News

The Royal Thai Army has announced launching air attacks along its disputed border with Cambodia, after accusing Cambodian forces of firing at its troops and killing at least one soldier.

In a statement on Monday, spokesman Major-General Winthai Suvari said the Thai Army deployed aircraft after the deadly clashes in the Chong Bok area of Nam Yuen District in Ubon Ratchathani province.

Suvari said at least four other soldiers were also wounded.

He added that the Thai Army was “expediting support for the evacuation of civilians in border areas”.

Cambodia also confirmed the attacks.

Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence spokeswoman Maly Socheata told the AFP news agency that Thai forces launched an attack on Cambodian troops in the border provinces of Preah Vihear and Oddar Meanchey early on Monday morning.

She added that Cambodia had not retaliated.

The attacks are the latest flare-up of violence between the neighbours after a ceasefire ended five days of deadly clashes in July.

At least 48 people were killed and an estimated 300,000 temporarily displaced during the clashes, with the two neighbours exchanging rockets and heavy artillery fire.

The ceasefire that ended the hostilities was brokered by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and United States President Trump, who also witnessed the signing of an expanded peace agreement between the two countries in Kuala Lumpur in October.

Tensions have continued to flare, however.

Following a landmine blast last month that maimed one of its soldiers, Thailand said it was halting the implementation of the ceasefire pact with Cambodia. Phnom Penh denied responsibility for the landmine explosion, saying the device was a remnant from past conflicts.

Thailand and Cambodia have for more than a century contested sovereignty at undemarcated points along their 817-km (508-mile) land border, first mapped in 1907 by France when it ruled Cambodia as a colony.

Here’s where things stand on Monday, December 8:

Fighting

• Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Kharkiv region killed at least four people, including a 70-year-old woman, on Sunday, according to Ukrainian police and the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office. At least 10 others were also injured.
• Russian forces also hit the Pechenihy reservoir dam in Kharkiv during the attack, with the Ukrainian military saying it was ready for the facility to be “critically damaged”. The reservoir supplies water to the city of Kharkiv, which is Ukraine’s second-largest metropolis.
• Russian attacks also killed two others in Ukraine on Sunday, one in the city of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region and another in the Chernihiv region, according to regional governors.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces launched more than 650 drones and 51 missiles overnight into Sunday, causing injuries and destroying infrastructure across Ukraine, with energy being the “main target”.
• In the central city of Kremenchuk, the attacks caused widespread power and water outages, according to Mayor Vitaliy Maletsky. He described the assault as a “massive combined strike” and said city workers were working to restore services.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces have seized the Ukrainian villages of Kucherivka in the Kharkiv region and Rivne near Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.
• The ministry also said that its forces shot down 172 Ukrainian drones and four Neptune long-range guided missiles in a 24-hour period.

Politics and diplomacy

• Zelenskyy said on Sunday that his conversation with United States representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on a peace plan for Ukraine had been “constructive, although not easy”. “The American representatives know the basic Ukrainian positions,” Zelenskyy added.
• Keith Kellogg, US President Donald Trump’s outgoing envoy for Ukraine, told the Reagan National Defense Forum in California that a deal to end the war in Ukraine was “really, really close”, and that negotiations were continuing over Russia’s demand for Ukraine’s Donbas region and the future of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. “The last 10 metres” is always the hardest, said Kellogg, who is due to step down in January.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, said that “territorial problems” were discussed at talks in Moscow between US and Russian officials last week, and that Washington would have to “make serious, I would say, radical changes to their papers” on Ukraine.
• Zelenskyy is due to meet the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for talks in London on Monday.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television reporter Pavel Zarubin on Sunday that Trump’s new national security strategy largely aligned with Russia’s positions. “The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision,” Peskov said of the new US strategy.
• He also said it was encouraging that the new strategy pledged to end “the perception, and preventing the reality, of the NATO military alliance as a perpetually expanding alliance”.

• Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni spoke with Zelenskyy on the phone and denounced what she called a new wave of “indiscriminate” Russian attacks on Ukraine. She also pledged to provide Italian generators to Ukraine in the coming weeks.