Ukraine updates: Finnish PM says war shows Europe's weakness

The prime minister of Finland has said Russia's war in Ukraine shows that the European Union isn't strong enough.

Visiting Australia, Sanna Marin said the invasion had exposed both EU weaknesses and strategic mistakes in dealing with Russia. 

"I must be very honest, brutally honest with you, Europe isn't strong enough right now. We would be in trouble without the United States," she told Sydney's Lowy Institute think tank. 

Marin insisted Ukraine must be given "whatever it takes" to win the war. She added that the US had been pivotal in supplying Kyiv with the weapons, finance and humanitarian aid necessary to thwart Russian ambitions.

"We have to make sure that we are also building those capabilities when it comes to European defense, the European defense industry, and making sure that we could cope in different kinds of situations," she said. 

Finland, which is seeking NATO membership, won independence from Russia almost 105 years ago, after the Russian Revolution of 1917. It later successfully fought off the Soviet Union in World War II.

Marin also criticized EU policies that had stressed the importance of engagement with Russian President Vladimir Putin. She said the bloc should have listened to member states who were part of the Soviet Union until it collapsed. 

"We should have listened to our Baltic and Polish friends much sooner," Marin said.

Here are the other main headlines from the war in Ukraine on Friday, December 2:

UK: Peace talks could act as smokescreen for training troops

Peace talks while Russia without the removal of its forces from Ukraine could be used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to resupply his troops before launching another offensive, the British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told The Telegraph newspaper.

There was a risk "a ceasefire is actually just used by Putin to train up more troops and to produce more ammunition and to refit his damaged armed forces and to rearm his armed forces," The Telegraph quoted Cleverly as saying.

Germany gives Ukraine 7 more Gepard tanks

Berlin is supplying Ukraine with an additional seven Gepard anti-aircraft tanks, the German Defense Ministry said.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz had announced the delivery on Tuesday.

Thirty German Gepard tanks are already in service in Ukraine.

Berlin has delivered military aid to Ukraine worth almost €2 billion ($2.1 billion).

Putin accuses West of 'destructive' position

Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the West's support for Ukraine was "destructive," the Kremlin said.

Russia's president spoke with Scholz over the phone on Friday.

"Attention was drawn to the destructive line of Western states, including Germany, which are pumping the Kyiv regime with weapons and training the Ukrainian military," the Kremlin said.

"All this, as well as comprehensive political and financial support for Ukraine, leads to the fact that Kyiv completely rejects the idea of ​​any negotiations," it said.

Putin also insisted that strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure were an "inevitable" response to Kyiv's "provocative attacks," and that Moscow had long "refrained" from hitting such targets.

Olaf Scholz urged Moscow to withdraw its forces from Ukraine and resolve the conflict through diplomacy in his call with Putin, a German government spokesperson said. He also condemned Russian airstrikes on civil infrastructure.

The two leaders discussed global food security and agreed to remain in contact, the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian forces would not withdraw from Ukraine, in response to US President Joe Biden's calls for an end to the invasion.

"Of course the special military operation will continue," Peskov said, according to Russia's state news agency Interfax.

10,000-13,000 Ukrainian troops killed in war — Ukrainian official

Between 10,000 and 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the war, presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said.

"We have official figures from the general staff, we have official figures from the top command, and they amount to between 10,000 and 12,500-13,000 killed," Podolyak told Ukrainian broadcaster Channel 24.

The death toll could not be independently verified.

The last official count from Kyiv dates back to late August, when the head of the military said 9,000 troops had been killed.

On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that 100,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed in the war.

Her office later corrected her comments, saying that they referred to both the killed and the injured.

Hungary's Orban opposes aid package

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that Budapest will continue to oppose a proposed €18 billion ($19 billion) EU aid package for Kyiv.

The package requires unanimous agreement among member states in order to pass.

"The question is how to help Ukraine,'' Orban said. "One proposal says that we should use the budgets of the EU member states to take out new loans together and use that money to give to Ukraine. "

Orban said that he opposed the proposal because he did not want the bloc to become a "community of indebted states."

Hungary's prime minister had earlier said that Budapest would be willing to provide Ukraine with $152-$178 million in aid from its own budget as part of a bilateral agreement with Kyiv.

On Wednesday, the European Commission recommended freezing funds to Hungary due to concerns over the state of the rule of law in the country.

Ukrainian embassies receive "bloody packages"

Several Ukrainian embassies have received "bloody packages," Kyiv's foreign ministry said.

The packages, which contained animal eyes, were sent to embassies in Hungary, the Netherlands, Croatia and Italy. They were also sent to consulates in Naples, Italy, in Krakow, Poland and in Brno, Czech Republic.

"We have grounds to believe that a well-planned campaign of terror and intimidation of Ukrainian embassies and consulates is under way," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement.

Six letter bombs have been sent this week to targets in Spain, including Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the US Embassy in Madrid. The Ukraine embassy was also among the targets, but the motive remains unclear.

Serbia's Vucic: No-one can bypass sanctions through Serbia

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has insisted that no-one can bypass EU sanctions against Moscow through Belgrade.

Serbia imports all of its gas from Russia, and its NIS oil company is majority-owned by Russian firms Gazprom Neft and Gazprom.

"We have reacted in cases of re-export of certain goods and our state bodies have detained people from companies that were involved in bypassing sanctions against the Russian Federation," Serbia's president said following a meeting with EU enlargement commissioner Oliver Verhelyi.

"I welcome [Vucic's] message that he will help us implement sanctions (against Russia) in order to end this war," Verhelyi said.

Serbia has been a candidate for EU membership since 2012. It has been criticized by Brussels for not imposing sanctions on Moscow.

UK ministry says Russia facing fresh logistic headaches 

The UK Ministry of Defence says Russia’s withdrawal from the west bank of the Dnipro River last month now affords Ukrainian troops the opportunity to strike additional Russian logistics nodes and lines of communication. 

The ministry said the threat probably caused Russia to relocate supply nodes, including rail transfer points, further south and east. 

It said Russian logistics units would probably need to conduct extra labor-intensive loading and unloading from rail to road transport. 

The ministry added that Russia’s shortage of munitions exacerbated by these logistics challenges was "likely one of the main factors currently limiting Russia’s potential to restart effective, large scale offensive ground operations." 

Germany delivering hundreds of generators to Ukraine

With Ukraine's power grid crippled by weeks of Russian airstrikes, Germany is making good on the pledge to deliver hundreds of generators as winter looms.

Germany's agency for technical relief has already sent nearly 150 devices, with another 320 currently being prepared for transport, the officials said. Some of the generators can be mounted on car trailers so they can be moved around affected areas. 

The agency said that some of the new equipment was sent to Ukrenergo, Ukraine's largest energy supplier. More  German generators are to be deployed to Odesa and Mykolaiv as well as the recently liberated Kherson.

More coverage of the war in Ukraine

Visiting Berlin, NATO's Jens Stoltenberg has praised defense spending increases in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He also called on Germany to keep pushing to reform and upgrade its military.

The European Union is close to locking a deal capping the sale of Russian oil at $60 per barrel. The cap is meant to limit Russia's revenues from oil sales while avoiding an all out ban that risks prices shooting up.

OSCE foreign ministers are meeting in Poland, which did not invite Russia's Sergey Lavrov in light of the war in Ukraine. Moscow railed against this step, while Western countries argued the Kremlin only had itself to blame.

rc/dj (dpa, Reuters, AFP, AP)