Russia finished 2025 with what Ukraine described as an information operation designed to avoid engaging in peace talks and continue its war, despite suffering staggering casualties for meagre territorial gains this year.

On Monday, December 29, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of attempting to assasinate Russia President Vladimir Putin at his residence at Lake Valdai, 140km (87 miles) northeast of Moscow.

“The Kyiv regime launched a terrorist attack using 91 long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on the state residence of the president of the Russian Federation in the Novgorod Region. All the UAVs were destroyed by the air defence systems of the Russian Armed Forces,” said Lavrov in a statement.

He did not say whether Putin was in residence at the time.

Lavrov’s Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha, quickly dismissed the claim. “Almost a day passed and Russia still hasn’t provided any plausible evidence to its accusations of Ukraine’s alleged ‘attack on Putin’s residence’. And they won’t. Because there’s none. No such attack happened,” Sybiha said.

Russia produced photographs of drone debris lying in the snow two days later, but the drone’s location, manufacture and the time of its downing could not be corroborated from them.

“The attack on Putin’s Valdai residence is presumably a Kremlin fake,” wrote the opposition outlet Sota. “Residents of Valdai, where Putin’s ‘Dinner’ residence is located, told Sota that last night they did not hear the work of the air defence, which would have shot down 91 drones.”

Sota also pointed out that drones attacking Valdai “necessarily cross a specially protected airspace with objects of the Strategic Missile Forces, East Kazakhstan region, military aviation, closed administrative units such as Solnechny, Lake, etc.

“A drone crossing the territory of these facilities can fly to the Dinner residence only by miracle,” Sota said.

Lavrov’s claim also appeared at odds with an earlier announcement from the Russian Ministry of Defence that only 41 drones had been downed in the Novgorod region on the night of December 28-29.

Russia’s Defence Ministry later issued an update, saying another 49 drones had been shot down over Bryansk and one over Smolensk “flying in the direction of Novgorod region”.

Ukraine observers pointed out that Bryansk and Smolensk are hundreds of kilometres from Valdai.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, stated that none of the usual evidence of Ukrainian strikes accompanied the alleged attack, such as footage, heat signatures, statements from local officials, or local media reports.

For example, a successful Ukrainian attack against an oil depot in Rybinsk on December 31 was well-documented on social media. So was an attack on the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in Rostov a week earlier, as well as a number of other strikes during the week.

News of the alleged attack came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy concluded successful talks with United States President Donald Trump in Florida, garnering a promise that US forces would participate in Ukraine’s security following any peace agreement with Russia.

It was the first time the US had agreed to such security guarantees, and it appeared to make Polish Premier Donald Tusk optimistic that the war in Ukraine could end early in 2026.

“Peace is on the horizon,” he told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

“The key result of recent days is the American declaration of willingness to participate in security guarantees for Ukraine after a peace agreement, including the presence of American troops, for example, on the border or on the line of contact between Ukraine and Russia,” Tusk said.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s allies, known as the Coalition of the Willing, were scheduled to meet in Kyiv on January 3 and in France three days later.

Lavrov’s announcement cast a pall on this optimism when he said, “Russia’s negotiating position will be reviewed.” On the same day, Putin ordered his forces in southern Ukraine to continue efforts to seize the unoccupied remainder of the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhia. Moscow controls three-quarters of the region.

Zelenskyy said Russia was “looking for a pretext” to escalate hostilities and avoid engaging in peace talks, following his successful meeting with Trump.

“Russia is at it again, using dangerous statements to undermine all achievements of our shared diplomatic efforts with President Trump’s team,” he wrote on social media.

Russia has repeatedly dashed Trump’s hopes for peace, refusing to cede occupied territory or to accept US and European forces on Ukrainian soil.

Yet Trump appeared to believe Moscow’s allegations.

“I don’t like it. It’s not good,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “It’s one thing to be offensive… It’s another thing to attack his house. It’s not the right time to do any of that. And I learned about it from President Putin today. I was very angry about it.”

Other US officials were not convinced. US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker expressed scepticism, telling an interviewer on Monday, “It’s unclear whether it actually happened.” On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that US intelligence had determined that Ukraine did not target Putin’s residence.

Moscow’s messaging appeared to bookend Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump, targeting the US president.

Putin held staged meetings with his General Staff on Saturday, December 27, and Monday, just before and after Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump, during which commander-in-chief Valery Gerasimov broadcast exaggerated claims of success.

He said Russian forces had occupied 6,640 square kilometres (2,564 square miles) of Ukrainian territory and seized 334 Ukrainian settlements in 2025. The ISW said it had “observed evidence indicating a Russian presence in 4,952 square kilometres (1912 sq miles)” and 245 settlements.

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii said territory amounting to 0.8 percent of Ukraine’s 603,550sq km (233,032sq miles) had been lost. at the cost of almost 420,000 dead and wounded Russians.

Ukraine’s General Staff estimated total Russian casualties for the war at more than 1.2 million, almost 11,500 tanks and 24,000 armoured fighting vehicles, more than 37,000 artillery systems, 781 aircraft and well in excess of 4,000 missiles.

By the end of 2025, Russian forces had still not taken Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, the eastern Ukrainian towns in Donetsk that they had been fighting to capture for five months. They held 55 percent of Hulyaipole in the southern Zaporizhia region, despite claiming to have seized it. Even Russian military reporters admitted Russian forces were being squeezed out of Kupiansk in the northern Kharkiv region, despite claiming also to have seized that.

“Due to inaccurate reports on the situation to higher authorities, reserves that were ‘not needed’ for the capture and clearing of Kupiansk were redeployed to other areas,” wrote one Kremlin-friendly outlet, citing “systematic exaggeration of successes”.

While it remained doubtful whether Ukraine did target Valdai, Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian cities were documented. During the last week of the year, Russia launched just more than 1,000 drones and 33 missiles at Ukraine’s cities. Ukraine’s Air Force said it intercepted 86 percent of the drones and 30 of the missiles.

[Aljazeera]

Around 40 people have died after a fire ripped through a bar in a ski resort in southern Switzerland, police have said. A further 115 people are injured, many of them “severely”.

The fire broke out at around 01:30 (00:30 GMT) during new year celebrations in a bar called Le Constellation in Crans-Montana.

Officials investigating the incident have not confirmed any cause, but categorically ruled out an attack.

People from multiple countries have been affected. Regional police commander Frédéric Gisler has said the priority in the coming days is to identify those who have died “so that their bodies can be returned rapidly” to their families.

Thirteen helicopters, 42 ambulances and 150 emergency responders were sent overnight to the scene of the fire in the Valais region, which is popular with tourists.

Most of the injured experienced severe burns and 60 people were sent to Sion hospital in Valais, with a “significant number” in a critical condition, Regional governor Mathias Reynard said.

Its intensive care unit was at full capacity and Reynard said the local community must take extra care to avoid needing hospital treatment unnecessarily.

“We are painfully aware that identifying the bodies, as well as the injured, may still take a terribly long time for the families involved,” Reynard added.

Some people have been taken to hospitals in other Swiss cities including Lausanne and Zurich which have specialist burns units.

A spokesperson for Lausanne University Hospital said they were treating 22 patients with burn injuries, while Zurich University Hospital said it was treating 12 patients for burns.

The Italian Foreign Ministry has told the BBC that 16 Italian nationals are currently missing, and between 12 and 15 others are receiving treatment in hospital.

The French foreign ministry said eight of its citizens were missing and that it could not rule out that French nationals were among the dead.

French media has reported that at least two of the injured are French nationals.

Three Italian nationals are being evacuated to Milan’s Niguarda hospital where there is a major burns unit, Italian councillor Guido Bertolaso has said.

They have burns across “30-40% of their bodies”, he told reporters, and they remain intubated, but “the fact they could be moved is a good sign”.

The precise number of dead and injured is not yet known, nor their nationalities but officials have confirmed that several nationalities were involved.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday evening, officials said they did not know how many people were in the bar when the fire broke out.

State councillor Stéphane Ganzer described the bar as having a “young festive population” during the New Year’s Eve party.

Attorney General Beatrice Pilloud has said an investigation was under way “to identify the circumstances which caused this dramatic situation to occur”.

She was asked by journalists at the press conference about rumours that bottles of champagne carrying flares might have been the cause of the blaze, and whether the staircases were “very narrow”.

She replied that she could not confirm anything while the investigation is ongoing.

Ms Pilloud said the staircases did appear to be narrow, but investigations would assess whether they were in line with requirements.

She said “several hypotheses” for the cause of the blaze have been put forward, and the favoured theory was a “general fire which caused conflagration” – a large fire that causes a lot of damage, rather than an explosion.

Several witnesses have been interviewed, she said, and phones have also been recovered for analysis.

“At no time is there question of any attack”, she said.

Work is ongoing to identify the victims and return bodies to families as quickly as possible, Ms Pilloud said, adding: “To do that there is significant work which needs to be carried out. And this significant work will require the closure of the district.”

The Italian ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, said that it would take weeks to identify the dead.

A helpline has been set up for families: +41 848 112 117

The fire was “one of the worst tragedies that our country has experienced,” Swiss President Guy Parmelin told reporters.

Local people gathered to pay tribute to the dead and injured at a vigil at Montana Station Church on Thursday evening, and floral tributes were laid near the scene of the fire.

Crans-Montana is a luxury ski resort, famous in the 1980s for hosting the World Cup skiing.

Le Constellation, which has been around for decades, has an upstairs with TV screens where people go and watch football matches, and a large bar downstairs for drinking and dancing.

The UK Foreign Office said its “thoughts are with all those injured and killed in the terrible tragedy” and consular staff were on standby to provide support to any British nationals affected.

King Charles said he and his wife Queen Camilla were “greatly saddened” to learn of the fire, and that it was “utterly heartbreaking that a night of celebration for young people and families instead turned to such nightmarish tragedy”.

French President Emmanuel Macron said France was welcoming the injured from Crans-Montana to its hospitals.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was working with Swiss authorities to get medical help to victims through the EU’s civil protection mechanism.

[BBC]