Russians used around 70 cruise missiles in the attack. Ukraine releases a video showing a German Gepard tank successfully repelling a Russian missile. Putin extends restrictions on western businessmen. All current voices and developments on the Ukraine war can be found in the ticker.
Tuesday, December 6, 12:12 a.m .: The Ukrainian armed forces released a video on Monday that, according to the military, shows a Russian cruise missile being shot down by a German-made Gepard anti-aircraft tank. The film, which lasts almost 26 seconds, shows a cheetah firing several shots from a position on a lightly snow-covered field, shortly afterwards there is a glaring explosion in the sky. The hit aircraft then falls to the ground to the cheers of Ukrainian soldiers. “Equipment provided by partners protects Ukrainian skies from terrorist cruise missiles,” it said on Facebook. “This time it’s an impeccable job by the German cheetah. Thank you, Germany.”
The authenticity of the video could not initially be independently confirmed. Russia attacked Ukraine again on Monday with dozens of cruise missiles. However, the video that has now been released does not indicate when the recording was made.
Ukraine has already received 30 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks from the stocks of the manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW). In addition, the delivery of seven more cheetahs was announced last Friday in Berlin.
Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression at the end of February, Germany has delivered weapons and military equipment to Ukraine worth almost two billion euros.
8:32 p.m .: The government of the former Soviet Republic of Moldova has initially been reluctant to comment on a part of the rocket found on its own territory near the Ukrainian border. “I was informed that border guards found part of a rocket near Briceni,” Prime Minister Natalia Gavriliţa said on Monday, according to local media. The area at the site, just a few kilometers from the Ukrainian border, has been cordoned off. The incident is being investigated by the authorities.
8:15 p.m .: According to the Ukrainian air defense, the Russian military used almost 70 cruise missiles in the new major attack on targets in Ukraine on Monday. A large part was launched by strategic bombers from a great distance, for example over the Caspian Sea, according to the message distributed on Telegram. 22 guided missiles of the “Kalibr” type were fired from ships in the Black Sea.
The Ukrainian air defense repelled most of the attacks. “In total, more than 60 rockets from the invaders were shot down,” it said. The information could not be verified.
However, some Russian missiles reached their targets in the cities of Odessa and Kyiv, for example. According to reports from the Unian state agency, energy supply objects were hit again.
7:51 p.m .: Western entrepreneurs in Russia still need a special permit from the government in order to be able to sell their shares in large companies. This particularly affects the banking and energy sectors. According to the Interfax news agency, a corresponding decree passed by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin in August was extended by a year on Monday and will now only expire on December 31, 2023.
After Russia launched a war of aggression against Ukraine, the West imposed sanctions on Moscow. At the same time, many corporations and entrepreneurs are trying to reduce their business in Russia because of the increased risks. However, the Russian government put a stop to these efforts months ago and prohibited the sale of shares in strategically important sectors such as raw material extraction or the financial sector. Such sales are only possible with an exemption from the government.
6:45 p.m .: Russia has blamed Ukraine for attacks on two Russian military airports with at least three deaths. The Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Monday evening: “On the morning of December 5, the Kiev regime tried to attack the airfields “Dyagilyevo” in the Ryazan region and “Engels” in the Saratov region with Soviet-made reactive drones in order to disable Russian long-haul aircraft to put.” Previously, Kyiv had already indicated participation.
The Russian military confirmed that three soldiers were killed and four others hospitalized with injuries. However, the long-range bombers were only slightly damaged, also thanks to the use of anti-aircraft defenses. In the afternoon, Russia launched another heavy rocket attack on Ukraine.
4:35 p.m .: The Chechen opposition activist and blogger Tumso Abdurachmanov is said to have been shot in Sweden. The explosive: The Putin supporter and Chechnya leader Kadyrov is said to have ordered the contract killing on European soil. This is reported by British Russia observer Alex Kokcharov and an independent Chechen news channel on Telegram. According to the Chechen news site 1adat, Abdurakhmanov was shot dead by a group of people.
The 36-year-old Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurachmanow was shot dead on Saturday night. Abdurakhmanov has repeatedly criticized the Kadyrov regime on YouTube, among other things. In 2015, the Kadyrov critics fled to Sweden and found political asylum there. He survived an attempted assassination in 2020. Two Russian citizens from Chechnya who tried to kill him were sentenced to long prison terms in 2021.Zelenskyj: More than 30 Russian rockets shot down
4:20 p.m .: In a new wave of Russian missile attacks, Ukraine shot down most of the missiles on Monday, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Accordingly, the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense managed to get more than 30 Russian missiles out of the sky. According to the authorities, at least two infrastructure objects were hit in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa. As a result of power outages, water supply and district heating failed in the port city. The air alert lasted almost three hours throughout Ukraine.
Selenskyj reported in a video that the repair of the damage had already started. At the same time, the President assured: “Our people never give up.” Russia has been waging a war of aggression against neighboring Ukraine since the end of February. Following military setbacks, Moscow has fired rockets at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure eight times since October. Large parts of the country only have electricity by the hour.
11:34 a.m .: At least three people were killed and several injured in explosions at two military airfields in the European part of Russia. “An unidentified drone attacked an airfield in the Saratov region,” Baza said on Monday. Two people had to be taken to the hospital. Around the same time, according to local media reports, a petrol truck detonated on the tarmac in the Ryazan region south of Moscow, killing three people and injuring five.
There was initially no information about the cause of the explosion in Ryazan. An airplane is said to have been damaged there. According to the report, two machines were also damaged at the “Engels-2” airport near Saratov.
The aircraft in Saratov are said to be Tu-95 strategic bombers. As the Ukrainian military reports, 14 more Tu-95 bombers subsequently took off from the airfield. It was initially not clear whether the Russians would use it to counterattack or bring the planes to safety.
The bombers are used in Russian missile attacks on Ukraine. In the past few weeks, the Ukrainian energy infrastructure has been massively damaged by such attacks.
In the past, Kyiv has admitted attacks on several air bases on Russia’s annexed Crimea peninsula. It was initially unclear who was behind the recent explosions.
5:08 a.m .: With a view to the winter that has already set in, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenkyj has appealed to the stamina and resilience of the population. “The enemy very much hopes to use winter against us: to make the winter cold and hardship part of their terror,” he said in his daily video address Sunday night. “We must do everything we can to survive this winter, no matter how hard it is.” Enduring this winter means enduring everything.
Russia does have an advantage with missiles and artillery. “But we have something the occupier doesn’t have and won’t have. We protect our home, and that gives us the greatest possible motivation,” Zelenskyy stressed. The Ukrainian people fight for freedom and defend the truth. “To get through the winter, we need to be more resilient and united than ever,” Zelenskyy said.
1:10 a.m .: The Ukrainian Attorney General Andriy Kostin has denounced a “dramatic increase” in sexual violence by Russian soldiers. As a result of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, all genders and age groups are affected, children as well as the elderly, Kostin told the Funke media group and the French newspaper Ouest-France. Russian soldiers used sexual violence in a targeted manner – as a “war method to humiliate Ukrainians,” he claimed.
Kostin told the newspapers that four months ago only 40 cases of sexual violence were registered, but now there are more than 110 cases. “Tendency strongly increasing.” There is also a high number of unreported cases. “In many cases, people are raped, tortured and then killed by Russian soldiers. Rapes often take place in front of relatives and children,” said Kostin. Occupied areas are particularly affected. According to Kostin, Russian commanders often ordered or at least supported rapes. The information provided by the Attorney General could not initially be independently verified.
The Germany director of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, Wenzel Michalski, also spoke of a system of violence. “Atrocities against civilians are part of the war tactics of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine,” Michalski told the newspapers of the Funke media group. “The violence of the soldiers, including rape, is not punished by the top Russian politicians and the military. On the contrary: forces that act particularly brutally are awarded,” he said. The violence is at least accepted by the leadership with approval.
According to Kostin, nearly 8,500 civilians, including 440 children, have been killed in Ukraine since the war began a good nine months ago. More than 11,000 civilians were injured. The Attorney General’s office has so far taken 50,197 cases of war crimes, he told the newspapers.
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