Russia appeared to ready itself for talks on the future of Ukraine with United States President-elect Donald Trump ahead of his swearing-in on Monday.

“No special conditions are needed for this. What is required is the mutual intent and political will to have a dialogue,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Saturday.

But Russia expressed its parameters very quickly.

Putin aide Nikolai Patrushev told Russian news outlet KP that a Ukraine settlement should be reached by the US and Russia, without Ukraine and without the European Union.

Asked whether territorial concessions would be made, he said “This is not even up for discussion.”

Moscow appears confident that Trump’s world view is similar to its own and conducive to a deal that sidelines Europe.

Patrushev drew a parallel between Moscow’s landgrab in Ukraine and Trump’s assertion in a January 7 press conference that the US should absorb Greenland and resume control of Panama, saying “we need them for economic security”.

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Trump also posted a map of the US and Canada as one country, calling their border an “artificially drawn line” and their union “much better for national security” – arguments identical to those used by the Kremlin to wage war on Ukraine.

“Trump outlined his interests in relation to Greenland, the Panama Canal, Mexico, and Canada,” Patrushev said. “Redrawing the world map to suit his interests and interfering in the affairs of countries on different continents is an American tradition.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also painted the views of Russia and the incoming US administration as aligned. He advised Trump to listen to the wishes of the people of Greenland, just as Russia – he said – listened to the people it annexed in 2022.

“I believe that, first and foremost, we need to hear from the Greenlandic people,” Lavrov told a press conference in Moscow on Tuesday.

“This is similar to how we – as neighbours of other islands, peninsulas, and territories – listened to the residents of Crimea, Donbas, and Novorossiya to understand their stance on the regime that had seized power through an unlawful coup.”

Moscow holds that the 2014 Maidan uprising that unseated then-President Viktor Yanukovych was a US-orchestrated coup.

Novorossiya was the term Catherine the Great used in the late 18th century to refer to newly conquered territories that now form part of Ukraine. Moscow annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson in September 2022 after unsupervised referenda.

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Moscow’s official view of the Ukraine conflict is that it is first and foremost about Russian security, dismissing Ukraine’s territorial integrity and right to self-determination as irrelevant.

Trump’s election confirms the legitimacy of the Russian view, Lavrov said.

“Everyone has long understood this, but now they are starting to acknowledge it: This is not about Ukraine itself but about Ukraine being used as a tool to weaken Russia’s position in the European security framework,” he said.

“Naturally, threats on our western flank, along our borders, must be neutralised.”

Global backing for a possible Putin-Trump deal

A new global survey of public opinion suggests that a deal between Putin and Trump might win the backing of at least certain influential countries.

In the survey released on Wednesday by the European Council on Foreign Relations, majorities in India, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and Brazil saw Trump’s election as a good thing for their countries and for peace in the world.

Majorities in India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil saw Russia as an ally or necessary partner for their respective countries, and believed its influence in world affairs would not diminish or might even grow.

Majorities in Ukraine, the UK and EU stood out in the survey for holding the opposite views.

As Russia, Europe, Ukraine and much of the rest of the world hung on Trump’s lips, the war in Ukraine raged with unabated ferocity.

Fighting intensified in the Russian region of Kursk, which Ukraine counter-invaded last August.

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“Assaults are taking place every day, continuously throughout the day and night,” Stanislav Krasnov, a platoon commander of Ukraine’s 95th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade, told Armyinform TV.

Ukraine takes North Korean troops prisoner

Ukrainian forces captured their first North Korean prisoner of war in Kursk on January 9, followed by a second on Saturday, putting beyond doubt the use of North Korean soldiers by the Russian military.

Ukraine released footage of the first capture by Ukraine’s 84th Tactical Group.

The 20-year-old rifleman carried a Russian-issued ID card from the Russian federated Republic of Tuva – further signals that Moscow had tried to hide its use of North Koreans.

Ukrainian paratroopers caught the second man, a 26-year-old reconnaissance sniper.

“It was not easy. Other North Korean soldiers and Russians keep trying to finish off their wounded Koreans – specifically to prevent them from being captured,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed in his evening address on Saturday.

Zelenskyy released video of Ukraine’s interrogation of the prisoners.

The rifleman appears to say he was told he was going on a training exercise. Asked if he wanted to go back to North Korea, he can be heard saying, “I want to live in Ukraine.”

Zelenskyy suggested that North Koreans could be granted amnesty to live in Ukraine if they supported it.

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“For those soldiers from North Korea who do not want to return, there may be some other ways. In particular, those Koreans who express a desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth in Korean about this war will be given such an opportunity,” he said.

Major Anton Zakharchuk, commanding Ukraine’s 95th Airmobile Battalion in Kursk, claimed North Korean soldiers were apparently following uniform orders to commit suicide to avoid capture.

“We try to identify them using aerial reconnaissance, they hide in trenches or burrows, and when we get closer, we hear explosions,” he said.

He also said Russian troops were allowing North Koreans to man the first waves of attacks, using them as human shields.

In one instance, the 6th Rangers Regiment fighting in Kursk reported, a North Korean soldier attempted to draw them to his position in hopes of blowing them up along with himself using a grenade.

The North Korean fighter tried to mislead soldiers “and blow himself up with them on a grenade”, the regiment wrote. It added that when the rangers approached him, “he blew himself up”.

Al Jazeera was unable to independently confirm these claims.

In a telephone call with France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Zelenskyy said 4,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed or wounded – about a third of the original number sent into active combat duty in Kursk in mid-December.

Russia says thousands of Ukrainian drones downed in 2024

Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up its deep attacks against Russian infrastructure during the week.

Russian state news agency TASS reported a massive aerial drone campaign on Tuesday. Russia reportedly shot down or disoriented 16 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the Tula region, 14 in the Rostov region, 17 in the Oryol region and several in the Voronezh region overnight.

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Ukraine’s General Staff said its operation had struck the Kombinat Kristal oil storage facility in Engels, “where a fire that had lasted five days after the previous attack had just been extinguished,” – a reference to a January 8 strike.

The General Staff also reported successful strikes on the Bryansk Chemical Plant in the city of Seltso, described as “a strategic facility of the Russian military-industrial complex … Ammunition for artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, aviation, engineering ammunition and components of the Kh-59 cruise missiles are manufactured here. Secondary detonations were observed on the territory of the plant, which lasted several hours.”

The staff said the Saratov Oil Refinery and the Kazanorgsintez plant were also hit.

Earlier, on Saturday, Ukraine used UAVs to attack the Russkaya compressor in Krasnodar Krai, which serves the TurkStream Pipeline, Russian state news agency TASS said. Ukraine reportedly used nine UAVs in the attack in Gaikodzor village. Russia’s Defence Ministry said it shot down all nine.

TurkStream is the only working Russian gas pipeline to Europe, after Nord Stream was sabotaged in 2022 and the Yamal pipeline across Ukraine shut down on January 1 after its contract with Russian energy company Gazprom ended.

Ukraine has made no secret of its desire to see Western nations stop all imports of Russian energy.

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Ukrainian presidential adviser Vladyslav Vlasiuk told EU ambassadors to Kyiv on Monday that Ukraine is upset by the import of what it believes were $7.3bn in liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports last year. “It’s time to cut off the petrodollar flow fueling Russia’s aggression,” he said.

Ukraine has also been frustrated by what it sees as slow or inadequate deliveries of long-range weapons, which enable it to take the fight to Russian soil, and has increasingly invested in its own production of arms.

TASS tallied the number of Ukrainian drones Russia downed last year to 7,300. Zelenskyy on Saturday asked his manufacturers “to make this year a record one in terms of all types of drones”.

The previous day, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told the Verkhovna Rada that spending on weapons would increase to a record $17.5bn in 2025 and domestic industrial capacity would reach $30bn. It is believed to have reached $7bn in 2024.

Ukraine, too, has battled for control of its airspace.

Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down 400 aerial targets in the week of January 6-12, almost all of them different types of UAVs. Zelenskyy said Russia had launched 600 drones during that week.