International
Ukraine continues to hit targets within Russia, which maintains the initiative at the front
Ukraine continues to hit targets within the Russian Federation and managed to damage several fuel tanks in the Rostov region last night with a drone attack, but the Russian forces maintain the initiative on the battlefield and continue to gain ground on the eastern front.
According to the Russian authorities, the attack has caused a fire in the aforementioned infrastructures in the southern Russian city of Azov.
Anonymous sources from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) have claimed the attack in statements to several Ukrainian media. According to these sources, the attacked infrastructures belong to two different oil product companies. One of them has up to 22 fuel tanks.
According to Russian Telegram channels, Azov’s neighbors heard explosions near the port and the train station, where oil facilities are located. Those same Telegram channels have published a video of a large column of fire and smoke rising towards the sky of the city of Azov.
In recent months, Kiev has attacked numerous refineries and other oil infrastructures within the Russian Federation with its own-made drones, in an attempt to decimate the Russian war economy and deprive the Russian Army fighting in Ukraine of some of the fuel it needs.
The United States has publicly expressed its disagreement with these attacks for fear of Russian reprisals and that they will destabilize the international oil market.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian General Staff has reported that the axis of the Pokrovsk front, in the eastern region of Donetsk, remains the hottest area in the entire contact zone due to constant Russian attacks.
In the middle of the day, “the Russian occupants” had tried to “15 times improve their positions” in the direction of the city of Pokrovsk, which is still in the hands of Ukraine.
According to the influential Ukrainian Telegram channel DeepState, which reports daily on the course of the war, Russian forces advanced in the last few hours along with the towns of Umanske, Arjangelske and Sokol, all of them in the Donetsk region.
In their report on Tuesday’s war, British military intelligence talks about the “probable” conquest by Russian troops of the town of Novooleksandrivka, 20 kilometers north of the occupied Avdivka (Donetsk).
“The area has experienced intense fighting throughout 2024 and Russia has gradually advanced since the capture of Avdivka in February 2024,” the British report reads.
According to London’s military intelligence, the capture of Novooleksandrivka brings Russia closer to a vital road for the supply of Ukrainian forces in the east.
The Russian authorities have been reporting in recent days and weeks of the improvement of positions and the seizure of several villages by their troops.
Ukraine lost the initiative at the front in September last year after having exhausted its counter-offensive with modest advances that in some cases have been reversed by Russia.
After almost half a year with hardly any supplies from the United States, Kiev began to receive new military aid from Washington financed with the expected package of more than 60 billion dollars approved by Congress in April, the ratification of which was delayed for more than six months due to the resistance of a part of the Republican Party.
Despite the arrival of new weapons and quantities of ammunition for artillery vital to correct the dramatic disadvantage that Ukraine suffered in this chapter for months, Kiev has not been able for the moment to stop enemy advances or recover the initiative.
For his part, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, expressed his concern about the deterioration of the situation in Ukraine after two and a half years of conflict and particularly denounced the situation in Kharkov, where the recent Russian land offensive “has destroyed entire communities.”
Kharkov, the second largest city in Ukraine, is located in the east of the country, close to the Russian-occupied regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, in the Donbas.
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.
Austrian man arrested in Croatia with deceased woman as passenger in his car
Colombian nationals arrested for human trafficking and disappearance of migrant boat
Homemade landmine explosion in Michoacán kills two soldiers, injures five
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