RussiaUkraine

These are the key developments from day 1,386 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here’s where things stand on Thursday, December 11:

Fighting

• Ukrainian sea drones hit and disabled a tanker involved in trading Russian oil as it sailed through Ukraine’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea to the Russian port of Novorossiysk, a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) official said.
• The Dashan tanker was sailing at maximum speed with its transponders off when powerful explosions hit its stern, inflicting critical damage on the vessel, the SBU official said. No information was available on possible casualties from the attack.
• The attack marks the third sea drone strike in two weeks on vessels that are part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” – unregulated ships which Kyiv says are helping Moscow export large quantities of oil and fund its war in Ukraine despite Western sanctions.
• Three people were killed and two wounded by Ukrainian shelling of a hospital in the Russia-controlled part of the Kherson region in Ukraine, a Russia-installed governor claimed on Telegram. All those killed and injured were reportedly employees of the medical facility.
• Ukrainian forces are fending off an unusually large Russian mechanised attack inside the strategic eastern city of Pokrovsk, Kyiv’s military said, including “armoured vehicles, cars, and motorcycles”.
• Russian drones have hit the gas transport system in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, a senior Ukrainian official said, in an area which contains several pipelines carrying US liquefied natural gas to Ukraine from Greece.
• Russian air defences shot down two drones en route to Moscow, the city’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

Peace deal

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had agreed on key points of a post-war reconstruction plan and an “economic document” in talks with United States President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
• “The principles of the economic document are completely clear, and we are fully aligned with the American side,” Zelenskyy said. “An important common principle is that for reconstruction to be of high quality and economic growth after this war to be tangible, real security must be at the core. When there is security, everything else is there too,” he said.
• Zelenskyy also said work was proceeding on the “fundamental document” of a US-backed 20-point plan aimed at ending the war. He said two other associated documents dealt with security guarantees and economic issues.
• The leaders of Britain, France and Germany held a call with President Trump to discuss Washington’s latest peace efforts to end the war in Ukraine, in what they said was “a critical moment” in the process.
• French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump and the European leaders discussed how to move forward on “a subject that concerns all of us”.
• There will be another meeting on Thursday of the leaders of the so-called “coalition of the willing” group of nations backing Ukraine, said the French presidency, adding that this meeting would be held via videoconference.

Military aid

• The US House of Representatives has passed a massive defence policy bill authorising a record $901bn in annual military spending, including $400m in military assistance to Ukraine in each of the next two years and other measures reinforcing the US commitment to Europe’s defence.

Politics and diplomacy

• Trump again expressed concern that Ukraine had not had an election in a long time, putting additional pressure on Zelenskyy to hold one.
• Zelenskyy said he had discussed with Ukraine’s parliament legal and other issues linked to the possibility of holding an election during wartime, and urged other countries, including the US, not to apply pressure on the issue.
• Wartime elections are forbidden by law in Ukraine, but Zelenskyy, whose term expired last year, is facing renewed pressure from Trump to hold a vote.

Regional security

• Following a report from the head of Kyiv’s foreign intelligence service that Russia and China were taking steps to intensify cooperation, Zelenskyy said there was a “growing trend of the de-sovereignisation of parts of Russian territory in China’s favour”, primarily through Moscow’s sale of its “scarce resources” to Beijing.
• “We … note that China is taking steps to intensify cooperation with Russia, including in the military-industrial sector,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

A report from the Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, Oleh Ivashchenko. There were many details regarding the foreign policy situation surrounding Ukraine and the economic situation in Russia – specifically, the dependence of its companies and state system on… pic.twitter.com/xV5fvx6RvR

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 10, 2025

Sanctions

• The US has extended a deadline for negotiations on buying the global assets of Russian oil company Lukoil by a little over a month to January 17. Trump imposed sanctions on Lukoil and Rosneft, Russia’s two biggest energy companies, on October 22 as part of an effort to pressure Moscow over its war in Ukraine, and Lukoil put its assets up for sale shortly after.
• Russian prosecutors asked a Moscow court to seize the assets of US private equity fund NCH Capital in Russia, the Kommersant newspaper said, citing court documents. Prosecutors accused the fund’s owners of financing Ukraine’s military forces.
• European Union ambassadors have greenlit the bloc’s plan to phase out Russian gas imports by late 2027, three EU officials told the Reuters news agency, clearing one of the final legal hurdles before the ban can pass into law.

Ukrainian leader responds to US President Trump’s suggestion that he is using the war as an excuse to avoid elections.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has declared that his government was prepared to hold elections within three months if the United States and Kyiv’s other allies can ensure the security of the voting process.

Zelenskyy issued his statement on Tuesday as he faced renewed pressure from US President Donald Trump, who suggested in an interview with a news outlet that the Ukrainian government was using Russia’s war on their country as an excuse to avoid elections.

Wartime elections are forbidden under Ukrainian law, and Zelenskyy’s term in office as the country’s elected president expired last year.

“I’m ready for elections, and moreover I ask… that the US help me, maybe together with European colleagues, to ensure the security of an election,” Zelenskyy said in comments to reporters.

“And then in the next 60-90 days, Ukraine will be ready to hold an election,” he said.

In a Politico news article published earlier on Tuesday, Trump was quoted as saying: “You know, they [Ukraine] talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy any more.”

Zelenskyy dismissed the suggestion that he was clinging to power as “totally inadequate”.

He then said that he would ask parliament to prepare proposals for new legislation that could allow for elections during martial law.

Earlier this year, Ukraine’s parliament overwhelmingly approved a resolution affirming the legitimacy of Zelenskyy’s wartime stay in office, asserting the constitutionality of deferring the presidential election while the country fights Russia’s invasion.

In February, Trump also accused Zelenskyy of being a “dictator”, echoing claims previously made by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zelenskyy and other officials have routinely dismissed the idea of holding elections while frequent Russian air strikes take place across the country, nearly a million troops are at the front and millions more Ukrainians are displaced. Also uncertain is the voting status of those Ukrainians living in the one-fifth of the country occupied by Russia.

Polls also show that Ukrainians are against holding wartime elections, but they also want new faces in a political landscape largely unchanged since the last national elections in 2019.

Ukraine, which is pushing back on a US-backed peace plan seen as Moscow-friendly, is also seeking strong security guarantees from its allies that would prevent any new Russian invasion in the future.

Washington’s peace proposal involves Ukraine surrendering land that Russia has not captured, primarily the entire industrial Donbas region, in return for security promises that fall short of Kyiv’s aspirations, including its wish to join the NATO military alliance.

These are the key developments from day 1,385 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here’s where things stand on Wednesday, December 10 :

Fighting

• Ukrainian troops holding parts of the beleaguered city of Pokrovsk have been ordered to withdraw from hard-to-defend positions in the past week, Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, said.

• Syrskii said the situation in Pokrovsk remains difficult for Ukrainian forces, with Russia massing an estimated 156,000 troops in the area under cover of recent rain and fog.

• Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, said that Moscow’s forces were advancing along the entire front line in Ukraine and were also focused on Ukrainian troops in the surrounded town of Myrnohrad.
• Russia said air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 121 Ukrainian drones throughout Tuesday.
• A member of the United Kingdom’s armed forces was killed in Ukraine while observing Ukrainian forces test a new defensive capability, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said. The ministry said the British soldier was killed away from the front lines with Russian forces.

• Ukraine’s state gas and oil company, Naftogaz, said that Russian drones had damaged gas infrastructure facilities, but there were no casualties.

• Russia’s Syzran oil refinery on the Volga River halted oil processing on December 5 after being damaged by a Ukrainian drone attack, the Reuters news agency reported, citing two industry sources.

• Ukraine will introduce more restrictions on power use and will allow additional energy imports as it struggles to repair infrastructure targeted by Russian strikes, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

Ceasefire

• Ukraine and its European partners, Germany, France and the UK, will present the US with “refined documents” on a peace plan to end the war with Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
• Finnish President Alexander Stubb said that allies of Ukraine worked on three separate documents, including a 20-point framework for peace, a set of security guarantees and a post-war reconstruction plan.
• At a United Nations Security Council meeting on Ukraine, Deputy US Ambassador Jennifer Locetta said the United States is working to bridge the divide in peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv. She said the aim is to secure a permanent ceasefire, and “a mutually agreed peace deal that leaves Ukraine sovereign and independent and with an opportunity for real prosperity”.
• Russia’s UN ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said, “What we have on the table are fairly realistic proposals for long-term, lasting settlement of Ukrainian conflict, something that our US colleagues are diligently working on.”
• Pope Leo said Europe must play a central role in efforts to end the war in Ukraine, warning that any peace plan sidelining the continent is “not realistic”, while urging leaders to seize what he described as a great opportunity to work together for a just peace.

Politics and diplomacy

• Zelenskyy said he was prepared to hold elections within three months if the US and Kyiv’s European allies could ensure the security of the vote. Wartime elections are forbidden by law in Ukraine, but Zelenskyy, whose term expired last year, is facing renewed pressure from US President Donald Trump to hold a vote.
• The Kremlin said that European claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to restore the Soviet Union were incorrect and that claims Putin plans to invade a NATO member were absolute rubbish.
• The European Union is very close to a solution for financing Ukraine in 2026 and 2027 that would have the support of at least a qualified majority of EU countries, European Council President Antonio Costa said.
• Japan has denied a media report that it had rebuffed an EU request to join plans to use frozen Russian state assets to fund Ukraine.

Regional security

• Three men went on trial in Germany, accused of following a former Ukrainian soldier on behalf of a Russian intelligence service as part of a possible assassination plot.

Sanctions

• US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said he discussed US sanctions on Russian oil giants Lukoil and Rosneft with Ukrainian Prime Minister Svyrydenko.

Firefighters evacuated residents and their pets from a nine-storey apartment building in Ukraine’s Sumy region after a Russian drone strike. The strikes come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with leaders of the UK, France and Germany in London to discuss the US peace plan.

These are the key developments from day 1,383 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

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.