Russia has freed over 140 Ukrainian service personnel yesterday in the latest prisoner exchange between the two sides. Live updates:
Live reporting by Bhvishya Patel. Updates from Neville Lazarus and Yousra Elbagir in Kyiv, and Diana Magnay in MoscowThese images show rescue teams and residents walking among the debris near a damaged hotel in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv amid Russian missile attacks last night.
The Kremlin's defence ministry said 82 Russian soldiers had been released by Ukraine, while the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Russia had handed over 140 Ukrainians. "Let us pray to our Mother in a special way for her sons and daughters who are suffering and no longer have the strength to pray, and for our many brothers and sisters throughout the world who are victims of war, passing these holidays in darkness and cold, in poverty and fear, immersed in violence and indifference," he said.
The air raid sirens sounded minutes after the end of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's New Year address in which he praised those who had fought for their country since the invasion on 24 February.Former director-general of the Royal United Services Institute , Michael Clarke, has been providing his analysis of the crisis in Ukraine which is now in its 10th month., Russian forces were making progress in the south as they were coming from the Russian-annexed region of Crimea.
He said:"It was their demand for independence and that created the momentum to break up the rest. He never forgave them for that. "There was a crisis in 2014 when Ukraine began to lean much too far he thought, to the European Union. And out of that crisis they occupied Crimea by force. The two were in Brazil to represent their countries at his inauguration and met both him and his future foreign relations minister, Mauro Vieira.
With bloody fighting ongoing and Russia not having secured any territorial gains since the first months of the war, Mr Shoigu told Russian soldiers:"Victory, like the New Year, is inevitable." "For years, the Western elites hypocritically assured all of us of their peaceful intentions, including the resolution of the most difficult conflict in the Donbas," he said.