A manufacturing plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region has significantly scaled up its production of Iranian-designed drones, using a range of Chinese components, and recruiting a low-skilled workforce of Russian teenagers and African women,

Both Russia and Ukraine expanded the use of drones in 2024 as a relatively cheap means of warfare that requires an opponent to use a much more expensive air defense system. Moscow and Kyiv acquired 1.

Ukraine's Air Force has carried out a precise strike on a factory producing ballistic missile fuel in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, in Russiaʼs Rostov Oblast. Source: Centre for Strategic Communications (StratCom) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Telegram Details: The military reported that the factory targeted was used by the Russians for producing solid propellant for the ballistic missiles which they use to strike critical and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

"Ukraine was brutally attacked on Christmas Day," said Keith Kellogg, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for Ukraine and Russia envoy.

Ukraine's air force says it detected 184 missiles and drones, causing damage to energy infrastructure across the country.

Russia and Ukraine have been locked in an intractable-seeming conflict that has thrown not only the two nations into a state of prolonged chaos but huge swaths of Eastern Europe as well. While ostensibly a war over territorial expansion and ethnic sovereignty,

Russian ruler Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, 26 December, answering a question about the prospects for ending the war in Ukraine in 2025, that he was "striving" to end it but was still going to achieve his "goals".