RussiaUkraine

In the quiet village of Kozubivka in Ukraine’s Poltava region, Nelia and her husband Oleksandr open their home to people displaced from Kharkiv, where bombing and shelling have forced thousands to flee.

But rebuilding a life in rural Ukraine is not easy. City people must learn to navigate unfamiliar routines on the farm, endure physical labour and bear the emotional weight of displacement. In the process tempers flare despite moments of tenderness.

Through these intimate encounters, Guests from Kharkiv reveals what it means to create community in the middle of a war and the courage it takes to adapt to a new way of life.

A documentary short by Halyna Lavrinets, produced by Eleron Pictures.

These are the key developments from day 1,392 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Wednesday, December 17:

Fighting

• Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital and warned people to stay in shelters late on Tuesday night as air defences worked to repel a Russian attack.
• Russian forces launched a “massive” drone attack on Ukraine’s Sumy region, targeting energy infrastructure and causing electricity blackouts, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said on Telegram late on Tuesday night.
• Power outages were also reported in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Energy Mykola Kolisnyk said.
• A Russian attack on electrical substations and other energy infrastructure left 280,000 households in Ukraine’s Odesa region without power, Governor Oleh Kiper wrote on Telegram.
• Electricity was later restored to 220,000 homes, Kiper said, but extensive work was still needed to repair damaged networks.

• The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is currently receiving electricity through only one of two external power lines, the facility’s Russian management said, after the other line was disconnected due to military activity.

• Russian forces shot down 180 Ukrainian drones in one day, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said, according to the state-run TASS news agency.
• The ambassador-at-large of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rodion Miroshnik, told TASS that Ukrainian attacks had killed 14 Russian civilians and injured nearly 70, including in the Russian-occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia regions of Ukraine, over the past week.

Ceasefire talks

• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz shared details about a potential European-led multinational force being considered as part of discussions on security guarantees for Ukraine.
• “We would secure a demilitarised zone between the warring parties and, to be very specific, we would also act against corresponding Russian incursions and attacks,” Merz told ZDF public television, adding that the talks “we’re not there yet”.

Regional security

• Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Sweden said in a joint statement on Tuesday that “Russia is the most significant, direct and long-term threat to our security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area”.
• After the Eastern Flank Summit in Helsinki, Finland, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that the grouping of European countries discussed an “anti-drone wall” that would require “billions in expenditure here”.
• Germany’s Federal Ministry of Defence said that it ended the deployment to Poland of its Patriot systems and soldiers from its Air and Missile Defence Task Force, after the mission concluded as planned.
• UK Secretary of State for Defence John Healey said the United Kingdom is spending 600 million pounds (more than $800 million) to buy “thousands of air defence systems, missiles, and automated turrets to shoot down drones” for Ukraine, during a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, according to the Kyiv Independent news outlet.
• German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius told the same meeting that Germany would “transfer a significant number of AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles” to Ukraine next year.

Reparations

• The leaders of 34 European countries signed an agreement in The Hague to create an International Claims Commission for Ukraine to seek compensation for hundreds of billions of dollars in damage from Russian attacks.
• “Every Russian war crime must have consequences for those who committed them,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said before signing the agreement.
• “The goal is to have validated claims that will ultimately be paid by Russia. It will really have to be paid by Russia,” Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs  David van Weel said.

These are the key developments from day 1,391 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Tuesday, December 16:

Fighting

• A Russian drone attack killed a 62-year-old Ukrainian man as he was riding a bicycle in the Velyka Pysarivka community of Ukraine’s Sumy region, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
• Russian forces launched 850 attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region in a single day, injuring 14 people and damaging houses, cars and infrastructure, Governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.
• Russian forces injured five people in attacks on Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, and six people in the Kherson region in the past day, local officials said, according to the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.
• In Dnipropetrovsk, those injured included a firefighter and factory worker, hurt after Russian forces launched a second attack on a factory in the Synelnykivskyi district, as rescuers tried to respond to a fire caused by an earlier Russian attack, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine reported on its website.
• Russian attacks caused power outages in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as well as the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, the Ukrainian energy company NPC Ukrenergo said on Facebook.
• Ukraine claimed that underwater drones had, for the first time in the war, struck a Russian submarine docked in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
• The head of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet press service, Aleksei Rulyov, denied that the underwater drone attack was successful. “Not a single ship or submarine of the Black Sea Fleet located at the base in Novorossiysk Bay was damaged,” he said. “The enemy’s attempt at sabotage through underwater drones failed to achieve its aims.”

Ceasefire talks

• US President Donald Trump said a deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine was “closer than ever” after American, Ukrainian, European and NATO leaders met in Berlin for hours of talks on a potential settlement, hosted by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
• European leaders issued a joint statement after the talks, saying that any decisions on potential Ukrainian territorial concessions to Russia can only be made by the people of Ukraine, and once robust security guarantees are in place for Kyiv.
• They also said that US and European leaders had agreed to “work together to provide robust security guarantees”, including a European-led “multinational force” made up of nations willing to assist “in securing Ukraine’s skies, and in supporting safer seas, including through operating inside Ukraine”.
• Speaking at a news conference after the talks, Merz said that the US had offered “considerable” security guarantees, and that although there is now a “chance for a real peace process”, “territorial settlement remains a key question”.

Regional security

• Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov called “the EU’s aggressive actions the main threat in the world at the moment”, and claimed that the US is trying to put Europe “in its place”, in an interview with Iranian state television.
• Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, suffered a major email outage. Officials told UK newspaper The Financial Times that they suspect it was a cyberattack, while the Ukraine ceasefire talks were taking place in Berlin.
• Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the new head of the UK’s armed forces, has called for “national resilience” in the face of a “growing” risk from Russia. “It means more people being ready to fight for their country,” Knighton said of the threat from Moscow, while also referring to recent comments from his French counterpart, Fabien Mandon, who said France must be ready to “lose its children”.

US President Donald Trump has said that an agreement to end Russia’s war on Ukraine is “closer than ever” after key leaders held talks in Berlin, but several officials said that significant differences remain over territorial issues.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that he had “very long and very good talks” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the leaders of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and NATO.

“We’re having tremendous support from European leaders. They want to get it [the war] ended also,” he said.

“We had numerous conversations with President [Vladimir] Putin of Russia, and I think we’re closer now than we have been, ever, and we’ll see what we can do.”

Zelenskyy had earlier said that negotiations with US and European leaders were difficult but productive.

The high-level discussions, involving Zelenskyy, a US delegation led by envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and European leaders, took place in Berlin over two days amid mounting pressure from Washington for Kyiv to make concessions to Moscow to end one of Europe’s deadliest conflicts since World War II.

In a statement following the talks, European leaders said they and the US were committed to working together to provide “robust security guarantees” to Ukraine, including a European-led “multinational force Ukraine” supported by the US.

They said the force’s work would include “operating inside Ukraine” as well as assisting in rebuilding Ukraine’s forces, securing its skies and supporting safer seas. They said that Ukrainian forces should remain at a peacetime level of 800,000.

Two US officials, speaking to the Reuters news agency, described the proposed protections as “Article 5-like”, a reference to NATO’s Article 5 mutual defence pledge.

Ukraine had earlier signalled it may be willing to abandon its ambition to join the NATO military alliance in exchange for firm Western security guarantees.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Zelenskyy said that Kyiv needed a clear understanding of the security guarantees on offer before making any decisions on territorial control under a potential peace settlement. He added that any guarantees must include effective ceasefire monitoring.

Ukrainian officials have been cautious about what form such guarantees could take. Ukraine received security assurances backed by the US and Europe after gaining independence in 1991, but those did not prevent Russia’s invasions in 2014 and 2022.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Washington had offered “considerable” security guarantees during the Berlin talks.

“What the US has placed on the table here in Berlin, in terms of legal and material guarantees, is really considerable,” Merz said at a joint news conference with Zelenskyy.

“We now have the chance for a real peace process,” he said, adding that territorial arrangements remain a central issue. “Only Ukraine can decide about territorial concessions. No ifs or buts.”

Merz also said it was essential for the European Union to reach an agreement on using frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine to demonstrate to Moscow that continuing the war is futile. He warned that EU members must share the risks involved in appropriating those assets, or risk damaging the bloc’s reputation.

Meanwhile, the EU has adopted new sanctions targeting companies and individuals accused of helping Russia circumvent Western restrictions on oil exports that help finance the war.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Putin was “open to peace and serious decisions” but opposed to what he described as “temporary respites and subterfuges”.

Reporting from Berlin, Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane said the outcome of the talks remains unclear.

“We know American emissaries were speaking to Ukrainians here in Berlin yesterday and today. Talks between those two groups have finished, according to a statement by Zelenskyy’s office,” Kane said.

“What we don’t yet know is how much of the US-led 28-point plan – parts of which were acceptable to Moscow but strongly opposed by Kyiv and EU officials – remains intact.”

Kane added that the German government has presented a separate 10-point proposal focused on military and intelligence cooperation rather than a peace settlement. European leaders are expected to continue discussions on the remaining areas of disagreement.

Fighting continues

Meanwhile, Ukraine said on Monday that Russia launched 153 drones overnight, with 17 striking their targets.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces destroyed 130 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.

Kyiv said its underwater drones struck a Russian submarine docked at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Ukraine has stepped up naval attacks in recent weeks on what it has described as Russia-linked vessels in the Black Sea.

Russian forces have continued to target the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, with two Turkish cargo ships hit in recent days. Kyiv said the strikes were aimed at Russian targets.

Zelenskyy also accused Moscow of using its attacks as leverage in peace negotiations.

He said Russia has struck every power station in Ukraine as part of its campaign against the country’s energy infrastructure.

This week is shaping up to be crucial for the European Union’s policy on Ukraine. EU foreign ministers met in Brussels on Monday; EU heads of state will gather on Thursday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is meeting United States envoy Steve Witkoff. At the top of the agenda is the peace plan put forward by US President Donald Trump and continuing funding for Ukraine’s war effort.

The European strategy so far has been to alter the US-proposed peace plan in such a way that it becomes completely unacceptable to Russia. This, as European leaders hope, will reinforce the core narrative emanating from their capitals over the past two months – that Russian President Vladimir Putin is just playing games and doesn’t really want peace.

The idea behind it is to try to sway Trump to their side and have him apply additional military and economic pressure on the Kremlin rather than pressing Ukraine into signing an unsavoury peace deal right away. But this effort could easily backfire.

The main practical issue with regards to Ukraine’s capacity to withstand Russian aggression during 2026 is who is going to fund its army as well as its state and social welfare system. Trump proudly states that the US is no longer financing Ukraine’s war effort because, in his parlance, it is “Biden’s war” – ie, his predecessor Joe Biden is to blame.

The burden of funding is now squarely on Europe – the EU and rich non-EU countries, such as the United Kingdom and Norway. The US keeps providing weapons to Ukraine, but these are being paid for with money from European coffers. US intelligence support, crucial in Ukraine’s war planning, is currently available to Kyiv for free.

European leaders have been vocal and aggressive throughout the year in rejecting any realistic compromise that could end the war. But even as 2025 is ending, there is no clarity as to how they are going to back up their jingoistic rhetoric with sufficient funding that would allow Ukraine not just to stay afloat but tip the balance in the conflict in its favour.

Their plan A is what they call the reparations loan. It envisages using the assets of the Russian Central Bank frozen by European banks to fund the Ukrainian defence. This means that rather than spending the money on actual reparations – as in Ukraine’s post-war restoration – it would be spent on the war itself.

The thinking behind this plan is that once Russia suffers a strategic defeat, it would retroactively agree to the confiscation rather than demand its money back, so European governments would not have to reach into their coffers to return the money to the Russians.

The obvious problem here is that exactly nobody – except war cheerleaders who have been promising Russia’s defeat for the past four years – believes this outcome is even remotely realistic. Belgium, which holds the bulk of these assets, is equally sceptical, which is why it opposes this plan. It has been joined by a growing number of EU states, including the Czech Republic and Italy.

The other big problem is that Trump’s peace plan has radically different designs for the assets in question. It envisages using them as actual reparations, as in spending them on restoring Ukraine’s economy. Most crucially, Moscow has on numerous occasions signalled that it agrees with this part of the plan. It considers the money lost and wants to make sure neighbouring Ukraine does not turn into a failed state.

This means that if the reparations loan plan goes ahead, it would undermine the most attractive provision of Trump’s plan. If this happens, the US and the EU may find themselves more at odds with each other than they already are, and that would hardly sway Trump.

His administration has indicated on a number of occasions that it could walk out of the peace process if it is derailed, which means ending any help to Ukraine, be it with weapons or intelligence.

The reparations loan plan also comes with an enormous risk for the European economy. The confiscation of Russian assets would discourage any central bank in the world from keeping its money in Europe, meaning the European banking system stands to lose.

More importantly, this move cannot guarantee that Ukraine would be able to stop Russia’s slow but steady advancement. Securing funding for another year under the current circumstances basically means that more Ukrainian lives and territory will be lost in 2026.

This money cannot in effect counter the biggest threat to Ukraine and its neighbours right now: that of Russia precipitating a humanitarian catastrophe that could spill over into the region by devastating Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this winter. The latest blackout in Odesa when the whole city was left without water and heating in the middle of winter is a dark prelude of things to come.

All this warrants the question of why European leaders are acting the way they are now. Could their irrational radicalism be explained by their extensive political investment in delusional outcomes of this war that they have been selling to voters for the past four years? Or are they engaging in incessant moral posturing so as to avoid being scapegoated for the real outcome of the war?

There is probably a bit of both. But there is perhaps also an even more sinister motive, recently expressed by Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference: the idea that “as long as this war is being fought, … Europe is safe because the Ukrainians have successfully tied down this mighty Russian army.” In other words, there are some within the European political elite who perceive ending the war as being against European interests.

But regardless of what those on top think or are motivated by, the war fatigue in Europe is real. The rise of pro-Russia far-right groups in Germany and elsewhere, capitalising on the ruling elites’ shining ineptitude in handling the conflict with Russia, is a clear sign of that.

If the reparations loan scheme does not pass this week, the EU would have to go to plan B, which envisages loaning money from the EU budget. That, of course, would be met with fierce opposition from the European public.

The failure to secure funding for Ukraine may be seen as an embarrassing failure in Europe, but it would make things easier for Zelenskyy. With his administration losing popularity amid continuing military upsets and a major corruption scandal, Ukraine’s president is well on his way to becoming the chief scapegoat in this debacle.

But no more funding from Europe would allow him to declare that the West has betrayed Ukraine and proceed with the inevitable: accepting an unsavoury peace largely on Russia’s terms.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.