Russia

These are the key developments from day 1,398 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Tuesday, December 23:

Fighting

• A car bomb killed Russian Lieutenant General ⁠Fanil Sarvarov in southern Moscow, the third such killing of a senior Russian military officer in just more than a year. Russian investors pointed the finger at Ukraine. Kyiv has not commented on the incident.
• Russian forces struck Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa late on Monday, damaging port facilities and a ship in the second such attack on the region in less than 24 hours, according to Ukrainian officials.
• Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said on the Telegram app that the latest attack on Odesa is part of Russia’s attempt “to disrupt maritime logistics by launching systematic attacks on port and energy infrastructure”.
• Kuleba said the attack also caused damage to energy infrastructure, disrupting electricity supply to more than 120,000 customers in the Odesa region. One person was hurt in the attack, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed media reports that residents of Hrabovske village, straddling the border with Russia in Ukraine’s Sumy region and home to 52 people, were taken by Russian troops. Zelenskyy said that 13 Ukrainian servicemen were among those taken.
• Ukraine’s military said it hit a Tamanneftegaz oil terminal in Russia’s Krasnodar region in an overnight attack, causing explosions and a fire. The Ukrainian General Staff said the oil terminal was part of Russia’s energy infrastructure that supported the financing and logistics of Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.
• A Ukrainian drone attack also damaged two vessels in the same region. All crew on the ships at the Volna terminal have been safely evacuated, according to regional authorities.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it had captured Vilcha village in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region. The claim could not be immediately verified.

Politics and diplomacy

• US President Donald Trump said that talks to end the war in Ukraine are going “OK”, amid questions about their progress, with Moscow and Kyiv still far apart on some key matters.
• Zelenskyy, meanwhile, described the negotiations in Miami as “very close to a real result”. He also told a gathering of Ukrainian diplomats that the peace process “all looks quite worthy”, even as he conceded that “not everything is ideal with this, but the plan is there”.
• Separately, in his nightly video address to the nation, Zelenskyy said the key issue in the talks was to determine whether the US was able to “get a response from Russia; real readiness on the part of that country to focus on something other than aggression”. He said that continued pressure on the Kremlin was vital to reduce Moscow’s capacity to wage war.
• The Kremlin said talks between Russia and the US in Miami on ways to resolve the conflict in Ukraine should not be seen as a breakthrough. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Izvestia news outlet that the discussions were expected to continue in a “meticulous” expert-level format.
• Peskov also questioned the reliability of the sources cited in a Reuters news agency report, which said that the US intelligence community believes Putin wants to seize all of Ukraine and reclaim parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet bloc. Peskov told reporters in Moscow that if the report was accurate, then the US’s intelligence conclusions were wrong.
• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov declared that Moscow is ready to confirm in a legal agreement that it has no intention of attacking either the European Union or the US-led NATO military alliance, the state RIA news agency reported.

Military aid

• The Czech Republic’s National Security Council will debate the future of a Czech-led, Western-financed scheme organising artillery ammunition supplies for Ukraine on January 7, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said. The scheme also brings together foreign donors, including Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.

Regional security

• Swedish customs released the Russian ship Adler, which it boarded over the weekend to perform an inspection, with marine tracking data showing the vessel was on the move again. Swedish customs declined to say what cargo the Adler had been carrying. The Adler is under EU sanctions, while the vessel and its owners, M Leasing LLC, are both subject to US sanctions, suspected of involvement in weapons transport.

United States President Donald Trump has issued a new warning to Nicolas Maduro, saying “it would be smart” for the Venezuelan leader to leave power, as Washington escalates a pressure campaign against Caracas.

The warning on Monday came as Russia pledged “full support” for Maduro’s government, and China condemned the US’s seizure of two oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela.

Trump, speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida alongside his top national security aides, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, suggested that he remains ready to further escalate his four-month pressure campaign.

When asked if the ⁠goal was to force Maduro from power, Trump told reporters: “Well, I think it probably would… That’s up to him what he wants to do. I think it’d be smart for him to do that. But again, we’re gonna find out.”

“If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the ​last time he’s ever able to play ‌tough,” he added.

Trump levied his latest threat as the US coastguard continued for a second day to chase a third oil tanker that it described as part of a “dark fleet” that Venezuela uses to evade US sanctions.

“It’s moving along, and we’ll end up getting it,” Trump said.

The US president also promised to keep the ships and the nearly 4 million barrels of Venezuelan oil the coastguard has seized so far.

“Maybe we’ll sell it. Maybe we’ll keep it. Maybe we will use it in the strategic reserves,” he said. “We’re keeping it. We’re keeping the ships also.”

Maduro fires back

Trump’s campaign against Venezuela’s vital oil sector comes amid a large US military buildup in the region with a stated mission of combating drug trafficking, as well as more than two dozen strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near the South American nation.

Critics have questioned the legality of the attacks, which have killed more than 100 people.

Venezuela denies any involvement in drug trafficking and insists that Washington is seeking to overthrow Maduro to seize the country’s oil reserves, which are the world’s largest.

It has condemned the US’s vessel seizures as acts of “international piracy”.

Maduro fired back at Trump hours after the latest warning, saying the US president would be “better off” if he focused on his own country’s problems rather than threatening Caracas.

“He would be better off in his own country on economic and social issues, and he would be better off in the world if he took care of his country’s affairs,” Maduro said in a speech broadcast on public television.

The exchange of words came on the eve of a United Nations Security Council meeting on Tuesday to discuss the growing crisis.

Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, in a phone call with his Venezuelan counterpart, Yvan Gil, slammed the US’s actions and expressed support for Caracas.

“The ministers expressed their deep concern over the escalation of Washington’s actions in the Caribbean Sea, which could have serious consequences for the region and threaten international shipping,” the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

“The Russian side reaffirmed its full support for and solidarity with the Venezuelan leadership and people in the current context,” it added.

US blockade

China also condemned the US’s latest moves as a “serious violation of international law”.

“China opposes any actions that violate the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter and infringe upon the sovereignty and security of other countries,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

“Venezuela has the right to develop independently and engage in a mutually beneficial cooperation with other nations. China understands and supports Venezuela’s stance in safeguarding its legitimate rights and interests,” he added.

Last week, Rubio brushed aside Moscow’s stated support for Caracas.

Washington, he said, was “not concerned about an escalation with Russia with regards to Venezuela” as “they have their hands full in Ukraine”.

US-Russia relations have soured in recent weeks as Trump has voiced frustration with Moscow over the lack of a resolution on the war in Ukraine

Gil, on Monday, also read a letter on state television, signed by Maduro and addressed to UN member nations, warning that the US blockade “will affect the supply of oil and energy” globally.

“Venezuela reaffirms its vocation for peace, but also declares with absolute clarity that it is prepared to defend its sovereignty, its territorial integrity and its resources in accordance with international law,” he said.

“However, we responsibly warn that these aggressions will not only impact Venezuela. The blockade and piracy against Venezuelan energy trade will affect oil and energy supply, increase instability in international markets, and hit the economies of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the world, especially in the most vulnerable countries.”

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for former CIA Director John Brennan want the Justice Department to be prevented from steering an investigation of him and other former government officials to a “favored” judge in Florida who dismissed the classified documents case against President Trump.

The request Monday is addressed to U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga, the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida, where federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation related to the U.S. government assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Brennan and other officials have received subpoenas, and his lawyers say Brennan has been advised by prosecutors that he’s a target of the investigation.

Brennan’s lawyers say the Justice Department is engaged in “judge shopping” and trying to arrange for the case to be handled by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who issued favorable rulings to Trump during the classified documents case and dismissed it last year. The letter asks Altonaga to exercise her “supervisory authority” as chief judge to ensure that the Justice Department is unable to steer the current election interference investigation into her courtroom.

“In short, we are seeking assurance that any litigation arising out of this grand jury proceeding will be heard by a judge who is selected by the court’s neutral and impartial processes, not by the prosecution’s self-interested maneuvering contrary to the interests of justice,” wrote Brennan’s attorneys, Kenneth Wainstein and Natasha Harnwell-Davis. The New York Times earlier reported on the letter.

It remains unclear what crime prosecutors in Florida believe was committed, but the subpoenas issued last month to Brennan and other former law enforcement and intelligence officials sought documents related to the preparation of the Obama administration’s intelligence community assessment, made public in January 2017, that detailed how Russia waged a covert influence campaign to help Trump defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Trump was investigated but not charged during his first term over whether his campaign conspired with Russia to tip the outcome of the election. He has long sought retribution over the Russia investigation and the officials who played a key part in it.

His Justice Department in September secured a false-statement and obstruction indictment against James Comey, the FBI director at the time the Russia investigation was launched, though the case was dismissed and its future is in doubt because of a judge’s ruling that blocked prosecutors from accessing materials they considered to be key evidence.

Brennan’s lawyers say the Trump administration’s Justice Department tried to “forum-shop” the investigation into Brennan to multiple jurisdictions, including Pennsylvania, before settling in Florida. But they say prosecutors have been unable to answer basic questions about why Florida is a proper venue for the investigation given that the intelligence community assessment at issue was produced by officials in the Washington, D.C., area.

The grand jury investigation is based in the Miami division of the Southern District of Florida, but Brennan’s lawyers say they’re concerned that the Trump administration may be poised to transfer the case to the smaller Fort Pierce division, where Cannon is the only judge. They cited as a basis for that alarm a Justice Department decision to seek an additional grand jury in Fort Pierce even though there’s no apparent caseload need.

“The United States Attorney’s efforts to funnel this investigation to the judge who issued this string of rulings that consistently favored President Trump’s positions in previous litigations should be seen for what it is,” Brennan’s lawyers wrote.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

A Russian general was killed in Moscow on Monday when an explosive device detonated underneath his car. Authorities say they are investigating whether Ukrainian special services were involved.

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has hailed talks on ending Moscow’s war in Ukraine as “productive and constructive”, after holding separate meetings with Ukrainian, European and Russian negotiators in the state of Florida.

The talks in Miami on Sunday were the latest in a series of meetings between the US, Russia and Ukraine on a 20-point plan touted by US President Donald Trump to end the nearly four-year-old war.

Despite the optimism from the US, there have been no clear signals of imminent resolutions to key hurdles, including on the issue of the territory Russia has seized during the conflict.

Witkoff, who met with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev on Saturday, held talks on Sunday with officials from Ukraine and Europe. He then held separate talks with the Ukrainian delegation, led by senior official Rustem Umerov.

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also joined the meetings.

Witkoff, in a joint statement with Umerov, called Sunday’s talks “productive and constructive”, saying they focused on a “shared strategic approach between Ukraine, the United States and Europe”.

“Particular attention was given to discussing timelines and the sequencing of next steps,” they said.

Witkoff and Umerov said that bilateral discussions between Ukrainian and US officials on Sunday focused on developing and aligning positions on four key documents: the 20-point plan, a “multilateral security guarantee framework,” a “US Security guarantee framework for Ukraine”, and an “economic & prosperity plan”.

In a separate X post that ‍used some of ⁠the same language, Witkoff said his talks with Dmitriev were also “productive and constructive”.

“Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine,” Witkoff said in the post. “Russia highly values the efforts and support of the United States to resolve the Ukrainian conflict and re-establish global security.”

Earlier on Sunday, Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, said that the changes requested by Ukraine and its European allies to the framework put forth by the US were not improving prospects for peace.

Ushakov said that Dmitriev was due to return to Moscow on Monday and would report to Putin on the outcome of his talks.

“After that, we will formulate the position with which we will proceed, including in our contacts with the Americans,” he said.

Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, sees Europe as “pro-war” and argues that its participation in the talks only hinders them.

Separately on Sunday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin was ready to talk with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, after the latter said Europe should reach out to the Russian president to end the war.

Putin has “expressed readiness to engage in dialogue with Macron”, Peskov told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. “Therefore, if there is mutual political will, then this can only be assessed positively.”

Macron’s office welcomed the Russian statement.

“It is welcome that the Kremlin has publicly agreed to this approach. We will decide in the coming days on the best way to proceed,” it said.

Trump first shared his plan consisting of 28 points to end the war in Ukraine last month, triggering immediate criticism from European leaders who said it echoed the Kremlin’s demands.

Zelenskyy has since said that Ukraine and its European allies have shared their own version of a 20-point plan, which was based on the initial plan put forward by the White House.

One of the key sticking points between Russia and Ukraine remains Russia’s demand to retain some of the land it has captured in Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion after years of fighting in Ukraine’s east.

Zelenskyy has described the talks as “constructive” and said they were “moving at a fairly rapid pace”. He nevertheless cautioned that “much depends on whether Russia feels the need to end the war for real”.

He also hailed this week as “historic” for Ukraine, thanking Europe for pledging $100bn of funding over the next two years.

These are the key developments from day 1,397 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Monday, December 22:

Fighting

• A Russian attack on Ukraine’s Kharkiv region killed a 49-year-old man and a 42-year-old woman, according to Governor Oleh Syniehubov. The killings took place in the village of Izyum.
• Russian attacks also killed one person in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, and one person in the southeastern Zaporizhia region, local officials reported.
• Russian forces have shelled the Zaporizhia region nearly 5,000 times over the past week, wounding 60 people and damaging hundreds of buildings, according to Governor Ivan Fedorov.
• Overall, Russian forces have launched about 1,300 drones, nearly 1,200 guided aerial bombs, and nine missiles towards Ukraine over the past week, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
• Ukraine’s ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, accused Russian forces of “illegally” detaining about 50 residents of the village of Hrabovske in the Sumy region and “forcibly deporting” them to Russian territory.
• The Kyiv Independent, citing Ukrainian authorities, reported that wreckage from a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia damaged a pipeline in the Krasnodar Krai region.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces shot down 29 Ukrainian drones in the past 24-hour period.
• The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed that Russian forces shot down 252 drones over the Russian-occupied Donbas region, using the “Donbas Dome electronic warfare system” over the past week, the TASS news agency reported.

Politics and diplomacy

• US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with a Ukrainian delegation, led by senior official Rustem Umerov and European officials, as the US continued to host talks in Miami, Florida, on a prospective peace deal for Russia’s war on Ukraine for a third day on Sunday.
• Witkoff said in a post on X late on Sunday that the talks with the Ukrainians and Europeans had been “productive and constructive” and focused on a “shared strategic approach between Ukraine, the United States and Europe”.
• In a second post about two hours later, Witkoff said that the US had also had “productive and constructive meetings” with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev over the past two days.
• “Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine [and] highly values the efforts and support of the United States to resolve the Ukrainian conflict and re-establish global security,” Witkoff said.
• Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, said that changes made by European countries and Ukraine to the US’s proposals for an end to Russia’s war did not improve prospects for peace.
• “I am sure that the proposals that the Europeans and Ukrainians have made or are trying to make definitely do not improve the document and do not improve the possibility of achieving long-term peace,” Ushakov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian president was ready to talk with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, after the latter said Europe should reach out to Moscow to end the war.
• Macron’s office welcomed the Russian statement, saying: “It is welcome that the Kremlin has publicly agreed to this approach. We will decide in the coming days on the best way to proceed.”
• India’s Ministry of External Affairs said that “202 Indian nationals are believed to have been recruited into the Russian armed forces” during Russia’s war on Ukraine. It said Russian authorities had reported that 26 had been killed and seven were missing.
• Sweden’s customs service said on Sunday that Swedish authorities boarded a Russian freighter that anchored in Swedish waters on Friday after developing engine problems, to inspect the cargo. The owners of the vessel, the Adler, are on the European Union’s sanctions list, Martin Hoglund, spokesman at the customs authority, said.
• “Shortly after 0100 last night [00:00 GMT] we boarded the ship with support from the Swedish Coast Guard and the police service in order to make a customs inspection,” Hoglund said. “The inspection is still ongoing.”

Yury Ushakov’s remarks come a day after US and Russian officials held talks on the US proposal in Florida.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy aide says that changes made by European countries and Ukraine to the United States’ proposals for an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine did not improve prospects for peace.

“I am sure that the proposals that the Europeans and Ukrainians have made or are trying to make definitely do not improve the document and do not improve the possibility of achieving long-term peace,” Yury Ushakov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies on Sunday.

The US-drafted proposals for an end to the nearly four-year ⁠war, leaked to the media last month, raised European and Ukrainian concerns that they favour more of Russia’s wartime demands ​and that US President Donald Trump’s administration could push Kyiv into conceding too much.

Since then, European and ‍Ukrainian negotiators have met with Trump envoys in an attempt to add their own proposals to the US drafts, though the exact contents of the current proposal have not been disclosed.

The remarks from Ushakov came after Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, met in Florida on Saturday with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Dmitriev said the talks would continue ​on Sunday.

The Miami meeting followed US talks on Friday with European and Ukrainian officials.

In the wake of those talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his team should hold more talks with European allies.

“There is a shared sense that after the work by our diplomatic team in the United States, we should now hold consultations with European partners in a broader circle,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Sunday.

Three-way talks?

Zelenskyy had said on Saturday that Ukraine ‌would back a US proposal for three-way talks with the US and Russia if it facilitated more exchanges of prisoners and paved the way for meetings of national leaders.

Ushakov ‌said that a proposal for three-way talks had not been seriously discussed by ⁠anyone and that it was not being worked on.

Russia says that European leaders are intent on scuttling the talks by introducing conditions that they know will be unacceptable to Russia, which took 12-17 square kilometres (4.6 to 6.6 square miles) of Ukrainian territory per day in 2025.

Ukraine and European leaders say that Russia cannot ‌be allowed to achieve its aims in what they call its imperial-style land grab.

Ukraine battles attempted Russian breakthrough

In Ukraine, fighting continues with the Ukrainian army battling an attempted Russian breakthrough in the Sumy region, it said on Sunday, following reports that Moscow forcibly moved 50 people from a border village there.

This marks a renewed Russian advance in the part of the region previously largely spared from intense ground fighting since Ukraine regained land there in a swift 2022 counter-offensive.

“Fighting is currently ongoing in the village of Grabovske,” Ukraine’s joint task force said, adding the troops were “making efforts to drive the occupiers back into Russian territory”.

Zelenskyy said that over the week, “Russia has launched approximately 1,300 attack drones, nearly 1,200 guided aerial bombs, and nine missiles of various types” against Ukraine.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in the country’s east.

After years of support from the United States for the Ukraine war to continue “as long as it takes”, the Trump administration is now pushing to end Europe’s war – quickly and imperfectly.

While details are still under negotiation, they include issues such as ensuring Ukraine never joins NATO and Russia’s control over about 20 percent of Ukraine.

To understand the implications for Europe, the US and their relations, host Steve Clemons speaks with Kurt Volker, Trump’s former special representative for Ukraine negotiations, and retired Colonel Heino Klinck, former director of US Army international affairs.

Negotiators from Russia and the United States have met in the US city of Miami as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Washington to ramp up the pressure on Moscow to end its war on Ukraine.

The meeting on Saturday took place between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, and US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Dmitriev told the reporters the talks were positive and would continue on Sunday.

“The discussions are proceeding constructively,” said Dmitriev. “They began earlier and will continue today, and will also continue tomorrow.”

Earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said that he may also join the talks in Miami. He said that progress has been made in discussions to end the war, but there is still a way to go.

“The role we’re trying to play is a role of figuring out whether there’s any overlap here that they can agree to, and that’s what we’ve invested a lot of time and energy [on], and continue to do so,” Rubio said. “That may not be possible. I hope it is. I hope it can get done this month, before the end of the year.”

Trump’s envoys have for weeks been negotiating a 20-point peace plan with Ukrainian, Russian and European officials.

While US ​officials say they have made progress, major differences remain on the issues of territory and possible security guarantees that Kyiv says are essential for any agreement.

Russia has shown few signs that it is willing to give up its expansive territorial demands in Ukraine, which it believes it is well-positioned to secure as the war grinds on and political fractures emerge among Ukraine’s European allies.

In Kyiv, Zelenskyy said he remains supportive of a US-led negotiations process, but that diplomacy needs to be accompanied by greater pressure on Russia.

“America must clearly say, if not diplomacy, then there will be full pressure… Putin does not yet feel the kind of pressure that should exist,” he said.

The Ukrainian leader said Washington has also proposed a new format for talks with Russia, comprised of three-way talks at the level of national security advisers from Ukraine, Russia, and the US.

Zelenskyy expressed scepticism that the talks would result in “anything new”, but said he would support trilateral discussions if they led to progress in areas such as prisoner swaps or a meeting of national leaders.

“If such a ‍meeting could be ⁠held now to allow for swaps of prisoners of war, or if a meeting of national security advisers achieves agreement on a leaders’ meeting… I cannot be opposed. We would support such a US proposal. Let’s see how things go,” he said.

The last time Ukrainian and Russian envoys held official direct talks was in July in Istanbul, which led to prisoner swaps but little else.

The talks in Miami come after Putin promised to press ahead with his military offensive in Ukraine, hailing Moscow’s battlefield gains in an annual news conference on Friday.

Putin, however, suggested that Russia could pause its devastating strikes on the country to allow Ukraine to hold a presidential ballot, a prospect that Zelenskyy rejected.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Ukraine’s Black Sea Odesa region from an overnight Russian ballistic missile strike on port infrastructure rose to eight, with 30 people wounded.

A civilian bus was struck in the attack, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

The Russian attacks on the coastline region have wrought havoc in recent weeks, hitting bridges and cutting electricity and heating for hundreds of thousands in freezing temperatures.

Moscow earlier said it would expand strikes on Ukrainian ports as retaliation for targeting its sanctions-busting oil tankers.

On Saturday, Ukraine claimed to have destroyed two Russian fighter jets at an airfield in Moscow-occupied Crimea, according to the security service SBU. Kyiv’s army said it struck a Russian oil rig in the Caspian Sea as well as a patrol ship nearby.

Putin described Russia’s initial full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” to “demilitarise” the country and prevent the expansion of NATO.

Kyiv and its European allies say the war, the largest and deadliest on European soil since World War II, is an unprovoked and illegal land grab that has resulted in a tidal wave of violence and destruction.

Here is where things stand on Sunday, December 21:

Fighting

• The death toll from a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s port city of Odesa rose from seven to eight, with at least 30 others wounded, according to Ukrainian authorities.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the situation in Odesa as “harsh” and accused Russia of trying to block Kyiv’s access to the Black Sea.
• The Ukrainian leader also said that he is looking to replace the head of the Southern Air Command, Dmytro Karpenko, over the Russian strikes on Odesa.
• Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said Russian forces also attacked the nearby port of Pivdennyi on Saturday, hitting several reservoirs.
• Ukraine’s military said its special forces carried out a drone attack on a Lukoil oil rig in the Caspian Sea on Friday, along with the Russian military patrol ship Okhotnik. The military also said that the Filanovsky oil rig, which had been targeted twice this month, was damaged in the strike.
• The Ukrainian military also said it destroyed two Russian fighter jets at an airfield in the occupied Crimean peninsula.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces took control of the villages of Svitle and Vysoke, located in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and the northeastern Luhansk region, respectively.

Diplomacy and ceasefire talks

• Zelenskyy said the United States proposed a new format for talks with Russia, comprised of three-way talks at the level of national security advisers from Ukraine, Russia, and the US.
• The Ukrainian leader expressed scepticism that the talks would result in “anything new”, but added that he believes that US-led talks have the best chance of success.
• He added that he would support trilateral discussions if they led to progress in areas such as prisoner swaps or a meeting of national leaders. “If such a ‍meeting could be ⁠held now to allow for swaps of prisoners of war, or if a meeting of national security advisers achieves agreement on a leaders’ meeting… I cannot be opposed. We would support such a US proposal. Let’s see how things go,” he said.
• Zelenskyy also pushed back against calls for Ukraine to hold elections as the war drags on, stating that voting cannot take place in Russian-occupied areas and that security conditions must first improve. “It is not [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who decides when and in what format the elections in Ukraine will take place,” Zelenskyy said.
• Zelenskyy urged European leaders to approve a measure to seize frozen Russian assets and use them to fund Ukraine’s war effort, saying that doing so will strengthen Ukraine’s leverage at the negotiating table. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that Ukraine will need about 137 billion euros ($161bn) in 2026 and 2027, as the demands of the war continue to strain the country’s economy.
• Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev held talks with his US counterpart, Steve Witkoff, and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in the city of Miami.
• “The ‌discussions are proceeding constructively. They began earlier and ‌will continue ⁠today, and will also continue tomorrow,” ‌Dmitriev said
• Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov attended a summit in Cairo, held to advance closer cooperation between Russia and African nations, and attended by more than 50 countries. Lavrov pitched Russia as a “reliable partner” to African countries in areas such as security and national sovereignty.

Weapons

• Ukrainian presidential aide Oleksandr Kamyshin announced a deal with Portugal on the joint production of maritime drones, saying it would help “defend Europe from the sea”.

Dec. 20 (UPI) — Officials for the European Union have agreed to loan $105 billon to Ukraine to help it stay financially solvent over the next two years amid Russian attacks in the Odesa region.

The money is in lieu of an allocation to Ukraine from frozen Russian assets equal to nearly $246 billion and being held in Belgium, the BBC reported.

The funds are equal to about two-thirds of the amount that Ukraine will need to pay its bills and give it a stronger bargaining position as peace talks continue with the aim of ending the Ukraine War that started when Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022, according to The New York Times.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the loan is interest-free and only would be repaid if Russia were required to pay reparations to Ukraine.

News of the E.U. allocation comes after a Russian missile strike near Odesa that killed eight and injured 27 others on Friday night, CNN reported.

Russian missiles struck a port facility in Pivdenne, and some of those killed and wounded were on a bus that was struck during the attack.

The missile strikes were part of an ongoing aerial campaign against the Odesa region over the past nine days and caused a power outage in Odesa, which is located on the Black Sea and about 300 miles south of Kyiv.

Two bridges in southern and northern Odesa were knocked out in recent strikes and are being repaired.

Russian forces also are targeting the energy infrastructure in Ukraine and have used drones and missiles to damage or destroy many targets in recent months.

A Russian ballistic missile strike on port infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa port in the south has killed at least eight people and wounded 27, as Moscow intensifies attacks on the strategic Black Sea region and talks to end the war remain in a critical stage.

The attack late on Friday hit critical logistics infrastructure, with some of the wounded trapped on a bus at the strike’s epicentre as trucks caught fire in a car park.

Ukrainian officials say the bombardment is part of a sustained Russian campaign against Odesa’s civilian infrastructure that has left more than two million people without electricity, water and heating for days amid freezing temperatures in the war’s fourth punishing winter.

Moscow struck the same port again on Saturday, hitting reservoirs in what Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba described as deliberately targeting civilian logistics routes.

The escalation comes as both sides trade blows across multiple fronts, while United States-led negotiations and numerous high-level meetings in Europe to end the war lumber on without a breakthrough.

Russia claimed on Saturday to have seized the villages of Svitle in the eastern Donetsk region and Vysoke in the northeastern Sumy region, though the reports could not be independently verified.

Ukraine has responded with a widening campaign against Russian military and energy assets.

On Friday night, Ukrainian drones struck the Filanovsky oil rig belonging to Russian energy giant Lukoil in the Caspian Sea, along with a military patrol ship patrolling near the platform.

The attack marked the first officially acknowledged Ukrainian strike on Caspian drilling infrastructure, though the rig had been hit at least twice before in December.

Between December 14 and 15, Ukrainian forces used sea drones to strike a Russian Kilo-class submarine at the Novorossiysk Naval Base in the Black Sea, according to a United Kingdom Defence Intelligence assessment.

Miami talks

The attacks unfold as American and European officials gather in Miami for weekend talks aimed at ending the nearly four-year war, with Russian and Ukrainian teams also in attendance.

Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on Saturday he was heading to Miami.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would not force Ukraine into any agreement, though he described the conflict as “not our war”.

Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are leading discussions with Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov and officials from the UK, France and Germany. Russian representatives, including Kremlin key negotiator Dmitriev, are meeting separately with American officials.

The key obstacle remains territorial concessions, with reports suggesting Washington is pushing Kyiv to cede parts of the eastern Donetsk region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin showed no signs of compromise at his annual choreographed news conference on Friday, pledging to press ahead with military operations and predicting new successes before the year’s end.

Putin’s remarks were the latest in a drumbeat of often-repeated maximalist Russian positions nearly four years after he ordered troops into the neighbouring country.

The issue of territory gained, lost, to be ceded or not, delves into the heart of the matter on one of the most contentious issues in the talks to end the war so far.

Putin has demanded Ukraine cede all territory in four key regions his forces have captured and occupied, along with Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed in 2014.

He also wants Ukrainian troops to withdraw from parts of eastern Ukraine that Russian forces have not yet taken in the eastern Donetsk region, where fighting remains attritional – conditions Kyiv has rejected outright.

As talks continue, so does the fighting, with Russia controlling large parts of Ukraine’s eastern and Black Sea coastal regions.

Putin projected confidence on Friday about battlefield progress, saying Russian forces had “fully seized strategic initiative” and would make further gains before the year ends.

However, that narrative is on shaky ground this week, as Moscow’s assertion of inevitable victory flew in the face of facts on the ground.

Ukraine steadily took back control of almost all of its northern city of Kupiansk after isolating Russian forces within it, belying Russian claims to have seized it.

Russian forces were also unable to dislodge Ukrainian defenders from the eastern city of Pokrovsk in the eastern area of Donetsk to back up Moscow’s claims of total control.

Ukraine received a boost on Friday when European leaders agreed to provide a 90 billion euros ($105bn) loan to cover military and economic needs for the next two years.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met Polish President Karol Nawrocki in Warsaw the same day to reinforce regional unity against Russia, said the funds would go towards defence if the war continues or reconstruction if peace is achieved.

These are the key developments from day 1,395 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Saturday, 20 December :

Fighting

• Russian attacks targeting ports in Ukraine’s Odesa killed seven people and wounded 15, Governor Oleh Kiper said in a post on Telegram.
• Kiper described the attack as “massive” and said it involved Russian ballistic missiles, which targeted trucks that caught fire.
• The Kyiv Independent news outlet reported that Odesa city has been suffering from chronic power outages since December 13, due to earlier Russian attacks.
• Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s Dnipro region with artillery shelling and drones, damaging homes, power lines and a gas pipeline, Vladyslav Hayvanenko, acting head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, wrote on Facebook.
• Ukraine has taken back control of almost all of its northern city of Kupiansk after isolating Russian forces and unending Russian claims to have seized the key urban centre.

Aid

• European Union leaders agreed to provide a $105.5bn interest-free loan to Ukraine to meet the country’s military and economic needs for the next two years.
• EU leaders decided ‍to borrow cash on capital markets to fund Ukraine’s defence against Russia, rather than use frozen Russian assets, diplomats said.

Diplomacy

• In his annual “results of the year” speech in Moscow on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for refusing to discuss giving up the Ukrainian Russia has seized, as part of truce negotiations.
• “We know from statements from Zelenskyy that he’s not prepared to discuss territory issues,” Putin said.
• The Russian president also attacked Europe’s handling of frozen Russian assets, labelling plans to use them to fund Ukraine as “robbery”, rather than theft, because it was being done openly.
• “Whatever they stole, they’ll have to give it back someday,” Putin said, pledging to pursue legal action in courts that he described as “independent of political decisions”.

Ceasefire talks

• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that progress has been made to end Russia’s war on Ukraine in a year-end address in Washington, DC.
• “I think we’ve made progress, but we have a ways to go, and obviously, the hardest issues are always the last issues,” Rubio told reporters.
• “We don’t see surrender any time in the near future, and only a negotiated settlement can end this war,” Rubio said, adding that any decision about ending the war will be up to Ukraine and Russia, and not the US.
• Top Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov, who is in the US for ceasefire discussions, said the US and Kyiv had agreed to continue their joint efforts to reach a ceasefire.
• “We agreed with our American partners on further steps and on continuing our joint work in the near future,” Umerov wrote on Telegram, without providing further details. He added that he had informed Zelenskyy of the outcome of the talks.
• Putin’s special envoy, Kirill ‍ Dmitriev, is heading ‍to Miami for a meeting with Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the US president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a Russian source told Reuters.
• The meeting in Miami this weekend comes after Witkoff and Kushner held talks in Berlin with Ukrainian and European officials earlier this week to try to reach a deal to ​end the war.
• The Russian source said that any meeting between Dmitriev and Ukrainian negotiators currently in the US had been ruled out.

Regional Security

• Turkiye’s Ministry of the Interior said that it found a Russian-made reconnaissance drone in the İzmit district of Kocaeli, in northwestern Turkiye, based on “initial findings” from an ongoing investigation.
• An “unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) believed to be of the Russian-made Orlan-10 type, used for reconnaissance and surveillance, was found,” the ministry said in a post on X.
• Turkiye’s Ministry of National Defence said on Monday that it had shot down a drone over the Black Sea as it approached Turkish airspace, according to local reports, without providing further details.
• Ukraine’s Ukrinform news site reported on Friday that after the drone was shot down, Turkiye had informed both Kyiv and Moscow “of the need to act cautiously” so as not to “negatively affect security in the Black Sea”.

The war on Ukraine was a big topic at Vladimir Putin’s annual televised question and answer session, but the Russian president wouldn’t say if the war is coming to an end.

Ukrainian military successes and Russian narratives clashed this week, as Moscow’s assertion of inevitable victory flew in the face of facts on the ground.

Ukraine steadily took back control of almost all of its northern city of Kupiansk after isolating Russian forces within it, belying Russian claims to have seized it.

Russian forces were also unable to dislodge Ukrainian defenders from the eastern city of Pokrovsk to back up Moscow’s claims of total control.

And Moscow attempted to deny Ukraine’s successful use of an underwater unmanned vehicle to severely damage a Kilo-class submarine, despite visual evidence.

Ukrainian forces operating in the northern Kharkiv region said they had cut Russian logistics to Kupiansk, surrounded a vanguard of 200 Russians inside it, and cleared Russian forces out of forests north of the city on December 12.

Geolocated footage showed Ukrainian forces advancing in the city the following day and taking back the southern suburb of Yuvileynyi, pushing Russian troops to the northern and western suburbs.

The Russian position had become more precarious by Monday. Ukrainian forces said they prevented reinforcements from entering the city through a gas pipeline, a tactic Russia had used in the siege of Chasiv Yar, and the isolated Russian troops were being supplied solely by drone. Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces were still repelling Russian attacks on Friday.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence insisted it had control of the situation. “Units of the Zapad Group of Forces exercise reliable control over all districts of liberated Kupiansk,” it said on Monday, claiming that Ukraine’s efforts to enter the city from the south were being suppressed.

“The only thing that can be said for sure is that the Russian Armed Forces are still holding part of the centre and north of Kupiansk, but most of it is already either in the grey zone or under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” wrote a Russian military reporter on the Telegram messaging app.

On Wednesday this week, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskii, Ukraine’s Army commander-in-chief, told a Ramstein-format of Ukraine’s allies that his forces had taken back 90 percent of Kupiansk. At the same time in Moscow, Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov was telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that “the enemy is unsuccessfully trying to regain” the city.

“The Russian Defense Minister, Belousov, continues to lie that Russia controls Kupiansk,” wrote Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, on Telegram. “In reality, most of the city is controlled by the Ukrainian Defense Forces, which are continuing to clear it of Russians. However, all of Putin’s officials, from [commander-in-chief Valery] Gerasimov, who was the first to lie about controlling the city, to Belousov, continue to lie in the presence of Putin himself.”

Contrary to the available evidence, Belousov also insisted that Russia had seized Pokrovsk, which Russia calls Krasnoarmeysk, and was on the cusp of vanquishing neighbouring Myrnohrad, which Russia calls Dimitrov. Both towns are in the eastern Donetsk region, and are almost surrounded by Russian forces to the north, south and east.

“Russian soldiers continue to inflict fire damage on Ukrainian troops in Dimitrov, the last stronghold of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Krasnoarmeysk agglomeration,” Belousov told Putin.

But Syrskii told allies that Ukrainian forces had regained about 16 square kilometres (6 square miles) in the northern part of Pokrovsk and 56sq km (22sq miles) west of the city. “Logistics in Myrnograd are complex, but the operations continue,” he wrote.

Russia had claimed complete control over Pokrovsk on December 2 and was sticking to its story.

Submarine and oil refinery explosions

A third point of contention was Ukraine’s successful use of an underwater unmanned vehicle (UUV) to strike a Russian Kilo-class submarine on Monday (December 15), in what is considered the first such attack in military history.

Video of the Russian fleet at anchor in the port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea shows a huge explosion in the stern section of the submarine.

Ukraine’s State Security Service later claimed credit for the attack.

However, Russia’s Defence Ministry said: “Not a single ship or submarine as well as the crews of the Black Sea Fleet stationed in the bay of the Novorossiysk naval base were damaged as a result of the sabotage.”

The ministry published footage of what it said was the attacked submarine, in which it appeared undamaged above the surface, but the video did not show the stern section.

Ukraine’s long-range strikes against Russia scored other successes, on which Russia did not comment.

Ukraine struck the oil refinery in Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow, on December 12. On Sunday, Ukrainian drones struck the Afipsky refinery in Krasnodar Krai and the Uryupinsk oil depot in Volgograd, causing explosions in both locations. They also struck the Dorogobuzhskaya power plant in Smolensk.

United States and Ukrainian negotiating teams met for two days in Berlin on Sunday and Monday. Russian officials said they would be briefed next week on the results of those talks.

But even as it claimed to be interested in ongoing peace negotiations, Russia clearly signalled that it plans to continue aggressive operations next year.

“The key task for the next year is to maintain and increase the pace of the offensive,” said Belousov in Putin’s presence on Wednesday, at an expanded meeting of the Defence Ministry Board.

“It wasn’t us who started the war in 2022; it was the destructive forces in Ukraine, with the support of the West – essentially, the West itself that unleashed this war,” Putin said. “We are only trying to finish it, to put an end to it.”

Putin said “the goals of the special military operation will certainly be achieved,” and “Russia will achieve the liberation of its historical lands by military means,” suggesting there was little room for compromise on Moscow’s side.

Putin’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov signalled the same thing in an interview with ABC on Tuesday. He said Europe and Ukraine expected a “deep and very wrong” revision of Russian peace proposals, and ruled out conceding seized Ukrainian land.

“We are not able in any form to compromise on this, because it would be, in our view, a revision of a very fundamental element of our statehood, set forth through our constitution,” Naryshkin said.

Russian losses outpace recruitments

Russia has attempted to give the impression that it has inexhaustible manpower with which to prosecute the war it started in Ukraine.

Belousov said almost 410,000 Russians volunteered for military service, exceeding expectations for 2025.

That translates to 32,800 per month. “Data from the Ukrainian General Staff on Russian losses indicate that Russian forces suffered an average of 34,600 casualties per month between January and November 2025 – suggesting that Belousov’s recruitment numbers are not quite replacing Russian losses,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested most of these casualties were deaths. “[Putin] spends around 30,000 soldiers’ lives on the front every month. Not wounded – 30,000 killed each month… We have drone footage confirming these deaths,” he told Dutch parliamentarians.

Syrski also doubted Russian recruitment quotas were sufficient.

“The number of Russian troops has long been around 710,000,” he wrote on Telegram. “However, the enemy has not been able to increase this figure, despite active recruitment in Russia, because our soldiers are ‘reducing’ the number of occupiers by a thousand every day through deaths and injuries.”

Russian leader underscores Kremlin’s hardline stance on peace talks as Trump pushes for deal to end war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking at his highly choreographed annual question-and-answer session in Moscow, has said his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy refuses to discuss territorial concessions.

The comments were made on Friday during the “Results of the Year” event, where Putin fielded questions from millions of Russians on topics ranging from domestic policy to the war.

Putin’s remarks are the latest in a drumbeat of often-repeated maximalist Russian positions nearly four years after he ordered troops into the neighbouring country, as United States President Donald Trump intensifies diplomatic efforts to broker a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv.

The issue of territory gained, lost, to be ceded or not, delves into the heart of the matter on one of the most contentious issues in the talks to end the war so far.

“We know from statements from Zelenskyy that he’s not prepared to discuss territory issues,” Putin told attendees at the event in the capital’s Gostiny Dvor exhibition hall. Zelenskyy has indeed stated that clearly, but Ukraine’s constitution also forbids the ceding of land.

Putin has demanded Ukraine cede all territory in four key regions his forces have captured and occupied, along with Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed in 2014.

He also wants Ukrainian troops to withdraw from parts of eastern Ukraine that Russian forces have not yet taken in the eastern Donetsk region, where fighting remains attritional – conditions Kyiv has rejected outright.

Putin projected confidence about battlefield progress, saying Russian forces had “fully seized strategic initiative” and would make further gains before the year ends.

Moscow’s larger army has made steady advances in recent months, seizing between 12 and 17 square kilometres (4.5 and 6.6 square miles) daily in 2025, according to Western assessments.

The Russian president also attacked Western handling of frozen Russian assets, labelling plans to use them for Ukraine as “robbery” rather than theft because it was being done openly.

“Whatever they stole, they’ll have to give it back someday,” he said, pledging to pursue legal action in courts he described as “independent of political decisions”.

European Union leaders agreed to provide a hefty $105bn interest-free loan to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs in its war with Russia for the next two years, EU Council President Antonio Costa said.

The leaders decided early on Friday ‍to borrow cash on capital markets to fund Ukraine’s defence against Russia rather than use frozen Russian assets, diplomats said.

The annual event, which Putin has held in different formats since 2001, drew about three million questions from Russians via phone, text and online platforms. An artificial intelligence system processed the queries to identify common themes.

Putin’s comments come at a pivotal moment, and are watched closely by Western officials who will want to get a read on how he intends to present the situation on the ground to the Russian public.

Trump has launched a major diplomatic push to end nearly four years of fighting, but negotiations have stalled over sharply conflicting demands from Moscow and Kyiv.

US officials estimate that Russia and Ukraine have suffered more than two million casualties since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022. Neither side discloses reliable loss figures.

These are the key developments from day 1,394 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Friday, December 19:

Fighting

• Three people, including two crew members of a cargo vessel, were killed in overnight Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian port of Rostov-on-Don and the town of Bataysk in the country’s southern Rostov region, local governor Yury Slyusar said.
• Russian strikes near Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa killed a woman in her car and hit infrastructure. Odesa’s Governor Oleh Kiper said a Russian drone killed a woman crossing a bridge in her car, and three children were injured in the incident.
• Kiper also asked residents whose homes have been affected by extended power outages to be patient and to end blocking roads in protest against the blackouts.
• “As a result of enemy attacks, the energy infrastructure in Odesa region has suffered extensive damage,” Kiper said.
• About 180,000 consumers have been left without electricity across five Ukrainian regions after Russian attacks, Ukraine’s acting energy minister, Artem Nekrasov, said.
• Nekrasov said the southern regions of Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia, the central regions of Cherkasy and Dnipropetrovsk, and the northeastern region of Sumy have been impacted.
• Russia has formed a military brigade equipped with Moscow’s new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile, Russian chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, said.
• Russia fired the Oreshnik at Ukraine for the first time in November 2024, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has boasted that the missile is impossible to intercept and has destructive power comparable to that of a nuclear weapon.

Sanctions

• European Union leaders have agreed in principle at a summit in Brussels to work on financing Ukraine in 2026 and 2027 through the use of frozen Russian assets rather than EU borrowing, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
• EU leaders were still trying to overcome differences over the plan, with talks in Brussels focused on seeking to reassure Belgium, which holds most of the frozen assets, and other concerned countries, that Europe would share the legal and financial risks resulting from the initiative.
• A new draft of the deal offered Belgium and other countries unlimited guarantees for damages should Moscow successfully sue them for using Russian assets to finance Ukraine.
• Diplomats said the deal could be a problem for some governments, who would need parliamentary approval. The new draft also offered EU countries and institutions, whose assets may be seized by Russia in retaliation, the possibility to offset such damages against Russian assets held by the EU.
• The text of the draft deal also offered a mechanism of unconditional, irrevocable, on-demand guarantees that the EU would swiftly repay the Russian central bank assets in all circumstances should the need arise.
• Russia’s central bank has said it will extend legal action beyond its lawsuit against Belgium-based depository Euroclear and sue European banks in a Russian court over attempts the EU’s plans to use frozen Russian assets as loans for Kyiv.
• Britain has imposed more sanctions targeting Russian oil companies, including 24 individuals and entities, in what it described as a move against Russia’s largest remaining unsanctioned oil companies: Tatneft, Russneft, NNK-Oil and Rusneftegaz.

Peace talks

• Ukrainian peace negotiators are en route to the United States and plan to meet Washington’s negotiating team on Friday and Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.
• US President Donald Trump said he believes talks to end the war in Ukraine are “getting close to something” as Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner plan to meet a Russian delegation in Miami this weekend.

Aid

• The Ukraine-US reconstruction fund, established as part of a Trump-pushed minerals deal the two countries signed in April, has approved its asset policies and is poised to begin reviewing its first investment opportunities in 2026, the US body overseeing the fund said.
• The Development Finance Corporation (DFC) said the fund’s second meeting “reached final consensus necessary to bring the fund to full operational status”. Potential deals could focus on critical minerals extraction and energy development as well as on maritime infrastructure, the DFC said.
• Ukraine is facing a foreign aid shortfall of 45-50 billion euros ($53-$59bn) in 2026, President Zelenskyy said, adding that if Kyiv did not receive a first tranche of a loan secured by Russian assets by next spring, it would have to cut drone production.
• Ukraine has clinched a long-awaited deal to restructure $2.6bn of growth-linked debt, with creditors overwhelmingly accepting a bonds-and-cash swap offer – a key step for the country to emerge from the sovereign default it suffered in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Politics and diplomacy

• President Zelenskyy said he saw no need to change Ukraine’s constitution enshrining its aim to become a NATO member state. A block on Ukraine joining the military alliance has been a core Russian demand to end its war.
• “To be honest, I don’t think we need to change our country’s constitution,” Zelenskyy said. “Certainly not because of calls from the Russian Federation or anyone else,” he said.
• Earlier this week, Zelenskyy said Ukraine could compromise on NATO membership if given bilateral security guarantees with protections similar to NATO’s Article 5, which considers an attack on one member as an attack against all.
• Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya met Chinese foreign ministerial aide Liu Bin in Beijing, where the pair “discussed ways to strengthen trade and economic cooperation, and issues of co-operation within international organisations”, the Foreign Ministry said.

Russian affairs

• Sergei Yeremeyev, a Belarusian man accused by Russia of blowing up two trains in Siberia for Ukraine, has been jailed for 22 years. Yeremeyev was found guilty of carrying out an act of terrorism and of planting explosives on two freight trains in 2023.
• British man Hayden Davies, who fought for Ukraine against Russia, has been sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security prison camp after being convicted of being a paid mercenary, Russian prosecutors said. The 30-year-old was tried by a court in a part of Russian-controlled Donetsk.