What happened in the last few hours

On the 314th day of the war launched by Russia against Ukraine, here are the key data as of 8:00 p.m. this Tuesday, January 3:

Ukraine claims to have shot down 500 Iranian-made Russian drones since September. Ukrainian authorities said on Tuesday that they had shot down some 500 drones launched by the Russian army and manufactured in Iran since last September. Yuriy Ignat, spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force Command, said the Ukrainian armed forces “will be ready”. “We shot down the drones,” he said, before detailing that 84 drones “were intercepted and shot down in two days”, according to information from the Ukrinform news agency.

Putin plans to speak with Erdogan this Wednesday. Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to meet with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to the Interfax news agency. El mandatario islamista, que ha tratado de mediar entre Moscú y kyiv para poner end à la guerra en Ucrania, est uno de los líderes que más veces ha reunido con el presidente ruso desde el inicio de la guerra de Rusia en Ucrania en febrero del past year.

Sunak reiterates his long-term commitment to Zelensky on their first call of the year. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reaffirmed to Volodimir Zelensky on Tuesday that the Ukrainian president can count on the UK’s long-term support. The first conversation of 2023 between the two leaders was marked by the recent drone attacks. “The two leaders discussed the heinous drone attacks in Ukraine in recent days,” a statement from Downing Street said following the conversation between Sunak and Zelensky. “We have agreed to intensify our efforts to bring victory closer this year,” the Ukrainian president said via his Telegram account. “We already have concrete decisions in this regard.”

The UN reports that 6,919 civilians have died in Ukraine due to the war. The United Nations Human Rights Office reported that 6,919 civilians have been killed and 11,075 injured in Ukraine since the start of the war until January 2. The organization clarified that the real figures are surely much higher, especially in regions where the fighting is more intense and where the monitoring work of the organization’s observers is more difficult. To date, 2,737 men, 1,842 women, 216 boys and 175 girls have been identified among the deceased.

Ukraine claims to have discovered another torture chamber in Mykolaiv province. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office on Tuesday reported the discovery of another torture chamber in the Mikolaiv region of the town of Oleksandrivka, liberated from Russian occupation. “According to the investigation, representatives of the aggressor country seized a house in the city. They illegally detained and brutally tortured local residents who refused to cooperate with the enemy,” said the statement from the prosecutor’s office, quoted by the Ukrinform agency.

Kuleba invites the president of the International Olympic Committee to see the impact of the war on Ukrainian sport. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Tuesday invited International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach to the town of Druzhkivka, Donetsk province, to learn about the impact of the Russian aggression war about Ukrainian sport. “I invite all sports officials who wish to allow Russian athletes to participate in international competitions because ‘sport is above politics’, including IOC President Thomas Bach, to visit ‘Altair’ and see for themselves. Russia’s ‘sporting neutrality’,” he wrote. in a post on Instagram.

In this photo by Dmitry Lovetsky for the AP, a poster in St. Petersburg celebrating a fallen Russian soldier in Ukraine.