World
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 683
As the war enters its 683rd day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Sunday, January 7, 2024.
Fighting
- At least 11 people, including five children, were killed by a Russian missile attack in and around the Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk. Vadym Filashkin, the regional governor of Ukraine’s partially-occupied eastern Donetsk region, said eight people were injured in the attack.
- Ukraine’s military said it carried out a successful attack on the Saky military airbase in the west of the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. “Saki airfield! All targets were hit!” Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk wrote on Telegram. He also published a photo appearing to show the airfield.
- Russia said earlier that its air defence units brought down Ukrainian missiles and drones targeting Crimea and the western part of the Black Sea. Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
- Local officials in Belgorod – a Russian city some 40km (25 miles) from the border with Ukraine – said that an “air target” was shot down on approach to the city. As Russians prepared to celebrate Orthodox Christmas, Christmas Eve masses in Belgorod were cancelled due to the “operational situation”, Mayor Valentin Demidov said.
Politics and diplomacy
- Speaking on the eve of the Russian Orthodox Christmas as he met families of soldiers killed in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin promised more support for soldiers who “with arms in hands” were defending Russia’s interests.
- In a rare public protest, about 15 Russian women whose husbands have been sent to fight in the Russian full-scale invasion symbolically laid flowers at the flame of the unknown soldier beneath the walls of the Kremlin in Moscow and demanded the men’s return from the front. About 244,000 Russians have been mobilised to fight in Ukraine out of a total force of about 617,000 troops.
- Shalanda Young, United States President Joe Biden’s top budget official, warned about the rapidly diminishing amount of time for lawmakers in Congress to replenish US aid for Ukraine. The funding has been blocked by Republicans demanding the $106bn plan, which also includes support for Israel, be linked to immigration measures at the US-Mexico border. Young said the situation was “dire”.
Weapons
- Ukraine provided further evidence that Russia attacked Ukraine with missiles supplied by North Korea, as the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office showed the media fragments of a weapon that hit the northeastern city on January 2. Spokesman Dmytro Chubenko said the missile was slightly bigger in diameter than the Russian Iskander missile, while its nozzle, internal electrical windings and rear parts were also different.
- Russia aims to produce more than 32,000 drones each year by 2030 and for domestic producers to account for 70 percent of the market, the state TASS news agency reported, citing First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov.
World
Video: What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site
new video loaded: What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site
transcript
transcript
What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site
Satellite images show how Iran has tried to bolster its defenses at parts of the Isfahan nuclear facility.
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What you’re seeing here are buried tunnel entrances at a nuclear facility in Iran. It’s one of the most important sites in the country for U.S. and Israeli forces. U.N. inspectors think that roughly half of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is buried here. And these three entrances are the only known ways to access it. If you think about nuclear sites in Iran, three main sites come to mind. They’re pretty well known: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. Natanz and Fordo, They were largely taken out in U.S. strikes last year. So I’ve been focusing on Isfahan. The uranium here is still relatively accessible. It’s actually a pretty large complex. This area here was very important for uranium processing, but it was heavily hit by the U.S. and Israel last June. If you go a little bit further north, that is underground and that requires tunnels to enter. In a terrain view, it gets quite interesting. There are three roads that lead to these tunnel entrances, and these tunnel entrances have become very important, both last year, but also right now. They lead to the underground facility where U.N. inspectors say uranium is stored and a new enrichment site could be located. If this falls into the wrong hands, that would be a problem in the long term. Here’s a great example of how very recent satellite imagery gives us new insights. This is from late January of this year, and what you see here is a line of trucks. And they’re filled with soil, and they’re lining up to go to some of these tunnel entrances. If you look a little bit closer here, you see another one of these trucks that’s just unloading some of the soil and some earthmoving equipment. Iran in preparation for any possible attacks at that point. They try to protect this facility a little bit more. So this is Jan. 29. And if you just look a few days later, we go to Feb. 2. This is the completely buried tunnel entrance, completely covered in soil to protect from any attack. And this is how it still looks in mid-March. The U.S. and Israel have basically two options here: The first one is to heavily bombard the entrances to this underground complex that would block any access, at least in the near future. They haven’t done that yet. So that’s very, very interesting — a little bit surprising. And it might point towards a second option: That would be to go in with ground forces and to extract the uranium. But that would require a really large amount of troops to secure the vast area, bringing in earthmoving equipment to clear the tunnels and a lot of time in hostile territory.

By Christoph Koettl and Alexander Cardia
March 20, 2026
World
Iranian man, 2nd person arrested after allegedly trying to enter UK nuclear missile base: report
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Two people were arrested after allegedly unsuccessfully attempting to enter HM Naval Base Clyde in Scotland on Thursday, authorities confirmed to Fox News Digital.
One suspect was an Iranian man, while the other was a woman of unknown nationality, The Telegraph reported.
“Around 5pm on Thursday, 19 March, 2026, we were made aware of two people attempting to enter HM Naval Base Clyde,” Police Scotland said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “A 34-year-old man and 31-year-old woman have been arrested in connection and enquiries are ongoing.”
The Telegraph reported that the man was Iranian, while the woman’s nationality was not immediately known. Citing the Times, the Telegraph said the suspects were turned away from the base because they lacked the correct passes and were later arrested nearby for allegedly “acting suspiciously in the vicinity.”
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HMS Artful, an Astute-class nuclear-powered fleet submarine, is shown at His Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde on March 4, 2025, in Faslane, Scotland. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
A Royal Navy spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital, “Police Scotland have arrested two people who unsuccessfully attempted to enter HM Naval Base Clyde on Thursday 19 March. As the matter is subject to an ongoing investigation, we will not comment further.”
HM Naval Base Clyde — commonly known as Faslane — is considered the primary base for the United Kingdom’s missile fleet.
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A general view of His Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde on March 4, 2025, in Faslane, Scotland. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
The Royal Navy says the base is home “to the core of the Submarine Service, including the nation’s nuclear deterrent, and the new generation of hunter-killer submarines.”
The U.K. Parliament says the Royal Navy currently operates a fleet of nine submarines, with the entire fleet based at HM Naval Base Clyde.
His Majesty’s Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde, also known as Faslane, hosts the U.K.’s nuclear submarines, which are armed with Trident missiles and serve as the U.K.’s nuclear deterrent. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
“Five of those are conventionally-armed nuclear-powered attack submarines of the Astute class. A further four are ballistic missiles submarines (SSBN) of the Vanguard class that comprise the UK’s submarine-based nuclear deterrent,” it added.
World
Iran’s Khamenei says enemy ‘defeated’ in written Nowruz message
Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since he replaced his slain father as Iran’s supreme leader.
Published On 20 Mar 2026
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said Iran’s enemies were being “defeated” in a written message for the Persian New Year, as the US and Israel continue to pound the country with attacks.
In a statement read on Iranian television on Friday, Khamenei praised the steadfastness of the Iranian people marking Nowruz, which he said ushered in the year of a “resistance economy under national unity and national security”.
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“At the moment, due to the particular unity that has been created between you, our compatriots – despite all the differences in religious, intellectual, cultural and political origins – the enemy has been defeated,” he said.
Khamenei has not been seen in public since he became supreme leader, following the assassination of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war on February 28.
Iran’s supreme leader said that while the US and Israel believed that after one or two days of attacks, the Iranian people would overthrow the government, but this was a “gross miscalculation”.
The war was launched under “the delusion that if the pinnacle of the regime and certain influential military figures were to attain martyrdom, it would instil fear and despair in our dear people … and through this means, the dream of dominating Iran and subsequently dismembering it would be realised”, he said.
Instead, “a fracture has emerged in the enemy,” he added.
Analysts have observed that the Iranian constitution itself was drafted with the spectre of a power vacuum in mind, a “survival protocol” designed to give the system the capacity to continue even at a moment of maximum shock.
Khamenei also denied that Iran or its allied forces were responsible for attacks against Turkiye and Oman.
Those were “false flag” incidents used by Iran’s enemy to “sow discord among neighbours, and it may occur in other countries as well”, he claimed.
The Turkish Ministry of National Defence last week said NATO air defences intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Iran. Two people were killed in Oman after drones came down in the Sohar province.
The supreme leader also called on Afghanistan and Pakistan to end their fighting and said he stood ready to assist.
“We consider our eastern neighbours to be very close to us”, the supreme leader said. “I appeal to our two brotherly countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to establish better relations with each other … and I myself am ready to take the necessary actions.”
The neighbouring countries agreed to a temporary “pause” in hostilities during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr this week, after weeks of deadly violence.
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