Russia-Ukraine war – live: Putin’s forces hitting Moscow-held towns due to fatigue and poor training, UK says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has arrived in Lithuania and is now on his way to his first meeting with his Lithuanian counterpart.

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has cracked jokes in his first court appearance since being transferred to an Arctic penal colony, but a judge rejected his latest challenge against his treatment in prison.

Mr Navalny appeared by video link from the “Penal Wolf” colony to which he was transferred last month from a prison in Melekhovo, east of Moscow, in an arduous three-week journey by road and rail.

He drew laughter from the judge when he asked on the call whether the Melekhovo colony had thrown a party to celebrate his departure, and whether it had included karaoke.

He later inquired if the prison department in Melekhovo had staged a naked party – a reference to a gathering of scantily clad celebrities in Moscow last month that caused a national scandal.

The exchanges showed Mr Navalny’s ability to find humour even in his grim situation and to connect with the outside world despite being sent to one of Russia’s most remote and inhospitable regions.

His frequent court hearings have provided him with a platform to keep up his attacks on President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine and to challenge and mock his incarcerators.

He told judge Kirill Nikiforov, who has presided over many such sessions, that “a tear is flowing down my cheek” from the pleasure of seeing him again.

Navalny, 47, is serving sentences totalling more than 30 years on a range of charges, from fraud to extremist activity, that he says were trumped up to silence him. In 2020 he survived an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent.

Russian forces have inadvertently dropped munitions on two positions populated either by native Russians or occupied Ukrianians, the British Ministry of Defence has reported.

In its latest intelligence update, the MoD said Russia had accidentally discharged two aerial munitions on two separate occasions in the past week.

The first, the MoD said, damaged nine residential properties in Russia’s Voronezh Oblast, which borders northeast Ukraine.

The second incident led to an unguided munition being dropped over the village of Rubizhne in occupied Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine. It was confirmed by the pro-Russian head of the Luhansk People’s Republic, a militia that has ruled parts of the region since 2014.

The MoD said the potential for these accidents to occur was “likely exacerbated by inadequate training and crew fatigue, leading to poor execution of tactics during missions”.

As President Joe Biden likes to remind anyone who will listen, “This is not your grandfather’s Republican Party”.

For years, leaders in the GOP like George W Bush sounded alarms about Russia and supported Nato membership for Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has begun a multi-nation tour through the Baltics to drum up further support for a difficult year ahead.

Mr Zelensky travelled to Lithuania on Wednesday and will continue on to Latvia and Estonia in the coming days.

The Ukrainian president will hold a joint press conference scheduled for 1125 GMT on Wednesday with the Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, Lithuania separately said.

Mr Zelensky will also give a public speech, Mr Nauseda’s office said.

The surprise visit to Vilnius, a staunch supporter of Kyiv, comes as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is nearing its second anniversary.

“The presidents will discuss the war in Ukraine, support for Ukraine and its integration in the European Union and NATO,” Mr Nauseda’s office said in a statement.

More than 60 heads of state and government and hundreds of business leaders are coming to Switzerland to discuss the biggest global challenges during the World Economic Forum‘s annual gathering next week, ranging from Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The likes of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and many others will descend on the Alpine ski resort town of Davos on Jan. 15-19, organizers said Tuesday.

Attendees have their work cut out for them with two major wars — the Israel-Hamas conflict and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — plus problems like climate change, major disruptions to trade in the Red Sea, a weak global economy and misinformation powered by rapidly advancing artificial intelligence in a major election year.

A U.S. citizen has been arrested on drug charges in Russia, officials said Tuesday, a move that comes amid soaring Russia-U.S. tensions over Ukraine.

The arrest of Robert Woodland Romanov was reported by the press service of the Moscow courts. It said the Ostankino District Court ruled on Saturday to keep him in custody for two months on charges of preparing to get involved in illegal drug trafficking pending an official investigation. It didn’t offer any details of the accusations.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan discussed North Korea’s transfer of missiles to Russia in a call on Tuesday with his South Korean counterpart Chang Ho-jin, the White House said in a statement.

Sullivan and Chang “condemned in the strongest possible terms” North Korea’s transfer of the missiles, the White House said. They also discussed “the provocative actions (North Korea) has taken along the demilitarized zone,” it said.

Sotheby’s has defended itself at a trial against accusations that it helped defraud a Russian oligarch out of tens of millions of dollars, saying it knew nothing of wrongdoing by an art buyer who advised the billionaire on buying works by famed artists like Amedeo Modigliani and Leonardo da Vinci.

Sotheby’s attorney Sara Shudofsky told a jury in an opening statement in Manhattan federal court that billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev was “trying to make an innocent party pay for what somebody else did to him.”

Shudofsky said the fertilizer magnate had “good reason to be angry with himself” after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy art masterpieces without taking “the most basic steps” to protect himself from a broker who cheated him.

Russia plans to start serial production of its new glide Drel bomb this year, the state TASS news agency cited a representative of the Rostec state defence conglomerate as saying in remarks published on Wednesday.

The bombs, some of Russia‘s newest weapons, are capable of flying independently using a gliding flight path onto a target at a greater distance and opening above it at “the right moment,” TASS reported.

“To date, the product has passed all types of tests,” TASS cited an unnamed representative at Rostec as saying.

“The production of the first batch of the Drel aerial bomb is planned for 2024.”

The Drel is designed to destroy armoured vehicles, ground-based radar stations, power plant control centres and anti-aircraft missile systems, TASS said. Military analysts say it is also resistant to jamming and to radar detection, making it difficult to destroy.

Russian and Western sources say Drel is a type of cluster bomb. Cluster munitions are prohibited by more than 100 countries. They typically release large numbers of smaller bomblets that can kill indiscriminately over a wide area. Those that fail to explode can pose a danger for decades.