Russia-Ukraine war: frontline troops suffering from ‘exceptional rat and mice infestation’ – as it happened

Ukrainian service members near the frontline town of Bakhmut. Photograph: Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters

3.45pm GMT

Closing summary

• Former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova has said she will challenge in the supreme court the decision to disqualify her from running in the Russian presidential election next year, calling it unjustified and undemocratic.

• Fighting age Ukrainian men in Estonia could be extradited to their home country and forced to join the war effort amid a shortage of soldiers. Estonia’s public broadcaster ERR reports that the Baltic nation stands ready to support Ukraine in its proposals to conscript Ukrainian men abroad for military service.

• The Communist party of Russia, the second largest party in parliament, has selected a 75-year-old candidate, Nikolai Kharitonov, who won just under 14% of the national vote when he stood against Putin in 2004, to stand in the presidential polls.

• The assassination of the Wagner mercenary army chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was approved by a close ally of Vladimir Putin, the Wall Street Journal has reported after conversations with western intelligence officials and a former Russian intelligence officer.

• Financial institutions that support the Russian military-industrial complex are to be blacklisted in the US after president Joe Biden signed an executive order yesterday to deny banks under sanctions access to the American financial system.

• Protesting Polish truckers have unblocked the key border crossing of Shehyni-Medyka between Poland and Ukraine, Kyiv’s economy minister Yulia Svyrydenko announced, hailing an “important improvement”.

Updated at 4.07pm GMT

3.41pm GMT

Some of the latest images coming out of Ukraine and Russia.

Police officers check the documents of relatives of Russian soldiers as they gather to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow on 23 December. The woman’s coat says on its back: ‘Bring my husband back, I’m tired of it.’ Photograph: Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

Ukrainian serviceman Vadym greets his wife Lydiia, who is visiting him during his short break from frontline duty, at the train station in Kramatorsk on 23 December. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

Damanged roof of a high-rise residential building hit by a kamikaze drone’s fragment explosion in Kyiv’s Solomyanskyi region on 22 December. Photograph: Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images

Updated at 3.50pm GMT