Electricity blackouts due to Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure are crippling its economy, including in key sectors such as mining and manufacturing. A report in the Washington Post said Ukraine needs another $2bn a month on top of the $55bn already projected for next year to meet basic expenses.
The head of Ukraine’s armed forces believes Russia will make a renewed attempt to capture the capital, Kyiv, after its attack earlier this year was repelled. In an interview with the Economist, Gen Valeriy Zaluzhny said he was trying to prepare for Russian forces having another go at taking the city, possibly in February or March.
In an interview with the Guardian, Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said its forces were preparing for Russia to launch a major offensive in the new year. Reznikov said that while Ukraine was now able to successfully defend itself against Russia’s missile attacks targeting key infrastructure, including the energy grid, evidence was emerging that the Kremlin was preparing a broad new offensive.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in an online address to the European Council that the next six months of the conflict would be “decisive in many respects”.
Vladimir Putin said Russia would try to overcome the financial impact of sanctions by selling gas to its eastern neighbours. In a televised speech, he said Russia would develop its economic ties with countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Kherson city was without electricity after heavy shelling, according to the head of the regional military administration. “At the first opportunity, the power industry will begin to restore power grids,” Yaroslav Yanushevich said on his Telegram account.
A former Russian deputy prime minister who is one of the country’s wealthiest men is one of the latest people to be placed under sanctions by the US government for ties to Putin and the war. Vladimir Potanin has had restrictions placed on him because of his involvement in Interros, a conglomerate that works across several sectors including manufacturing, construction and finance.
A Russian airbase in Kursk was struck on Wednesday night, a senior Ukrainian official said. Anton Gerashchenko, a senior adviser to Zelenskiy, said an “unknown drone” struck the military facility.
Russian shelling killed two people on Thursday in the centre of Kherson, a Ukrainian official said. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president’s office, said the two were killed about 100 metres from the regional administration building, which was hit in shelling on Wednesday.
The UN diplomat in charge of aid said it was unlikely the Black Sea grain deal would be expanded to include more ports or reduce inspection times. Kyiv has called for an expansion of the deal with Moscow, which allows safe passage for ships carrying grain out of three Ukrainian ports. More than 14m tonnes of grain have been exported since the deal was agreed, the UN said on Thursday.
Ukrainian forces shelled the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk overnight, Russian-installed officials in the annexed areas said on Thursday. “At exactly seven o’clock this morning they subjected the centre of Donetsk to the most massive attack since 2014,” Alexei Kulemzin, the Russian-backed mayor of the city, said on Telegram.
The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that all weapons supplied to Ukraine by the west were legitimate targets for Russia, and that they would be destroyed or seized.
EU member states failed to agree on a ninth package of Russia sanctions in talks late on Wednesday, diplomats said, as EU leaders gathered in Brussels on Thursday for their last summit of the year. Countries moved closer to a deal in Wednesday’s negotiations but Poland and some other countries still have objections, one EU diplomat told Reuters, adding that a new draft was expected to be circulated on Thursday evening.
Two people were injured in continued shelling in the Nikopol area on Thursday. The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk oblast, Valentyn Reznichenko, said a 66-year-old man was being treated in hospital and a 67-year-old woman was being treated at home.
Russia’s recent deployment of additional units of mobilised reservists to Belarus will be unlikely to constitute a force capable of conducting a successful new assault into northern Ukraine, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. On 13 December, Belarus carried out a “snap combat readiness inspection of its forces”, the ministry notes in its latest intelligence report.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said further strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure could lead to a serious deterioration of the humanitarian situation and further displacement. In a speech to the Human Rights Council after a trip to Ukraine, Türk said Russian strikes were exposing millions of people to “extreme hardship”.
A UN senior official on Thursday voiced optimism that there would be a breakthrough in negotiations to ease exports of Russian fertilisers. “I am cautiously optimistic that we can have important progress soon,” Rebeca Grynspan said in Geneva.
Russia said on Thursday it had received an apology from the Vatican over Pope Francis’s comments last month that Russian soldiers from some minority ethnic groups were the “cruellest” fighters in the Ukraine conflict. At a briefing in Moscow, the foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Russia now considered the matter closed and hoped for a constructive dialogue between Russia and the Vatican.
