Summary
The time in Kyiv is just coming up to 9pm. Here’s a summary of the latest events:
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the frontline city of Bakhmut. He met military representatives and handed out awards to soldiers, his office has said.
A blast ripped through the Urengoi-Pomary-Uzhhorod gas exporting pipeline that leads from Russia through Ukraine. Reuters reported that three people died in the incident.
Ukraine was warned to prepare for new Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure. Its prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said Moscow wanted his people to spend Christmas and new year in darkness.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said the situation in four areas of eastern Ukraine – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – that Moscow illegally annexed in September, was “extremely difficult”. Russia’s illegal annexation of the four territories, which together make up 15% of Ukraine, marked the largest forcible takeover of territory in Europe since the second world war and was condemned by Kyiv and its western allies as illegal. Russia has suffered acute setbacks in the areas, halting its ambitions.
The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, on Tuesday condemned Iran’s support for Russia in its war in Ukraine and the ongoing repression of opposition in the country, but said the EU would continue to work with Iran on restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. “Necessary meeting with Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in Jordan amid deteriorating Iran-EU relations,” Borrell tweeted ahead of a regional conference being hosted by Jordan.
Ukraine is accelerating efforts to erase the vestiges of Soviet and Russian influence from its public spaces by pulling down monuments and renaming hundreds of streets to honour its own artists, poets, soldiers, independence leaders and others – including heroes of this year’s war. Following Moscow’s invasion that has killed or injured untold numbers of civilians and soldiers and pummelled buildings and infrastructure, Ukraine’s leaders have shifted a campaign that once focused on dismantling its communist past into one of “de-Russification”.
China says Chinese-Russian naval drills beginning on Wednesday aim to “further deepen” cooperation between the sides whose unofficial anti-western alliance has gained strength since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, AP reports. The drills will be held off the coast of Zhejiang province south of Shanghai until next Tuesday, according to a brief notice posted Monday by China’s eastern theatre command under the ruling Communist party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army.
Putin was in Belarus on Monday, where he and the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, hardly mentioning the war raging in nearby Ukraine, conducted a late-night joint news conference, Reuters reports. Russian forces used Belarus as a launchpad for their abortive attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in February, and there has been Russian and Belarusian military activity there for months.
Asked about Putin’s comment dismissing the prospect of Russia “absorbing” Belarus, the US state department spokesperson Ned Price said it should be treated as the “height of irony”, given it was “coming from a leader who is seeking at the present moment, right now, to violently absorb his other peaceful nextdoor neighbour”. He added that Washington would continue to watch very closely whether or not Belarus would provide additional support to Putin and would respond “appropriately” if it did.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, held talks with his Belarusian counterpart, Sergei Aleinik, in Minsk ahead of Putin’s visit. 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”.
Zelenskiy urged Georgia on Monday to allow its jailed former president to go abroad for treatment to safeguard his health.
Mikheil Saakashvili, president of Georgia from 2004 to 2013, was initially credited with implementing reforms. He was later sentenced to six years in prison on abuse of power charges his supporters say are politically motivated.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 could be preparing to take a more active role in the conflict once again.
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.”
We’re pausing this live blog for now, but will reopen it should there be any major developments.
Updated
Two Turkish military transport aircraft that had been stranded in Ukraine since the beginning of the war 10 months ago safely returned to Turkey on Tuesday, the defence ministry has said.
Reuters reports that the two Airbus A400M military transport planes of the Turkish air force had flown to Kyiv-Boryspil airport just as Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
The defence ministry said the two aircraft had gone to Kyiv to deliver humanitarian supplies and evacuate Turkish citizens, but became stuck at Kyiv’s airport when Ukrainian air space was closed due to the outbreak of hostilities.
The two aircraft left Ukraine on Tuesday afternoon and arrived at the airport in the central Turkish city of Kayseri in the evening, a defence ministry statement said.
Updated
