International
Russia announces the creation of a center for the design and production of assault drones
The Minister of Defense of Russia, Sergey Shoigu, announced today the creation of a center for the design and production of assault drones, an aspect in which Ukraine has done a lot of damage to the Russian rear.
“The center will unite the different companies, laboratories and design departments that are dedicated to the development and production of advanced weapons,” Shoigu said during a visit to a military polygon in the Moscow region.
Shoigu was able to supervise the operation of drones with a payload of between 10 and 200 kilograms, and whose parts are all domestically manufactured, which facilitates their rapid mass production.
Specifically, the specialists presented to the minister a universal quadcopter that can carry different types of ammunition and operate in conditions of almost zero visibility, and whose easy handling only requires two weeks of instruction for its operators.
To begin with, the company is willing to produce 30 of those units per month in case it receives the approval of the Ministry of Defense.
Precisely, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has been insisting for many months on the need to accelerate the production of unmanned devices for use in the military campaign in Ukraine, where Moscow has mostly used Shahed imported from Iran.
Russian air defenses shot down fifty enemy drones in eight Russian regions during the early hours of the morning, including the one surrounding the capital, Moscow, according to a military statement.
Half of those drones were targeted at the border region of Belgorod, the hardest hit since the beginning of the war and where two other people died.
The governors of the Smolensk, Briansk and Kaluga regions reported that the Ukrainian attacks caused fires in a fuel tank and energy infrastructure.
Since the first year of the war, Ukraine has managed to hit different military and energy targets in the annexed Crimean peninsula, other occupied territories and the regions of the European part of Russia with self-produced aerial and naval drones.
For their part, Ukraine’s air defenses intercepted two Russian missiles and three Russian drones on Friday night, while they recorded a total of seven missile attacks, according to Air Force commander Mikola Oleschuk.
The air defenses destroyed two X-59 and X-69 guided air missiles, as well as three reconnaissance drones, two Orlan-10 and a Supercam, Oleschuk said through his Telegram channel.
In addition, according to the Air Force commander, the launches of three Iskander-M ballistic missiles, two S-300 and S-400 guided missiles from the Russian border region of Belgorod, in addition to the two intercepted missiles, which departed from the Black Sea, were recorded.
The Attorney General’s Office of Ukraine reported this Saturday that since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022 the number of children killed by the conflict has risen to 545 minutes that 1,289 have been injured with varying degrees of severity.
According to a publication of the prosecutor’s office on its Telegram channel, the majority of dead or injured children are concentrated in regions crossed by the war front such as Donetsk (east), Kharkov (northeast) and Kerson, but also in the capital region of Kiev, among others.
Only yesterday, Friday, an eight-year-old boy and a 14-year-old teenager were killed as a result of the bombing of the town of Sinelnikovo, in the Dnipropetrovsk region (center), while a six-year-old boy was seriously injured.
In addition, in the Mikoláiv region (south), a 14-year-old teenager was injured in the bombing of the town of Solonchaki, the prosecutor’s office recalled.
NATO Defense Ministers agreed yesterday in Brussels that they are willing to provide more military support, including anti-aircraft defenses, to Ukraine, at the end of an emergency meeting requested by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski.
In recent weeks, Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have intensified and according to Zelenski, some have not been able to be repelled due to a lack of anti-aircraft ammunition.
Ukrainian security services sources said that the drone attacks launched tonight against eight Russian regions achieved their goal of causing damage to that country’s energy infrastructure.
Russia accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting its journalists after the death on Friday of the war correspondent of the Russian channel ‘Izvestia’, Semion Yeremin, who died while making a report in the Ukrainian region of Zaporiyia.
“As for the fact that the Ukrainian Army deliberately makes Russian journalists its target, this is so,” Dmitri Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, told that television channel.
International
Austrian man arrested in Croatia with deceased woman as passenger in his car
A 65-year-old Austrian citizen was arrested at a border checkpoint in Croatia after attempting to enter the country in his car with a deceased woman sitting as a passenger, police announced on Tuesday.
The man was detained in a routine check in late November in Gunja, a border area separating Bosnia from Croatia, the police told AFP. Suspicious because they saw “no consciousness or movement” from the passenger, Croatian officers called a doctor, who confirmed the death of the 83-year-old woman, also Austrian, according to her identification.
The woman’s relationship to the suspect is unknown. She had died in Bosnia, and the man intended to repatriate her body to Austria to “avoid the formalities related to transporting a corpse,” according to the police. Croatian media reported that the man was her legal guardian.
Once her death was confirmed, a funeral service took charge of the body.
International
Colombian nationals arrested for human trafficking and disappearance of migrant boat
Colombian authorities arrested two nationals accused of the illegal trafficking of migrants to the United States and of endangering lives due to the disappearance of a boat with 40 people aboard, U.S. Department of Justice officials reported on Tuesday.
Hernando Manuel de la Cruz Rivera Orjuela, 52, and Luis Enrique Linero Pinto, 40, both Colombian citizens, were arrested on December 13 in Colombia at the request of the United States for their alleged involvement in a “transnational human trafficking operation,” the department said in a statement.
According to the charges, the detainees were transporting migrants to San Andrés Island in the Caribbean, where they would then be taken by boat to Nicaragua. The goal was to reach the United States through Central America and Mexico.
The accused are said to have advised the migrants on how to reach San Andrés Island, where they personally received them, arranged accommodations, and “took them to the boats that transported them to Nicaragua so they could enter the United States illegally,” the statement reads.
“These defendants put several migrants on the boat that disappeared off the coast of Nicaragua in 2023,” said Deputy Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, as cited in the statement.
Both men are “directly and personally responsible for the illicit trafficking of migrants on that vessel,” according to the indictment dated October 23.
International
Homemade landmine explosion in Michoacán kills two soldiers, injures five
Two soldiers were killed and five others were injured by the explosion of homemade landmines planted by a criminal group in a mountainous area of the Mexican state of Michoacán (west), the Secretary of Defense reported on Tuesday.
The attack occurred on Monday morning in the municipality of Cotija, a border area between Michoacán and the state of Jalisco, when the military was conducting a reconnaissance mission after receiving information about an armed camp in the area, explained Secretary General Ricardo Trevilla.
“At that moment, an improvised explosive device detonated. Unfortunately, two soldiers lost their lives, and five others were injured,” the military leader detailed. The affected soldiers were airlifted to hospitals in the region by a military helicopter, while the rest of the team continued with the reconnaissance of the area.
Trevilla stated that before the explosion, the military unit had located the dismembered bodies of three people, and upon continuing the mission, they confirmed the camp was abandoned.
Asked about the individuals responsible for placing the explosives, the general suggested they could be criminals linked to the local group Cárteles Unidos, which operates in Michoacán and uses these tactics in their territorial dispute with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the country.
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