Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
Vladimir Putin has travelled to Belarus to meet the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, as fears grow in Kyiv that Moscow is pushing its closest ally to join a new ground offensive against Ukraine. Putin described the talks as “very productive” and insisted that Russia has no interest in “absorbing” anyone, adding that unspecified “enemies” wanted to stop Russia’s integration with Belarus. Lukashenko said high level Belarusian-Russian negotiations covered “the entire range of matters concerning Belarusian-Russian relations”.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, held talks with his Belarusian counterpart, Sergei Aleinik, in Minsk earlier today ahead of Putin’s visit to Minsk. The foreign ministers discussed “specific topical issues, the efforts to counter the illegal sanctions of the West, as well as interaction on international platforms”, Belarusian state media cited Belarus’s foreign ministry as saying, as well as having “touched upon trade and economic cooperation matters and the implementation of joint projects”.
Belarus’s defence ministry said it had completed a series of inspections of its armed forces’ military preparedness, hours ahead of Putin’s visit to Minsk. Weeks of military manoeuvres and inspections have raised fears in Kyiv that Belarus, which acted as a staging post for Russia to launch its invasion of Ukraine in February, could be preparing to take a more active role in the conflict once again.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine was ready for “all possible defence scenarios” against Moscow and its ally. “Protecting our border, both with Russia and Belarus, is our constant priority,” Zelenskiy said on Sunday after a meeting with Ukraine’s top military command. “We are preparing for all possible defence scenarios.”
The exiled Belarus opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, has warned that the chances of Minsk sending soldiers into Ukraine “may increase in coming weeks”. Kyiv was “right to prepare” for Minsk to join Moscow’s new offensive because the probability “might increase in coming weeks”, Tsikhanouskaya said in an interview with Kyiv Post.
The head of Moldova’s security service, Alexandru Musteata, has warned of a “very high” risk of a new Russian offensive towards his country’s east. Russia still aims to secure a land corridor through Ukraine to the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, Musteata said, adding that his agency believed Moscow was looking at several scenarios to reach Moldova and that it was possible an offensive would be launched in January-February or later in March-April.
A Russian drone attack caused “fairly serious” damage in Kyiv region on Monday and three areas in the region have been left without power supply, governor Oleksiy Kuleba said. Russia unleashed 35 “kamikaze” drones on Ukraine in the early hours of Monday as many people slept, hitting critical infrastructure in and around Kyiv in Moscow’s third air attack on the Ukrainian capital in six days.
Ukraine’s atomic energy agency accused Russia of flouting nuclear safety by sending a “kamikaze” drone over part of a nuclear power plant in Mykolaiv region just after Sunday midnight. Energoatom said the Iranian-made Shahed drone had been detected over the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant, and called on the international nuclear community to protect atomic sites from the risks of war.
Air raid alerts were issued across Kyiv and most of Ukraine on Monday early afternoon, officials said. There were no immediate reports of attacks and the alarm was ended about 20 minutes after the alert.
Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 30 out of 35 Russian-launched Shahed drones overnight. The Iranian-made Shahed-136/131 kamikaze drones were reportedly launched from the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov, the force added.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had shot down four US-made HARM anti-radiation missiles over the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, in the space of 24 hours, the state-run TASS news agency reported. One person died and several were injured by Ukrainian shelling in the region on Sunday morning, the region’s governor said.
Ukraine’s forces are holding on to the heavily contested eastern city of Bakhmut in the country’s eastern Donetsk region, according to Zelenskiy. “The Bakhmut direction is key,” he said in his latest national address. “We keep the city, although the occupiers are doing everything so that not a single undamaged wall remains there.”
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, said he believes Russia’s war in Ukraine “will go on” and does not see a prospect for “serious” peace talks in the immediate future. Speaking to reporters during his annual end-of-year conference in New York, Guterres said he “strongly hoped that peace could be reached in 2023, citing the “consequences” for Ukraine’s people, Russian society and the global economy if a deal is not found
Rishi Sunak said that the west should reject unilateral calls by the Kremlin for a ceasefire in Ukraine and focus on “degrading Russia’s capability to regroup and to resupply” at a meeting of European leaders in Latvia. The UK prime minister was speaking at a summit of the 10-country Joint Expeditionary Force in the Latvian capital at a time of heightened concern as to whether Britain will continue the robust support for Ukraine that began under Boris Johnson.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, asked western leaders meeting in Latvia to ramp up the supply of a wide range of weapons systems to his country. He called on leaders “to do everything to accelerate the defeat” of Russia, and said supplying air defence systems to Kyiv would be “one of the most successful steps against Russian aggression and this step is required right now”.
EU ministers have agreed a plan to cap the price of gas, ending months of argument over how to handle the cost of soaring energy prices after Russia cut gas supplies to Europe. A gas price cap will kick in if prices on the main European gas exchange, the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF), exceed €180 (£157) a megawatt-hour for three consecutive working days, far lower than the European Commission’s original proposal of €275 a MWh, which had been derided by cap-supporting countries as a joke.
The Canadian government has announced plans to seize $26m in sanctioned assets from the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, with the proceeds from the forfeiture to go towards reconstruction in Ukraine and compensation of victims of the Russian invasion. The move marked the first case of the Canadian government using new powers to pursue the seizure of assets belonging to sanctioned individuals, it said in a statement.
That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine war blog today. Thank you for reading.
Vladimir Putin has described Russian-Belarusian talks in Minsk as “very productive” after his one-on-one meeting with Alexander Lukashenko, Belarusian state media reported.
Speaking to reporters at a joint press conference with his Belarusian counterpart, Putin insisted that Russia has no interest in “absorbing” anyone, and that unspecified “enemies” wanted to stop Russia’s integration with Belarus.
The future of Belarusian and Russian peoples “is being determined now”, Belarusian state-owned news agency Belta cited President Lukashenko as saying. He added:
Today we can unequivocally state: together we were able not only to survive, but also to find opportunities for the development of our economies.
He said negotiations of the two leaders with larger government delegations in Minsk had been productive, and said they discussed “the entire range of matters concerning Belarusian-Russian relations”, according to Belta.
