner of interesting developments, so many that I’ll hold off on the latest tech jumps and Kursk, where things are happening but all in all the situation seems roughly stable. Instead, I’ll kick off with really one of the objectively least important subjects, which is defying logic (but not experience) by dominating the airwaves and telephone screens as the only “Really Big” Ukraine story these days: Trump and the “peace talks.”
Maybe There’s Another Russo-Ukraine War That We Don’t Know About?
Talking from his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump said he knew that Putin wanted a meeting and that a conversation was being prepared for the near future, stressing: “We have to end this war.”
US President-elect Donald Trump plans to meet with President Vladimir Putin soon to discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine. Talking from his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump said he knew that Putin wanted a meeting and that a conversation was being prepared for the near future, stressing: “We have to end this war.” Commentators are divided.
La Stampa (Italy) fears the US will take clear steps towards Russia:
In an intercepted call, a Russian woman describes how a Russian serviceman, after receiving orders to go to war, returned home on leave, stayed for three days, and took his own life.
In an intercepted telephone conversation newly released by Ukrainian intelligence (HUR), a Russian woman talks about the suicide of a serviceman in the Russian army after being ordered to fight against Ukraine.
“I was at a funeral yesterday. Lenka Fomenko’s Dima hung himself,” the woman says.
Two Ukraine natives achieved their goals of playing basketball at the highest international levels with the world’s top professionals in the National Basketball Association.
His first sport was gymnastics, and as a youngster he was trained by Oleksiy Stepanenko, who gained fame for working with Olympic gold medalist Ihor Korobchynsky. His mother ran track early in her life and at age 13 Alex Len began playing the sport of basketball. Born in Antratsyt, Luhansk, Alex attended high school at Dnipro Higher College in Dnipro, Ukraine and represented his country at the 2009 FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship and the 2010 FIBA Europe U-18 Championship. He garnered attention in the 2010 tournament when he finished fourth in scoring, second in rebounding and first in blocked shots. Following the tournament Len signed with BC Dnipro of Ukraine’s Basketball Super League for the 2010-11 season.
Having set a personal goal of playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA) someday, Alex was pleasantly surprised when he was recruited by the University of Maryland. Despite a head coaching change in 2011, Maryland assistant coach Scott Spinelli and new incoming head coach Mark Turgeon successfully lured the seven-footer to Maryland.
A Ukrainian army spokesperson’s comments about an attempted encirclement are corroborated by open-source battlefield maps showing recent Russian gains.
Russia is attempting to besiege Pokrovsk, a stronghold in eastern Ukraine, by bypassing it and cutting a key supply route to the city instead of directly engaging it, a Ukrainian officer said on Monday.
A highway linking Pokrovsk with the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine is now the new target for Moscow troops, Maj. Viktor Trehubov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Khortytsia Operational Group, told AP News in a WhatsApp message.
The world in focus, as seen by Canadian leading global affairs analyst Michael Bociurkiw in a quick review of the biggest news in international media today.
Firefighters are in a critical stage of their almost week-long battle against deadly Los Angeles blazes. Crews report progress, but the National Weather Service has issued an expanded warning about winds that could gust up to 70 mph, causing extreme fire behavior in ongoing blazes or possibly turning any new spark into a raging inferno.
At least 24 people have died, and with dozens still missing, there are “likely to be a lot more” deaths, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said. Here’s what we know about the victims. More than 92,000 Los Angeles County residents are under evacuation orders and some 89,000 are under evacuation warnings, according to authorities.
In a press conference on Monday Sweden’s Minister of Defense said its military will test new secret drone technology developed with Saab during NATO’s upcoming Arctic Strike exercise.
In a joint press conference at Sweden’s People and Defense National Conference held at Sälen’s Högfjällshotell on Monday, Sweden’s Minister of Defense Pål Jonson, Army Chief Jonny Lindfors and Saab CEO Micael Johansson spoke about the secret drone swarm project developed by the Swedish Armed Forces and Saab.
Jonson said that Sweden, as NATO’s newest member, must accelerate the pace of rearmament in the face of current security risks and that one area where its armed forces was lacking was in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday to reassure Ukraine of continued support, his ministry said, a week before US President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated.
Pistorius will hold meetings “on the continuation of cooperation and support” for Ukraine’s defence industry, a ministry spokesman told AFP. The United States’ policy toward Ukraine is widely expected to change under Trump.
Explosions and fires reported in at least seven regions, according to Ukrainian and Russian Telegram channels. Key facilities hit, causing fires and disruptions to air travel across affected areas.
[UPDATES] As of 3 p.m., the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine officially confirmed the largest strike on Russian military targets, ranging from 200 to 1,100 km inside Russian territory. Key regions hit included Bryansk, Saratov, Tula, and Tatarstan.
“The Ukrainian Defence Forces carried out the most massive strike against the occupiers’ military facilities, at a distance of 200 to 1,100 kilometres (125 to 700 miles) deep into the territory of the Russian Federation,” Ukraine’s General Staff said in a post on social media.
Drones from Lithuanian manufacturers were promised for delivery by the end of 2024. Instead they are gathering dust in warehouses waiting for paperwork to be completed correctly.
The Lithuanian LRT news service reported on Saturday that thousands of drones procured by the Vilnius government from local manufacturers for delivery to Ukraine by the end of 2024 remain in storage because of bureaucratic delays. The suppliers of the equipment say that these unacceptable delays are impacting Ukraine’s ability to defend itself effectively.
In August, five Lithuanian drone manufacturers successfully conducted tests in Ukraine after which almost 5,000 drones worth €5 million ($5.1 million) were purchased for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. At the same time the Lithuanian army bought 2,300 combat drones worth €3 million ($3.06 million).
The drone’s qualities make it useful for making military supply runs into remote or hard-to-access areas where even multi-wheel drive regular vehicles can’t reach.
Russia’s armed forces are introducing a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that they call the TraMP (Transport Aviation Multipurpose Platform), but which they unofficially call the TRUMP – who says Russians don’t have a sense of humor? The cargo drone is designed to provide transport and logistics support for military operations.
According to the military issues website ArmyRecognition on Jan. 13, citing the Russian weapons Telegram channel, the drone has completed its design phase and is undergoing ground tests, with a first operational flight planned for April.
A lasting containment of Moscow’s expansionist and hegemonic ambitions is only possible through a more or less just Russian-Ukrainian peace.
Are the signs in Eastern Europe pointing to peace? On the surface, one could interpret a number of recent trends in this way. On the one hand, Ukraine is under enormous pressure – both on the battlefield and on the international stage. Russian troops are slowly but surely advancing in the Donets Basin. Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure are having an ever stronger effect.
In the United States, President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he wants to end the war as quickly as possible. In Western and Central Eastern Europe, a phalanx of populist parties has emerged, for whom international law, European solidarity and democratic values – and thus the fate of Ukraine – are at best of secondary importance. Not only radical left- and right-wingers, but also some centrist politicians, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, are conducting election campaigns as would-be peacemakers, whose level-headedness is allegedly preventing an escalation of the war.
Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.
Key Takeaways from the ISW:
Biden makes farewell plea for Ukraine as NATO leaders meet in Brussels; Zelensky and Macron discuss next steps for French troop deployment; Russian strikes kill three women in Sumy and Donetsk.
In a rare State Department speech before his successor takes over on Jan. 20, outgoing US President Joe Biden pleaded for continued aid to Kyiv in 2025 and beyond, saying that his administration accomplished its goal of rallying the world around Ukraine’s defense.
“As I saw it, when Putin launched his invasion, I had two jobs: to rally the world to defend Ukraine and avoid war between two nuclear powers, Biden said. “We did both...And we’ve laid the foundation for the next administration to preserve a bright future for the Ukrainian people.”