war

Dec. 14 (UPI) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that his country may give up its dreams of NATO ascension, at least temporarily, for an end to the war and security guarantees from the United States and Europe, reports said.

Zelensky, who has said that NATO ascension is unlikely because of Russian opposition, held that Ukraine would still seek security guarantees similar to the bloc’s Article 5 clause for mutual protection for members under attack.

His comments were made to journalists in a private WhatsApp chat and were reported by The New York Times and Financial Times.

“This is already a compromise on our part,” Zelensky said.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will host talks Sunday between Zelensky, as well as Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump‘s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at the Federal Chancellery.

Zelensky added that he has not yet received a response from the Trump administration on revised peace proposals sent last week, the reports said.

Under that peace plan, The New York Times reported, Ukraine said any decision to give up Ukrainian territory would need to be put to a vote and it removed a measure put in place by American negotiators preventing it from ever joining NATO, indicating that Zelensky holds on to hope Ukraine could join the defense alliance in the future.

Yuri Ushakov, the foreign policy adviser to President Vladimir Putin, said on state television Sunday that Russia would have “sharp objections” if the United States adopted any Ukrainian or European suggestions for the plan.

Both Ukraine and Russia have seemingly rejected a proposal from the Trump administration that would create a sort-of demilitarized zone in parts of eastern Ukraine that it still holds, requiring only Ukrainian troops to withdraw from the buffer area.

Zelensky said Sunday he did not consider it fair that Russian troops were not also asked to withdraw deeper into the occupied territories.

“We stand where we stand,” he said. “That is precisely a ceasefire.”

The Ukrainian president says Kyiv could drop its long-held ambition of joining NATO in exchange for Western security guarantees.

Ukraine has indicated it is prepared to drop its long-held ambition of joining NATO in exchange for Western security guarantees, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said ahead of meetings with US envoys and European allies in Berlin.

Zelenskyy described the proposal on Sunday as a concession by Kyiv, after years of pressing for NATO membership as the strongest deterrent against future Russian attacks. He said the United States, European partners and other allies could instead provide legally binding security guarantees.

“From the very beginning, Ukraine’s desire was to join NATO; these are real security guarantees. Some partners from the US and Europe did not support this direction,” Zelenskyy said in response to questions from reporters in a WhatsApp chat.

“Thus, today, bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the US, Article 5-like guarantees for us from the US, and security guarantees from European colleagues, as well as other countries – Canada, Japan – are an opportunity to prevent another Russian invasion,” he said.

“And it is already a compromise from our part,” Zelenskyy added, stressing that such guarantees must be legally binding.

The shift would mark a significant change for Ukraine, which has long sought NATO membership despite Moscow viewing the alliance’s expansion as a threat.

While the move aligns with one of Russia’s stated war objectives, Kyiv has continued to reject demands to cede territory.

Zelenskyy said he was seeking a “dignified” peace and firm assurances that Russia would not launch another attack, as diplomats gathered to discuss what could become Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II. He also accused Moscow of prolonging the war through sustained attacks on Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure.

Pressure to reach a settlement

The talks come amid pressure from US President Donald Trump to reach a settlement. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner on Sunday arrived in the German capital city of Berlin for discussions involving Ukrainian and European representatives.

The decision to send Witkoff, who has previously led negotiations with both Kyiv and Moscow, suggested Washington saw scope for progress.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine, Europe and the US were reviewing a 20-point plan that could culminate in a ceasefire, though he reiterated that Kyiv was not holding direct talks with Russia. He said a truce along current front lines could be considered fair, while noting that Russia continues to demand a Ukrainian withdrawal from parts of Donetsk and Luhansk still under Kyiv’s control.

Despite diplomatic efforts, Russian attacks have continued, leaving thousands without electricity in recent strikes. Ukrainian officials say Moscow is deliberately targeting the power grid to deprive civilians of heat and water during winter.

Fighting has also intensified in the Black Sea. Russian forces recently struck Ukrainian ports, damaging Turkish-owned vessels, including a ship carrying food supplies. An attack on Odesa set grain silos ablaze, according to Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba. Zelenskyy said the strikes “had no … military purpose whatsoever”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned against further escalation, saying the Black Sea should not become an “area of confrontation”.

“Everyone needs safe navigation in the Black Sea,” Erdogan said, calling for a “limited ceasefire” covering ports and energy facilities. Turkiye controls the Bosphorus Strait, a vital route for Ukrainian grain and Russian oil exports.

Myles Caggins, former US military spokesman for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, talks about the attack in Syria that resulted in the killings of three Americans.

Dublin, Ireland – When I was accepted to Trinity College Dublin, I imagined a fresh start, new lectures, late-night study sessions and a campus alive with possibility.

The plan was clear: begin my studies in September 2024 and finally step into the future I had worked so hard for.

But when September came, the borders of Gaza were shut tight, my neighbourhood was being bombed almost every day, and the dream of university collapsed with the buildings around me. Trinity sent me a deferral letter, and I remember holding it in my hands and feeling torn in two.

I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or heartbroken. That letter became a strange symbol of hope, a reminder that maybe, someday, my life could continue. But everything else was falling apart so quickly that it was hard to believe in anything.

My family and I were displaced five times as the war intensified. Each time, we left something behind: books, clothes, memories, safety.

After the first temporary truce, we went home for a short time. But it no longer felt like the place we had built our lives. The walls were cracked, windows shattered, and floors coated in dust and debris.

It felt haunted by what had happened.

I knew I had to go

I’m the middle child among three siblings. My older sister, Razan, is 25, and my younger brother, Fadel, is 23.

You might think being a middle child spares you, but during the war, I felt responsible for them. On nights when bombings shook the building and fear crept into every corner, I tried to be the steady one. I tried to comfort them as I trembled inside.

Then, in April 2025, my name appeared on a small, restricted list of people allowed to leave Gaza. About 130 people could cross at that time, dual-nationality holders, family reunification cases and a handful of others. My name on that list felt unreal.

The morning I approached the crossing, I remember the long, tense line of people waiting, gripping documents, holding bags, clutching their children’s hands. No one talked.

When two IDF officers questioned me, I answered as steadily as I could, afraid that something, anything, might go wrong and they’d send me back.

When they finally waved me through, I felt relief and guilt at the same time.

I didn’t call home until I got to Jordan. When my mother heard my voice, she cried. I did, too. I told her I was safe, but it felt like I had left a part of my heart behind with them.

My family is now in Khan Younis, still living through the chaos.

I arrived in Amman on April 18, my heart heavy with the weight of what I had escaped. The next morning, I boarded a flight to Istanbul, with nothing around me feeling real.

The sounds of normalcy, laughter, announcements, and the rustle of bags were jarring after the constant bombardment. I had been living in a world where every sound could signal danger, where the air was thick with fear and uncertainty.

I felt like a ghost, wandering through a world that no longer belonged to me.

Finally, after hours of flying, waiting, being screened and watching departure boards, I landed in Dublin. The Irish air felt clean, the sky impossibly open. I should’ve been happy, but I was engulfed by crushing guilt, the joy overshadowed by the pain of separation.

I wasn’t completely alone. A Palestinian colleague from Gaza had arrived in April 2024, and two friends were also in Ireland. There was an unspoken understanding between us.

“You recognise the trauma in each other without saying a word,” I often tell people now. “It’s in the way we listen, the way we sit, the way we carry ourselves.”

Back in Gaza, my daily life had shrunk to pure survival: running, hiding, rationing water, checking who was alive. Bombings hit every day, and nighttime was the worst. Darkness makes every sound feel closer, sharper.

You don’t sleep during war. You wait.

Those nights, the silence was deafening, punctuated by the distant echoes of explosions. I would lie awake, straining to hear danger.

The darkness wrapped me like a suffocating blanket, amplifying every creak of the building, every whisper of the wind.

During the day, people on the street moved quickly, eyes darting, alert.

Water was a precious commodity; we would line up for hours at distribution points, often only to receive a fraction of what we needed. It was never enough.

No human should live like that

Five times, we fled in search of safety, packed in minutes, hearts racing with fear.

In one building where dozens of displaced families stayed, people slept on thin mattresses, shoulder to shoulder. Children cried quietly, adults whispered, trying to comfort one another, but every explosion outside sent ripples of panic through the rooms.

No human being should have to live like that, but millions of us did.

As I sit in Dublin, I carry the weight of my family’s struggles with me, a constant reminder of the life I left behind.

The guilt of survival is a heavy burden, but I hold onto hope that one day, I can return and help rebuild what has been lost.

Even now, far from Gaza, I feel it. You don’t leave war behind; you carry it with you like a second heartbeat.

Watching a world I’m not part of yet

I often stop in the campus courtyards. Not just because they’re beautiful, though they are, but because I need those moments to remind myself that I survived.

The laughter of children here feels foreign, a reminder of joy that has been stolen from so many.

Walking through Trinity College today feels surreal. Students laugh over coffee, rush to lectures and complain about assignments. Life moves so seamlessly here.

I message my family every day. Some days, they reply quickly. Other days, hours pass with no response. Those silent days feel like torture.

But I’m determined. Being here is about rebuilding a life, about honouring the people I left behind.

Survival comes with weight.

I carry the dreams of those who couldn’t leave. That responsibility shapes the way I move through the world; quieter, more grateful, more aware.

I hope someday I can bring my family to safety. I hope to finish my studies, rebuild my life and use my voice for people still trapped in war.

I want people to know what it takes to stand in that line at the border, to leave everything behind, to walk into a future alone.

Here is where things stand on Sunday, December 14:

Fighting

• Two people were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on the Russian city of Saratov, regional Governor Roman Busargin said in a statement on Telegram. An unspecified number of people were also injured in the attack.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it hit Ukrainian industrial and energy facilities with hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, in what it called a retaliatory attack for Ukrainian strikes on “civilian targets” in Russia.
• Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa and the surrounding region have suffered major blackouts after a large overnight Russian attack on the power grid left more than a million households without power.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia’s overnight attack on Ukraine included more than 450 drones and 30 missiles.
• Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko described the attack as one of the war’s largest assaults on Odesa, where supplies of electricity and water had been knocked out. She said supplies of non-drinking water were being brought to areas of the city.
• Ukraine’s power grid operator said a “significant number” of households were without power in the southern regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv, and that the Ukrainian-controlled part of the front-line Kherson region was totally without power.
• Ukraine’s navy has accused Russia of using a drone to deliberately attack the civilian Turkish vessel Viva, which was carrying sunflower oil to Egypt, a day after Moscow hit two Ukrainian ports. None of the 11 Turkish nationals onboard the ship was hurt, and the vessel continued its journey to Egypt.
• Earlier, it was also reported that three Turkish vessels were damaged in a separate attack.
• Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant temporarily lost all offsite power overnight for the 12th time during the conflict, due to military activity affecting the electrical grid, according to Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Both power lines are now reconnected, the IAEA said.

US-led negotiations

• Zelenskyy said he would meet US and European representatives in Berlin to discuss the “fundamentals of peace”. He added that Ukraine needed a “dignified” peace and a guarantee that Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of his country in 2022, would not attack again.
• US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will meet Zelenskyy and European leaders in Berlin on Sunday and Monday, a US official briefed on the matter said.
• French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz were also expected to attend the Berlin meeting, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• Europeans and Ukrainians are asking the US to provide them with “security guarantees” before any territorial negotiations in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, the French presidency said.
• British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have discussed work on US-led peace proposals for Ukraine and efforts to use frozen Russian sovereign assets to provide funds for Kyiv, a Downing Street spokesperson said in a statement.
• Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, fresh from a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Turkmenistan, said he hopes to discuss a Ukraine-Russia peace plan with Trump, adding that “peace is not far away”.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukraine received 114 prisoners released by Belarus, including citizens accused of working for Ukrainian intelligence and Belarusian political prisoners, according to Kyiv’s POW coordination centre. The centre posted photos appearing to show the released captives boarding a bus, with some of them smiling and embracing.
• Zelenskyy spoke to Belarusian prisoner Maria Kalesnikava after her release, presidential aide Dmytro Lytvyn told reporters. Lytvyn told reporters that military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov was present when the prisoners released by Belarus were received.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korea’s KCNA news agency reported. At the event, Kim praised officers and soldiers for their “heroic” conduct during their 120-day overseas deployment.
• Russia has sentenced top International Criminal Court (ICC) judges and its chief prosecutor Karim Khan to jail, in retaliation for the court’s 2023 decision to issue an arrest warrant for Putin over alleged war crimes during the Ukraine war.

United States President Donald Trump has pledged to pursue “serious retaliation” against the armed group ISIL (ISIS) after an ambush in central Syria killed two US service members and one civilian interpreter, also from the US.

The attack on US forces on Saturday was the first to inflict casualties since the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a year ago.

Three additional US military members were injured in the attack, as well as at least two Syrian troops, according to government and media reports.

In a social media post, Trump said he had received confirmation that the injured US soldiers were “doing well”.

He, however, warned that there would be serious consequences for what he described as an ISIL (ISIS) attack.

“This was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” Trump wrote. “The President of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is extremely angry and disturbed by this attack. There will be very serious retaliation.”

His remarks echoed those of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who likewise promised to take severe action against anyone who attacked US service members.

“Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you,” Hegseth wrote on social media.

Conducting ‘counter-terrorism operations’

Saturday’s attack was first announced by US Central Command, also known as CENTCOM.

It characterised the attack as an “ambush” carried out by a lone ISIL gunman, who was subsequently “engaged and killed”. Hegseth later confirmed that the perpetrator “was killed by partner forces”.

The attack took place near Palmyra in Syria’s central Homs region, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.

“The attack occurred as the soldiers were conducting a key leader engagement,” he wrote in a statement. “Their mission was in support of on-going counter-ISIS/counter-terrorism operations in the region.”

Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkiye, meanwhile, described the incident as a “cowardly terrorist ambush targeting a joint U.S.–Syrian government patrol”. He noted there were “Syrian troops wounded in the attack” and wished them a “speedy recovery”.

But the details about the attack and the individuals involved remain unclear.

CENTCOM indicated the US government would withhold identifying information about the late US soldiers and their units “until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified”.

The incident remains under “active investigation”, according to the US Department of Defense.

Who was the suspect?

The identity of the suspect has also not been released to the public.

But three local officials told the Reuters news agency that the assailant was a member of the Syrian security forces.

A spokesperson for the Syrian Interior Ministry also told the television channel Al-Ikhbariah TV that the attacker did not have a leadership role in the country’s security forces. He did not say whether the man was a junior member.

“On December 10, an evaluation was issued indicating that this attacker might hold extremist ideas, and a decision regarding him was due to be issued tomorrow, on Sunday,” the spokesperson, Noureddine el-Baba, said.

The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) state news agency reported earlier that Syrian security forces and US troops came under fire during a joint patrol.

The news agency AFP, meanwhile, cited an anonymous Syrian military official as saying shots were fired “during a meeting between Syrian and American officers” at a Syrian base in Palmyra.

A witness in the city, who also asked to remain anonymous, told the agency that he heard the shots coming from inside the base.

Traffic on the Deir Az Zor–Damascus highway was temporarily halted as military aircraft conducted overflights in the area, the agency said.

A security source told SANA that US helicopters evacuated those who were wounded to the al-Tanf base near the Iraqi border.

A long-term US presence

In the aftermath of the attack, US officials pledged to double down on their efforts to combat ISIL (ISIS) in Syria.

“We will not waver in this mission until ISIS is utterly destroyed, and any attack on Americans will be met with swift and unrelenting justice,” Ambassador Barrack wrote on social media.

“Alongside the Syrian Government, we will relentlessly pursue every individual, facilitator, financier, and enabler involved in this heinous act. They will be identified and held accountable swiftly and decisively.”

The US has troops stationed in northeastern Syria as part of a decade-long effort to help a Kurdish-led force there combat ISIL (ISIS).

ISIL captured Palmyra in 2015, at the height of its military ascendancy in Syria, before losing the city 10 months later. During that time, it destroyed several ancient sites and artefacts while using others to stage mass executions.

ISIL (ISIS) was vanquished in Syria in 2018 but still carries out sporadic attacks without controlling any territory inside Syria.

As of December 2024, there were approximately 2,000 US troops stationed in Syria to continue the fight against ISIL (ISIS).

In late November, CENTCOM announced the destruction of “more than 15 sites containing ISIS weapons caches”, as the US continues its campaign against the armed group.

This month, Syria marked one year since the ouster of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, but the war-ravaged nation continues to face stiff security and economic challenges as it seeks to rebuild and recover after 14 years of ruinous civil war.

For more than a century, Warner Bros has been one of Hollywood’s biggest players, a legacy studio that helped define the Golden Age of cinema with iconic blockbuster movies. Now, it’s at the centre of a contentious, billion-dollar bidding war between Netflix, the world’s leading streaming platform, and Paramount Skydance, owned by the powerful Ellison family, which has close ties to President Trump.

Whichever way this goes, the outcome isn’t looking great.

Contributors:
Matt Craig – Reporter, Forbes
Daheli Hall – Writer and director
Lee Hepner – Antitrust lawyer
Dominic Patten – Executive editor, Deadline

On our radar

This week, Australia became the first country in the world to impose a social media ban for children less than the age of 16. The Australian government says it is taking on Big Tech and safeguarding children, but some young people were able to quickly bypass the new rules. Ryan Kohls reports.

The Imran Khan rumour mill

Despite being in jail for more than two years, Imran Khan continues to occupy airtime in Pakistan. After the army restricted access to Khan, rumours of his death ricocheted across social media.  Pressure from his supporters and family forced the military to lift the restrictions and grant Khan’s sisters access to speak to him. Meenakshi Ravi reports on the showdown between Imran Khan and powerful Field Marshal Asim Munir, and what it reveals about power, politics and narrative control in Pakistan.

Featuring: 
Amber Rahim Shamsi – Pakistan Editor, Nukta
Moeed Pirzada – Political YouTuber
Mohammed Hanif – Author and journalist

Paramilitary force intensifies offensive in Kordofan region after seizing control of Darfur in October.

At least three people have been killed and nine others wounded, when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a drone attack on a central Sudanese city, as fighting intensifies across the vast strategic region of Kordofan that could determine the war’s outcome.

The strike hit a square near a police station in the Tayba neighbourhood of el-Obeid on Saturday afternoon, military sources told Al Jazeera. Several of the wounded are in critical condition, they said.

The attack underscores the RSF’s expanding use of air power as it shifts its offensive from Darfur to the sprawling Kordofan region, home to critical oil infrastructure that has generated revenue for both Sudan and neighbouring South Sudan.

Military sources reported that the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) had earlier struck RSF positions in the town of Um Adara in South Kordofan, while RSF forces shelled the city of Um Rawaba in the north, causing civilian casualties.

An RSF drone also targeted army positions in Kosti city in White Nile state, in southeastern Sudan, destroying a military vehicle and injuring its crew, the sources added.

The three Kordofan states have witnessed fierce clashes in recent weeks, forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes and compounding what aid agencies describe as one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme warned it will be forced to slash food rations by up to 70 percent for communities facing starvation starting in January due to critical funding shortages.

Ross Smith, the agency’s emergency preparedness director, said the cuts would affect those already “on the brink of famine” as well as vulnerable communities at risk of sliding into hunger.

The WFP said 20 million Sudanese are suffering from malnutrition, with six million facing famine-like conditions. Smith warned that funding could “collapse” by April, threatening the programme’s ability to continue operations.

Sudan’s war between the army and RSF has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 13 million people since fighting erupted in April 2023, according to international organisations.

VR headsets are offering injured, traumatised Palestinian children some respite from hardship in war-torn Gaza.

Inside a makeshift tent in the heart of the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel’s genocidal war, which has destroyed neighbourhoods, schools and hospitals, decimated families and shattered lives for more than two years, no longer exists.

Virtual reality technology is taking Palestinian children struggling with physical and psychological wounds to a world away, where they can feel safe again.

“After I was injured in the head, I try to forget the pain,” Salah Abu Rukba, a Palestinian child taking part in the sessions, told Al Jazeera at the VR Tent in az-Zawayda, central Gaza.

“When I put on the headset, I forget the injury. I feel comfort as I forget the destruction, the war, and even the sound of the drones disappears.”

Lama Abu Dalal, communication officer at Gaza MedTech – the technology initiative spearheading the project – said Abu Rukba and the others have constant reminders of the war etched in their bodies.

But the VR headset makes them forget their life-changing wounds and simply be children again, if only for a few moments.

Gaza MedTech was launched by Palestinian innovator Mosab Ali, who used VR to comfort his injured son. Ali was later killed in an Israeli attack.

Studies have confirmed that VR can have beneficial effects in the treatment of mental disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Offering this service in Gaza is hard to sustain, as spare parts of the equipment are barred from entry into Gaza by Israel’s ongoing punishing blockade.

Since a ceasefire formally went into effect on October 10, Israel has allowed slightly more aid in, although far less than Gaza’s needs and what the agreement clearly stipulated. Israel continues to restrict the free flow of humanitarian aid and medical supplies.

Authorities in Gaza say the truce has been violated by Israel at least 738 times since taking effect.

The United Nations estimates that more than 90 percent of children in Gaza are showing signs of severe stress driven by the loss of safety and stability, and will require long-term support to heal from the psychological effect of the conflict.

Multiple UN bodies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN humanitarian office OCHA, and independent UN experts, have called for immediate and unimpeded access to Gaza for essential medical equipment and psychological support.

Kim Jong Un participates in latest public event to honour North Korean troops who served with Russian forces in war against Ukraine.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has hugged injured soldiers in wheelchairs at a ceremony in the capital, Pyongyang, to welcome home troops who served with Russian forces in the war against Ukraine.

State-run Korean Central News Agency said on Saturday that Kim praised the “mass heroism” of the returning 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army, which had served in Russia’s Kursk region.

Kim hailed the regiment’s conduct during its 120-day overseas deployment, which commenced in early August and involved combat and engineering duties, including mine clearing in the Kursk region of Russia, where Ukrainian forces had infiltrated and occupied for months before withdrawing.

“You could work a miracle of turning a vast area of danger zone into a safe and secure one in a matter of less than three months, the task which was believed to be impossible to be carried out even in several years,” Kim said, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

“The armed villains of the West, armed with whatever latest military hardware they are, cannot match this revolutionary army with an unfathomable spiritual depth,” Kim added at the ceremony on Friday.

The North’s leader also spoke of the “heartrending loss” of nine members of the regiment and announced that the unit would be conferred with the Order of Freedom and Independence. The deceased troops would also be honoured with the title Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, KCNA said, referring to North Korea’s official name.

Video footage of the ceremony released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft and Kim embracing soldiers seated in wheelchairs, as other soldiers and officials gathered to welcome the troops.

The Russian Ministry of Defence confirmed last month that North Korean troops, who had helped Russia repel Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, were now involved in clearing the area of mines.

Concluding a key meeting of his ruling Workers’ Party of Korea on Thursday, Kim also praised the deployment of North Korean troops in support of Russia’s war on Ukraine, saying it “demonstrated to the world the prestige of our army”.

North Korea’s “ever-victorious army” was the “genuine protector of international justice”, Kim said.

Under a mutual defence pact between Moscow and Pyongyang, an estimated 14,000 North Korean soldiers were deployed to fight for Russia, with the number of those killed or wounded ranging between 3,000 and 4,000.

The welcoming ceremony held on Friday marks the latest event to publicly honour North Korean soldiers who served in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

In October, Kim was featured embracing weeping soldiers at a ground-breaking ceremony for a planned memorial to those who fought for Russia, and in June, state media showed Kim draping coffins with the national flag in what appeared to be the repatriation of soldiers’ remains from Russia.

US President Donald Trump’s overseas envoy will travel to Germany this weekend to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders for the latest round of high-level talks on ending the war.

Steve Witkoff, who has been leading White House attempts to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, will discuss the latest version of the proposed peace agreement in Berlin.

The Trump administration is pushing for a deal to be in place by Christmas and has held several rounds of talks with Ukrainian and Russian representatives in recent weeks, though there has been little sign a breakthrough is imminent.

It has not yet been confirmed which European leaders will attend the Berlin talks.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported details of the meeting, said UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz would all take part.

Confirmation of the Witkoff-Zelensky meeting comes days after Ukraine gave the US its revised version of a 20-point peace plan, the latest iteration of a proposal which first emerged in late November and has triggered a flurry of diplomatic activity.

The fate of territory in eastern Ukraine remains one of the most intractable topics in the negotiations, with Kyiv refusing to cede land which has been illegally occupied, and Moscow repeating its intention to take the Donbas region in full by force unless Ukraine withdraws.

Zelensky has reacted sceptically to the White House’s latest proposal on resolving the territorial question, which is for Ukraine’s army to pull out of the region and for it to be turned into a “special economic zone”.

The Ukrainian president told reporters that under the US-proposed terms, the Kremlin would undertake not to advance into the areas vacated by Ukraine’s forces, with the land between Russian-controlled parts of the Donbas and Ukraine’s defensive lines effectively turned into a demilitarised zone.

The proposal, seemingly an attempt to resolve the question of legal ownership by creating a new status for the land, has been publicly questioned by Zelensky, who said: “What will restrain [Russia] from advancing? Or from infiltrating disguised as civilians?”

Ukraine and allies in Europe have said publicly that the US-led talks have been fruitful, and have hailed progress on securing amendments to a plan which was widely viewed as favouring Russia when it first emerged.

But there have been signs in recent weeks that Trump is losing patience with Zelensky and his backers on the continent.

In a scathing interview with Politico earlier this week, the US president labelled European leaders “weak” and renewed his calls for Ukraine to hold elections.

Zelensky said elections could be held within 90 days if the US and Europe provided the necessary security. Elections have been suspended since martial law was declared when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

As the White House’s diplomatic push continues, attention in Europe is focused on how to support Ukraine in the event of a peace deal, with talks ongoing over security guarantees and funding.

The Ukrainian government faces a stark financial situation: it needs to find an extra €135.7bn (£119bn; $159bn) over the next two years.

On Friday, European Union governments agreed to indefinitely freeze around €210bn (£185bn; $247) worth of Russian assets held in Europe.

It is hoped that agreement paves the way for the funds to be loaned back to Ukraine if a deal can be reached at an EU summit next week, providing Kyiv with financial help for its military and efforts to rebuild parts of the country left devastated after nearly four years of all-out war.

That move has been condemned as theft by the Kremlin, and Russia’s central bank has said it will sue Euroclear, a Belgian bank where the vast majority of Russian assets frozen after the invasion are held.

Officials were still negotiating the exact structure of a deal to repurpose the Russian assets on behalf of Ukraine, with the Belgian government being particularly sceptical due to its particular legal exposure as the main holder.

Elsewhere, it was reported that the latest version of the peace plan being circulated envisions Ukraine rapidly joining the European Union.

The Financial Times said Brussels backed Ukraine’s swift accession to the bloc, an idea proposed by Ukraine in the latest draft it has given to Washington.

Ukraine formally applied to join the EU days after the 2022 invasion but despite promises of an accelerated process is still several years away from becoming a member.

Under the plan, Ukraine would become a member as soon as January 2027, AFP reported, citing an unnamed senior official. It was unclear whether Washington had approved that element of the draft.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian attacks ‘had no … military purpose whatsoever’.

Russian forces have attacked two Ukrainian ports, damaging three Turkish-owned vessels, including a ship carrying food supplies, according to Ukrainian officials and a shipowner.

Friday’s attacks by Russian forces targeted Chornomorsk and Odesa ports in Ukraine’s southwestern Odesa region on the Black Sea. A Ukrainian navy spokesperson told the Reuters news agency that three Turkish-owned vessels were damaged in total, but did not provide additional details.

Posting video footage on social media of firefighters tackling a blaze on board what he described as a “civilian vessel” in Chornomorsk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian attacks “had no … military purpose whatsoever”.

“This proves once again that Russians not only fail to take the current opportunity for diplomacy seriously enough, but also continue the war precisely to destroy normal life in Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said.

“It is crucial that … the world maintains the proper moral compass: who is dragging out this war and who is working to end it with peace, who is using ballistic missiles against civilian life, and who is striking the targets that influence the functioning of Russia’s war machine,” he said.

Today, the Russian army carried out a missile strike on our Odesa region, and last night there was also a Russian attack on Odesa’s energy infrastructure. At one point we talked about the situation in this city and the people of Odesa with President Trump.

Today’s Russian… pic.twitter.com/gIgXUlc4AJ

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 12, 2025

Zelenskyy did not name the vessel, but it was identified as the Panama-flagged and Turkish-owned Cenk T by Reuters, which matched cranes and buildings to satellite imagery of Chornomorsk port.

The ship’s owners, Cenk Shipping, confirmed it was attacked at about 4pm local time (14:00 GMT). There were no casualties among the crew, and damage to the ship was limited, it added.

An employee of a private company was also injured in a separate attack on Odesa port, where a cargo loader was also damaged, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba confirmed.

He added that Russia had used drones and ballistic missiles in the port strikes, which were “aimed at civilian logistics and commercial shipping”.

Ukraine’s three large Black Sea ports in the Odesa region are a key economic artery for Kyiv.

Late on Friday, Turkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the vessel had been attacked in Chornomorsk port. It added that there were no reports of injured Turkish citizens.

The ministry said in a statement that the attack “validates our previously stated concerns regarding the spread of the ongoing war in the region to the Black Sea, and its impact on maritime security and freedom of navigation”.

“We reiterate the need for an arrangement whereby, in order to prevent escalation in the Black Sea, attacks targeting navigational safety as well as the parties’ energy and port infrastructure are suspended,” it added.

Hours earlier, in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Turkmenistan’s capital of Ashgabat, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for calm in the Black Sea and suggested that a limited ceasefire for energy facilities and ports could be beneficial for regional security.

Turkiye, which has the longest Black Sea coastline at approximately 1,329km (826 miles), has grown increasingly alarmed at the escalating attacks in its back yard and has offered to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow.

The attacks come just days after Putin promised retaliation and threatened to cut “Ukraine off from the sea” for Kyiv’s maritime drone attacks on Moscow’s “shadow fleet” – unmarked tankers thought to be used to circumvent oil sanctions – in the Black Sea.

Kyiv says the tankers are Moscow’s main source of funding for its almost four-year-old war. It has also tried to squeeze Russian revenues by expanding attacks to the Caspian Sea, where it struck a major oil rig this week.

These are the key developments from day 1,388 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here’s where things stand on Saturday, December 13:

Fighting

• Ukrainian forces said they had retaken parts of the northeastern town of Kupiansk and encircled Russian troops there, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the area and praised the operation, saying it strengthened Ukraine diplomatically.
• In a video clip, President Zelenskyy, wearing a bulletproof vest, is seen standing in front of a sign bearing the town’s name at the entrance to Kupiansk. “Today it is extremely important to achieve results on the front lines so that Ukraine can achieve results in diplomacy,” he said.
• Ukrainian drones struck two Russian oil rigs in the Caspian Sea, an official in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said. The SBU drones hit the Filanovsky and Korchagin oil rigs, which both belong to Russia’s Lukoil. The Filanovsky rig – part of Russia’s largest Caspian oilfield – came under attack earlier this week as Ukraine steps up its campaign to disrupt Russian oil and gas output.
• Ukraine said it conducted an operation alongside a local resistance movement to hit two Russian ships transporting weapons and military equipment in the Caspian Sea. They did not specify when the strike took place.
• Ukraine’s military also said it attacked a major Russian oil refinery in Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow, and industry sources said the facility had suspended output.
• Russia attacked Ukraine’s Chornomorsk and Odesa ports, damaging three Turkish-owned vessels, including a civilian ship carrying food supplies, Ukrainian officials said.
• Moscow previously threatened to cut “Ukraine off from the sea” in retaliation for Kyiv’s maritime drone attacks on its “shadow fleet” tankers thought to be used to export oil.
• Russia also attacked energy facilities in the southern Ukrainian Odesa region overnight, causing fires and leaving several settlements in the region without electricity, the local governor and emergency service said.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it had destroyed 90 Ukrainian drones over the country and the Black Sea overnight.
• Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport said it suspended departures amid the overnight drone attacks, while in the city of Tver, 181km (112 miles) northwest of Moscow, authorities said seven people were injured.

Peace deal

• Turkiye has called for an urgent end to the war in Ukraine after Turkish-owned vessels were damaged in an attack on Ukraine’s Chornomorsk port by Russia, saying the incident underscored risks to Black Sea maritime security.
• Ankara called for an arrangement to suspend attacks targeting navigation safety, energy and port infrastructure “to prevent escalation”.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling him that a limited ceasefire around energy facilities and ports in particular could be beneficial.
• Ukrainian, European and United States national security advisers met and discussed coordination of their positions on proposals for a settlement to the conflict in Ukraine, the head of the Ukrainian negotiating team, Rustem Umerov, said.
• Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the meeting was attended from the US side by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, as well as World Bank chief Ajay Banga and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.

We continue our joint work with our American partners and the leadership of international financial institutions on the economic track within the broader effort to secure a just and lasting peace for Ukraine.

Today, we held a meeting with representatives of the U.S. President,… pic.twitter.com/QNJzBQ0GD6

— Yulia Svyrydenko (@Svyrydenko_Y) December 12, 2025

• President Donald Trump said a US-proposed free economic zone in the Ukraine-controlled parts of the eastern Donbas would work after Washington suggested creating such an economic zone as a compromise between Ukraine and Russia.
• Ukraine, the US and European powers are still working to find a joint position that would outline the contours of a peace deal, including security guarantees for Kyiv, in a ceasefire deal that “American negotiators are willing to bring to the Russians”, a French presidency official said.
• Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said a ceasefire is only possible after Ukrainian forces withdraw from the entire Donbas region, and the area Kyiv currently controls is taken over by the Russian National Guard.
• “If not by negotiation, then by military means, this territory will come under the full control of the Russian Federation. Everything else will depend entirely on that,” Ushakov said.

Sanctions

• The European Union agreed to indefinitely freeze 210 billion euros ($246bn) worth of Russian sovereign assets held in Europe, removing a big obstacle to using the cash to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. The agreement removes the risk that Hungary and Slovakia, which have better relations with Moscow than other EU states, could refuse to roll over the freeze at some point and force the EU to return the money to Russia.
• Russia’s central bank said the EU plans to use its assets to support Ukraine were illegal and it reserved the right to employ all available means to protect its interests.
• The bank said separately it was suing Brussels-based financial institution Euroclear – which holds many of the assets – in a Moscow court over what it said were damaging and “illegal” actions.
• In advance of the vote to freeze the funds, Hungary lodged a protest against what it called an “unlawful” step by the EU to hold Russian assets indefinitely. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the decision would “cause irreparable damage to the Union”.
• “Hungary protests the decision and will do its best to restore a lawful situation,” Orban said.

International affairs

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attended a welcoming ceremony for the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army that returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, praising the officers and soldiers for their “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” during a 120-day overseas deployment.
• Berlin has summoned Russia’s ambassador over what it said was a huge increase in threatening hybrid activities, including disinformation campaigns, espionage, cyberattacks and attempted sabotage. “[We] made it clear that we are monitoring Russia’s actions very closely and will take action against them,” Germany’s Federal Foreign Office spokesperson Martin Giese said.

A Russian Shahed kamikaze drone strike on a ship in the port of Chornomorsk was in retaliation for a recent spate of Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil tankers in the Black Sea, the Ambrey maritime security firm tells us. The attack on the Turkish-owned CENK-T roll-on, roll-off cargo ship comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned he would “cut Ukraine off from the sea” in response to Ukraine’s stepped-up campaign against Russian commercial shipping. 

As we have previously reported, Ukraine carried out three attacks on Russian-connected oil tankers in the Black Sea in late November and early December. Reports emerged on Wednesday that they carried out a fourth one, which you can read more about later in this story.

“This attack was the first retaliation,” Joshua Hutchinson, a former Royal Marine commando now serving as the company’s Managing Director of Risk and Intelligence, told us Friday afternoon.

Video emerging on social media showed several angles of the attack. One showed the Shahed flying over the port of Chornomorsk before the CENK-T‘s bow became engulfed in flames.

Early reports on this incident from both Ambrey and Russian media claimed Russia used an Iskander-M ballistic missile to carry out the attack, but the video clearly shows otherwise. While it’s possible another strike occurred using a ballistic missile, we have seen no evidence of it at this time.

A separate video showed different views of the 606-foot-long Panamanian-flagged vessel in flames following the strike. One view appeared to be across the harbor, while another was a closer view, dockside, with the ship burning and people running from the scene. The strike injured at least one person, according to Ambrey.

In addition to the CENK-T being hit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said several other targets in the Odesa region were attacked in a volley of missile and drone strikes. Though Russia has frequently attacked Ukrainian ports, this incident marks an escalation to the Black Sea shipping wars, increasing the danger to commercial vessels regardless of nation of origin, Hutchinson told us.

“We are heading to an uncharted time,” he explained. “We are now seeing two state actors attacking commercial shipping.”

While Russia has hit Ukrainian ports before, strikes on ships have been largely incidental. A concerted campaign against vessels would make shipping companies think twice before sending vessels into this area due to the risks to ships and crews. We saw that play out when the Houthis were attacking Red Sea shipping and a large percentage of companies opted to avoid the region. This would be very problematic for Ukraine.

The CENK-T was reportedly bringing in a shipment of generators, which Ukraine badly needs as Russia attacks its energy infrastructure. As we noted earlier in this story, on Dec. 2, Putin threatened to attack the shipping of nations helping Ukraine. We reached out to the vessel’s owner, CENK RoRo, for more information about the attack and how it will respond.

Zelensky decried the attack, saying it was another sign Russians aren’t interested in peace.

“Today’s Russian strike, like many other similar attacks, had, and could not have, any military sense,” the Ukrainian leader stated on X. “A civilian ship in the Chornomorsk port was damaged. This once again proves that the Russians not only do not take the current chance for diplomacy seriously enough, but also continue the war aimed at destroying normal life in Ukraine.”

The Russians have not officially commented on the CENK-T strike; however, Russian media acknowledged that it was in response to the attacks that damaged the four Russian ships and that the tempo could increase.

“Earlier, Vladimir Putin directly stated that the strikes by the Russian Armed Forces on Ukrainian ports are a completely justified response to Kyiv’s actions,” the Russian Readovka media outlet suggested. “At the same time, the sinking of just 10-15 ships in one port could paralyze its operations.”

The most recent of those took place on Wednesday when Sea Baby drones from Ukraine’s state security service (SBU) attacked the Serbian-flagged crude oil tanker Dashan in the Black Sea. Video of that attack showed the drones approaching the ship, which erupted in flames.

The Dashan attack, as we noted in our previous coverage, was preceded by others. On Dec. 2, a Ukrainian aerial drone struck the Russian-owned oil tanker Midvolga-2 about 80 miles north of the Turkish city of Sinop. A few days earlier, oil tankers, Kairos and Virat, were struck in quick succession off Turkey’s Black Sea coast by Ukrainian Sea Baby drones. These vessels are reportedly part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” that evades sanctions.

Ukraine, as we have frequently reported, is waging a campaign against Russia’s energy infrastructure involving numerous attacks on refineries, ports and other supply hubs inside Russia. The attack on the Dashan is a further indication that Ukraine is taking this fight to Russian vessels at sea.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has reportedly signaled its support for the Ukrainian attacks on Russian vessels 

The Atlantic suggested that while the Biden administration feared escalation and opposed attacks on Russian vessels in international waters, Trump has taken the opposite tack. The publication reported that not only did the Trump administration not object to strikes, but in a number of cases, approved the transfer of intelligence to Kyiv, which was used to hit oil infrastructure facilities in Russia. The War Zone cannot independently verify that claim.

In the wake of today’s attack, Ambrey issued a warning to all ships making Black Sea port calls. These vessels “are advised to conduct comprehensive voyage threat assessments,” the company stated. “The crew is advised to remain within the designated Safe Muster Point (SMP) during missile attacks on infrastructure. The SMP should be located above the waterline, amidships and low-down in the superstructure.”

The coming days will tell if both parties continue to prosecute commercial shipping targets and what that could mean for maritime access to Ukraine.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

These are the key developments from day 1,387 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here’s where things stand on Friday, December 12:

Fighting

• Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked the Russian army after its forces reportedly took control of the town of Siversk in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s military responded, saying it remained in control of the town.
• News agencies were unable to verify the battlefield claims around Siversk, a longstanding target in Russia’s drive to capture all of Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
• Moscow’s forces have also taken control of the village of Lyman in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, Russian state news agencies reported, citing the Ministry of Defence.
• Russia said Ukraine launched a major aerial attack with at least 287 drones downed over a number of regions inside the country, including Moscow. Russia’s Defence Ministry said at least 40 drones were shot down over the Moscow region, home to more than 22 million people.
• Ukrainian drones hit two chemical plants in Russia’s Novgorod and Smolensk regions, the commander of Kyiv’s drone forces said. Ukrainian drones also struck Russia’s Filanovsky oil platform in the Caspian Sea for the first time, halting production at the facility owned by Lukoil, according to a Ukraine Security Service official.
• Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called on Britain to disclose what British soldier George Hooley, who was recently killed in Ukraine, was doing in the country.
• Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused London of helping Kyiv carry out “acts of terrorism” on Russia, but provided no evidence for her assertion. Britain’s Ministry of Defence said Hooley died while observing Ukrainian forces test a new defensive capability away from the front line with Russian forces.

Peace deal

• Ukraine has presented the United States with a revised 20-point framework to end its war with Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that the issue of ceding territory to Russia remains a major sticking point in negotiations.
• Zelenskyy said, as a compromise, the US is offering to create a “free economic zone” in Ukraine-controlled parts of the eastern Donbas, which Russia has demanded Ukraine cede.
• “They see it as Ukrainian troops withdrawing from the Donetsk region, and the compromise is supposedly that Russian troops will not enter this part of Donetsk region. They do not know who will govern this territory,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Russia is referring to it as a “demilitarised zone”.
• Zelenskyy also said that Ukrainians should vote on any territorial concessions in a referendum and that he had discussed security guarantees for Ukraine in a video call with top US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and White House special envoy Steve Witkoff.

• Speaking at a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” – a group of 34 nations led by Britain and France that have pledged support for Ukraine against Russian aggression – Zelenskyy said that holding elections in Ukraine during wartime would require a ceasefire.
• US President Donald Trump said the US will send a representative to participate in talks in Europe on Ukraine this weekend if there is a good chance of making progress on a ceasefire deal.
• “We’ll be attending the meeting on Saturday in Europe if we think there’s a good chance. And we don’t want to waste a lot of time if we think it’s negative,” Trump said.
• Earlier, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump had grown weary of multiple meetings that never reached an agreement on ending the war in Ukraine.

Regional security

• NATO chief Mark Rutte urged allies to step up defence efforts to prevent a war waged in Europe by Russia, which could be “on the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured”.
• In a speech in Berlin, Rutte said too many allies of the military alliance did not feel the urgency of Russia’s threat in Europe and that they must rapidly increase defence spending and production to prevent war.

Sanctions

• Russian and Belarusian youth athletes should compete in international events without access restrictions, the International Olympic Committee said, marking a first step in easing sanctions imposed following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

• European Union governments have started a process to freeze Russian central bank assets immobilised in Europe for the long term to avoid votes every six months on rolling over the freeze, a move that would pave the way to use the money to provide a loan to Ukraine.
• Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister Vincent Van Peteghem said Russian frozen assets will have to be used for Ukraine at some point, adding that Brussels “would not take any reckless compromises” before it agreed to any deal on the issue.
• Brussels has opposed an unprecedented plan to use Russian funds frozen in the EU – primarily in Belgian banking institutions – to fund a loan to Ukraine, saying it places the country at outsized risk of future legal action from Moscow.
• Russia’s Foreign Ministry reiterated that the EU’s “manipulations” with Moscow’s frozen assets would not go unanswered.
• Germany’s top fiscal court has ruled that authorities cannot, for now, sell or use an oil tanker and its cargo seized off the Baltic Sea coast, siding with the vessel’s owners in two separate cases.
• The Panama-flagged Eventin was found drifting off Germany’s coast in January after departing Russia with about 100,000 metric tonnes of oil worth about 40 million euros ($47m). German authorities suspect the vessel is part of a “shadow fleet” used by Russia to skirt EU sanctions

Economy

• Russia’s revenues from exports of crude oil and refined products fell again in November, the International Energy Agency said, touching their lowest level since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

European leaders have sent new peace proposals for the war in Ukraine to US President Donald Trump.

Loss of territory to Russia and use of frozen Russian assets in Ukraine remain areas of disagreement.

But could the war be nearing an end?

Presenter: Folly Bah Thibault

Guests:

Peter Zalmayev – Director of Eurasia Democracy Initiative

Chris Weafer – CEO of Macro-Advisory, a strategic consultancy focused on Russia and Eurasia

Steven Erlanger – Chief diplomatic correspondent for Europe at The New York Times

Crowds celebrated in the Syrian city of Latakia after the US House of Representatives approved a bill that will lift sanctions imposed on Syria six years ago. The legislation will now go to the US Senate where it’s expected to pass.

South Sudan’s military has moved into the Heglig oilfield under an unprecedented agreement between the country and neighbouring Sudan’s warring parties to safeguard critical energy infrastructure from the country’s civil war.

The deployment on Wednesday came after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured the strategic site on December 8, compelling the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) units to retreat across the border into South Sudan, where they reportedly surrendered their weapons.

The agreement aims to neutralise the facility from combat operations as fighting intensifies across Sudan’s Kordofan region, threatening both countries’ primary revenue source.

Official Sudanese government sources revealed to Al Jazeera that high-level contacts have taken place between the Sudanese and South Sudanese leaderships since the beginning of this week, after the RSF mobilized to attack the “Heglig” area. Understandings were reached to secure the evacuation of workers in the field and avoid military confrontations to ensure that the oil field and its facilities are not subjected to sabotage and destruction, and tribal leaders also played a role in that.

The deployment of South Sudan forces was based on a previous oil and security cooperation agreement signed between Khartoum and Juba, which stipulates the protection of oil fields, pipelines and central pumping stations for South Sudan’s oil, in addition to the electricity interconnection project and strengthening cooperation in the energy sector.

The new factor is the involvement of the RSF.

South Sudan People’s Defence Forces Chief of Staff Paul Nang said at Heglig that troops entered under a “tripartite agreement” involving President Salva Kiir, SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, according to state broadcaster SSBC News.

The pact requires both Sudanese forces to withdraw from the area.

Nang stressed that South Sudanese forces would maintain strict neutrality.

“The primary goal is to completely neutralise the Heglig field from any combat operations”, he said, because it “represents an economic lifeline not only for South Sudan but for Sudan as well”.

The deployment followed a deadly drone attack on Tuesday evening that killed dozens, including three South Sudanese soldiers.

SAF confirmed using a drone to target RSF fighters at the facility, though the exact death toll remains unclear. Local media reported that seven tribal leaders and numerous RSF personnel died in the attack.

Approximately 3,900 Sudanese soldiers crossed into South Sudan’s Rubkona County after evacuating Heglig, handing over tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery to South Sudanese authorities, according to Unity State officials in South Sudan.

Thousands of civilians have also fled across the border since Sunday.

Heglig houses a central processing facility able to handle up to 130,000 barrels per day of South Sudanese crude destined for export through Sudanese pipelines. The site also includes Block 6, Sudan’s largest producing field.

Jan Pospisil, a South Sudan expert at Coventry University, explained the strategic calculus behind the unusual arrangement.

“From the SAF’s perspective, they don’t want the RSF to find another possible revenue stream, and it is better from their perspective for South Sudan to take control of the area,” he told Al Jazeera.

He added that the RSF “can’t really defend against air attacks by the SAF, as we saw with this drone strike, and they don’t need money right now”.

The seizure of Heglig marks the latest RSF advance as the conflict’s centre of gravity shifts from Darfur to the vast Kordofan region. The paramilitary force secured complete control of Darfur in October with the fall of el-Fasher, prompting international alarm over mass atrocities.

Activists at the Tawila camp told Al Jazeera that refugees continue arriving, with some forced to sleep outdoors due to insufficient resources.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk repeated a warning he issued last week that he was “extremely worried that we might see in Kordofan a repeat of the atrocities that have been committed in el-Fasher”, amid RSF advances in the region.

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect echoed his warning, with Executive Director Savita Pawnday stressing that Sudan faces “one of the world’s gravest atrocity crises”, where civilians are enduring “unimaginable harm while the international community fails to respond”.

The fighting has triggered displacement, with the International Organization for Migration reporting more than 1,000 people fled South Kordofan province in just two days this week as combat intensified around the state capital, Kadugli.

In el-Fasher, the Sudan Doctors Network reported this week that the RSF is holding more than 19,000 detainees across Darfur prisons, including 73 medical personnel.

The medical advocacy group said cholera outbreaks are killing people due to overcrowding and the absence of adequate healthcare, with more than four deaths recorded weekly from medical neglect.

Russia has claimed to be in full control of Pokrovsk, but Ukrainian forces say they still control the northern part of the strategic city in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces have reported an unusually large Russian mechanised attack inside the strategic eastern city of Pokrovsk, where Russia has reportedly massed a force of some 156,000 troops to take the beleaguered and now destroyed former logistics hub.

“The Russians used armoured vehicles, cars, and motorcycles. The convoys attempted to break through from the south to the northern part of the city,” Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Response Corps said in a statement on Wednesday regarding an assault earlier in the day.

A source in the 7th Rapid Response Corps told the Reuters news agency that Russia had deployed about 30 vehicles in convoy, making it the largest such attack yet inside the city. The source added that previously, Russia had deployed just one or two vehicles to aid troop advances.

While Russia has claimed full control of Pokrovsk, Kyiv maintains that its troops still hold the northern part of the city, where fierce urban battles continue to rage.

Russian troops have pushed into the city for months in small infantry groups, looking to capture the former logistics hub as a critical part of Moscow’s campaign to seize the entire industrial Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Video clips shared by the 7th Rapid Response Corps showed heavy vehicles in snow and mud, as well as drone attacks on Russian troops and explosions and burning wreckage.

Russian forces were attempting to exploit poor weather conditions but had been pushed back, the unit said on Facebook.

Capturing Pokrovsk would be Russia’s biggest prize in Ukraine in nearly two years, and the city’s weakening defence amid Moscow’s onslaught has added to pressure on Kyiv, which is attempting to improve terms in a United States-backed proposal for a peace deal that is widely seen as favourable to Moscow.

Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, told journalists earlier this week that the situation around Pokrovsk remained difficult as Russia massed a force of some 156,000 around the beleaguered city.

Syrskii said Russian troops were staging the military buildup in the area under the cover of rain and fog.

George Barros, Russia team lead at the Institute for the Study of War – a US-based think tank – said Moscow is “hyping” the importance of the fall of Pokrovsk “in order to portray Russia’s battlefield advances as inevitable”.

“That sense of inevitability is being echoed by some members of President Donald Trump’s negotiating team trying to pull together a peace proposal for the Ukraine war,” Barros wrote in an opinion piece shared online.

But Russia has paid a huge price in its push to take the city with “more than 1,000 armoured vehicles and over 500 tanks” lost in the Pokrovsk area alone since the beginning of Russia’s offensive operations in October 2023 to seize nearby Avdiivka, which fell to Russian forces in early 2024 in one of the bloodiest battles of the war so far.

NEW: The Kremlin is significantly intensifying its cognitive warfare effort to present the Russian military and economy as able to inevitably win a war of attrition against Ukraine. ⬇️

The Kremlin’s cognitive warfare effort aims to achieve several of Putin’s original war aims… pic.twitter.com/zXxCKrI06x

— Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar) December 10, 2025

On Wednesday, President Trump said he had exchanged “pretty strong words” with the leaders of France, Britain and Germany on Ukraine, telling them their plan to hold new talks on a proposed US peace plan this weekend risked “wasting time”.

“We discussed Ukraine in pretty strong words,” Trump told reporters when asked about the phone call with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“They would like us to go to a meeting over the weekend in Europe, and we’ll make a determination depending on what they come back with. We don’t want to be wasting time,” Trump said.

The initial US peace plan that involved Ukraine surrendering land that Russia has not captured was seen by Kyiv and its European allies as aligning too closely with many of Russia’s demands to end the war, and has since been revised.

Trump has been pushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree to the US plan while Ukrainian officials told the AFP news agency on Wednesday that Kyiv had sent an updated draft of the plan back to Washington.

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.

Syria is seeing major political changes, but security on the ground is still unstable. Israeli attacks continue in the south, while armed groups and internal tensions remain uncertain elements to Syria’s security. Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid breaks it down.

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.