Closing Summary
It is approaching 5pm in Ukraine. Here’s a roundup of the day’s events:
Ukraine shot down 24 of 28 Shahed drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that damaged residential buildings in Kyiv and an infrastructure facility and grain warehouse in southern regions, officials said.
More than two dozen Russian drones targeted Ukraine’s capital, hitting the 24th, 25th and 26th storeys of an apartment building and injuring two people, and causing lesser damage to several other residential buildings, according to Reuters.
In the south, Russia again tried to hit port infrastructure – a frequent target since it pulled out of a UN-brokered deal that allowed safe passage of Ukrainian grain shipments through the Black Sea.
On Friday, Russia said its air defences intercepted five Ukrainian drones south of Moscow in the space of less than an hour. The defence ministry said four were intercepted over Kaluga region and a fifth was destroyed inside the Moscow region.
Russia may sever diplomatic ties with the US if Washington confiscates Russian assets frozen over the Ukrainian conflict, the Interfax news agency quoted the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, as saying on Friday.
Russia will never leave in peace any country that seizes its assets, the Kremlin said on Friday, saying it would look at what western assets it could seize in retaliation in such a scenario. The Kremlin was commenting on an idea being actively discussed in the west, where some politicians have suggested that frozen Russian assets worth $300bn be handed to Ukraine.
The Dutch government will send an initial 18 F-16 jets to Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Friday following a conversation with the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte.
Russia is ready to swiftly respond in kind to Washington deploying short- and medium-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said.
The Kremlin accused the Wall Street Journal of publishing “pulp fiction” on Friday after it reported that the death of the mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash had been orchestrated by a Russian security official, Nikolai Patrushev.
A top Russian diplomat has said Moscow and Washington were still engaged in sensitive negotiations over a prisoner exchange, but accused the US side of leaking details to the media.
The United States said on Friday it would place sanctions on foreign banks that supported Russia’s war in Ukraine, in a new bid to exert economic pressure on Moscow as it diversifies from the west to China.
The Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, visited Kyiv on Friday to present an aid package for Ukraine on his first official foreign visit, a ministry spokesperson said.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, held a telephone call with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Friday to discuss ways to de-escalate the conflict in Gaza as well as humanitarian relief efforts, the Kremlin said.
The renowned Russian writer Boris Akunin, who was declared a terrorist by Moscow and became the target of a criminal inquiry this week, says he fears the moves signal a new milestone in the country’s history under Vladimir Putin. “Putin’s regime has clearly decided to take a very important new step on its way from a police, autocratic state to a totalitarian state,” Akunin, who lives in exile, told Agence France-Presse.
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Photojournalist Jelle Krings has been documenting Ukraine’s flower industry since the start of the Russian invasion, looking at how it helps the country cope with war. From a greenhouse production plant built with Dutch technologies, we follow the supply chain of flowers throughout the country to the people who use them, exploring the meaning of flowers in Ukraine’s wartime society.
At the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Moscow’s troops just a few miles away from Kyiv, a sudden explosion from an incoming mortar sent shock waves through the glass of one of the largest greenhouses in the outskirts of the capital. Despite the chaos, a few hours after the blast a small group of workers inside the facility carried on with their invisible yet crucial task for the country’s morale and resilience – to cut flowers.
Read more here by Lorenzo Tondo and Jelle Krings:
The United States on Friday issued a general licence authorising some transactions with Russia’s sanction-hit Expobank through to 21 March, according to a notice posted on the US Treasury’s website.
Expobank has proposed to buy HSBC’s unit in Russia and the general licence should ease the British lender’s long-awaited departure from the country.
Washington imposed sanctions on Expobank earlier this month.
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President Joe Biden’s new executive order strengthening US sanctions against Russia will put new pressure on banks to ensure that their services are not being used to aid Russia’s efforts to circumvent sanctions, the US deputy treasury secretary, Wally Adeyemo said on Friday.
Adeyemo said in an interview on CNBC that most major financial institutions were adhering to US sanctions aimed at preventing Russia from acquiring materials needed for its war effort. But the new executive order due to be signed on Friday allows the Treasury to target banks in countries such as China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates that may be willingly or unwittingly helping Russia evade sanctions, Adeyemo said.
“What this tool says is that if you’re a financial institution, you need to take steps to make sure that you are not being used” by Russian front companies to evade sanctions, he said.
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Dutch government to deliver F-16 jets to Ukraine
The Dutch government will send an initial 18 F-16 jets to Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Friday following a conversation with the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte.
“We discussed frontline developments, the situation in the Black Sea, and Ukraine’s current military needs, including artillery, drones, and air defence,” Zelenskiy wrote on X.
“We agreed to continue our joint work on security guarantees following the G7 Vilnius Declaration. We also discussed the next Peace Formula meeting and efforts to further consolidate international support for the Ukrainian vision of a just peace.”
The delivery of the fighter jets is still pending on an export permit by the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs and the fulfillment of criteria for staff and infrastructure in Ukraine, Rutte added without giving a timeline for these decisions.
But the announcement made it possible to reserve funds and people to prepare the planes for delivery, the government said.
“Today I informed President Zelenskiy of our government’s decision to prepare an initial 18 F-16 fighter aircraft for delivery to Ukraine,” Rutte wrote on X.
📞: I spoke with President @ZelenskyyUa again this morning. Naturally, we discussed the European Council’s important decision last week to launch accession negotiations with Ukraine. I’m impressed with Ukraine’s progress so far, and the Netherlands stands ready to help Ukraine as…
— Mark Rutte (@MinPres) December 22, 2023
“The delivery of F-16s is one of the most important elements of the agreements made on military support for Ukraine.”
The Netherlands sent its first U.S. made F-16s to a new training facility for Ukrainian pilots and staff in Romania last month. Denmark, Norway and Belgium have also announced they will give F-16 jets to Ukraine, after the US government approved sending them to defend against Russia as soon as pilot training is completed.
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The Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, visited Kyiv on Friday to present an aid package for Ukraine on his first official foreign visit, a ministry spokesperson said.
Poland has been involved in humanitarian and military assistance for neighbouring Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Poland also welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees.
“This is an important visit because he is the first politician of this rank to appear in Kiyv after the EU’s decision to start the accession process with Ukraine and Moldova,” a ministry spokesperson, Pawel Wronski, was quoted by the news agency PAP as saying.
All 27 EU states except Hungary agreed last week to start accession talks with Ukraine.
Sikorski will also meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the spokesperson said.
“The minister is preparing and presenting an aid package for Ukraine, as well as an idea for cooperation and political support,” he said.
“Poland cannot only be a military hub, but should also be an economic and political hub for Ukraine. The minister will declare support for Ukrainian aspirations and for Ukraine’s preparations for EU membership.”
One problem that has overshadowed Polish-Ukrainian relations in recent weeks is the issue of grain from Ukraine and a blockade of several border crossings by truck drivers. The countries’ farm ministers held online talks, the Ukrainian ministry said on the Telegram messenger app on Friday.
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Russia says drones shot down near Moscow
Russia said its air defences intercepted five Ukrainian drones south of Moscow in the space of less than an hour on Friday.
The defence ministry said four were intercepted over Kaluga region and a fifth was destroyed inside the Moscow region, Reuters reports
Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, apparently referring to the latter incident, said fragments of the drone had fallen in the city of Podolsk but no casualties or damage had been reported.
Drone attacks aimed at Moscow have subsided since the summer, when they repeatedly hit a business district of the capital and forced frequent airport closures.
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The UK’s Ministry of Defence has posted this map showing the current state of the front line in Ukraine:
The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) December 22, 2023
The map below is the latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 23 December 2023.
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/o4WH85VnAr #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/tEdXWST49L
Ukraine shot down 24 of 28 Shahed drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that damaged residential buildings in Kyiv and an infrastructure facility and grain warehouse in southern regions, officials said.
Reuters reports that more than two dozen Russian drones targeted Ukraine’s capital, hitting the 24th, 25th and 26th storeys of an apartment building and injuring two people, and causing lesser damage to several other residential buildings.
In the south, Russia again tried to hit port infrastructure – a frequent target since it pulled out of a UN-brokered deal that allowed safe passage of Ukrainian grain shipments though the Black Sea.
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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, held a telephone call with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Friday to discuss ways to de-escalate the conflict in Gaza as well as humanitarian relief efforts, the Kremlin said.
It said the two men agreed that Abbas would visit Russia at a date to be agreed.
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Here are the latest images coming across the wires from Ukraine:
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The United States said Friday it would place sanctions on foreign banks that supported Russia’s war in Ukraine, in a new bid to exert economic pressure on Moscow as it diversifies from the west to China.
Under an executive order to be signed on Friday by the president, Joe Biden, the US would be authorised to issue so-called secondary sanctions against financial institutions that supported Russia’s defence industry, officials told Agence France-Presse.
The US, the world’s largest economy, was sending a message to financial institutions that they have “a very stark choice”, a senior official said on customary condition of anonymity.
“Ultimately, for almost any bank in the world, you give them the choice between continuing to sell a modest amount of goods to Russia’s military-industrial complex or being connected to the US financial system – they’re going to choose being connected to the US financial system, given that our economy is far bigger, and our currency is the one used around the world,” he said.
But Russia has been seeking to reduce reliance on dollars, euros and yen since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered a wave of western sanctions.
China’s largest banks have extended billions of dollars worth of credit in renminbi to Russia since the war as western institutions exit.
The US official voiced hope that European and US banks, while not directly invested in Russia, would put pressure on partners operating in the country.
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Uzbekistan’s foreign ministry has summoned the Russian ambassador over a call by a Russian politician to annex the former Soviet republic, it said late on Thursday.
The Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, who is co-chair of the A Just Russia – For Truth party, said this week he believed Russia should annex Uzbekistan and other countries whose citizens travelled en masse to Russia for work.
The Uzbek foreign ministry told the Russian ambassador, Oleg Malginov, on Thursday that Tashkent was “deeply concerned” about the “provocative” comments.
Malginov, in turn, said Prilepin’s comments had nothing to do with the official Kremlin position, the ministry said.
Millions of migrant labourers from formerly Soviet republics in Central Asia work in Russia, and their presence sometimes leads to economic and ethnic tensions. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and later other areas of Ukraine has caused unease among other ex-Soviet republics.
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Renowned Russian writer Boris Akunin, who was declared a “terrorist” by Moscow and became the target of a criminal inquiry this week, says he fears the moves signal a new milestone in the country’s history under Vladimir Putin.
“Putin’s regime has clearly decided to take a very important new step on its way from a police, autocratic state to a totalitarian state,” Akunin, who lives in exile, told Agence France-Presse in a video interview.
“Extending repression to the sphere of literature in such a traditionally literature-centred country as Russia is a major step.”
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, authorities have taken their crackdown to a new level, introducing censorship and shutting down independent media.
This week authorities sent shock waves across Russia’s literary circles by adding Akunin’s name to Moscow’s list of “terrorists and extremists” and opening a criminal probe against him over his criticism of Russia’s invasion.
The measures were announced soon after Putin said he would seek a fifth term in office in 2024.
“This has not happened since the Stalin era and the time of the Great Terror,” Akunin said, referring to his “terrorist” designation.
A top Russian diplomat has said Moscow and Washington were still engaged in sensitive negotiations over a prisoner exchange, but accused the U.S. side of leaking details to the media.
The United States said on 5 December that Russia had rejected a “new and significant” proposal for the release of Paul Whelan, a former US marine serving a 16-year sentence in Russia for spying, and US reporter Evan Gershkovich, awaiting trial in Moscow on espionage charges.
Both men deny they are spies and the US has designated them as “wrongfully detained” by Russia.
The Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told Interfax news agency in an interview published on Friday: “The issue of exchanges of citizens serving prison terms in Russia and the United States is extremely delicate. Decisions in this area are often hampered by being actively discussed in public.”
He said that contacts about possible exchanges were conducted by the intelligence services of both countries.
“It is interesting that the participants in these contacts on the American side insist on their complete confidentiality. We also adhere to this line, but then certain twists occur when the White House regularly arranges ‘leaks’ and begins to discuss sensitive issues in the public space.”
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said last week that Moscow hoped to reach an agreement but that Washington needed to listen to Russia’s conditions, which he did not specify.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Wednesday that Washington was very actively pursuing the release of Whelan and Gershkovich and would “leave no stone unturned” to find a way of getting them home.
The two countries have agreed high-profile prisoner swaps in the past – most recently in December 2022 when Moscow traded Brittney Griner, a US basketball star convicted of a drugs offence in Russia – for Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout.
The Wall Street Journal has vehemently denied that its reporter Gershkovich is a spy. He was detained in March and is accused of trying to obtain military secrets.
Whelan, arrested in 2018, was quoted by the BBC this week as saying he felt “abandoned” by the United States and his life was “draining away” in a Russian penal colony. The White House said on Thursday it was “very concerned” about reports that Whelan felt under physical threat in prison.
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Kremlin accuses Wall Street Journal of 'publishing fiction' over Prigozhin report
The Kremlin accused the Wall Street Journal of publishing “pulp fiction” on Friday after it reported that the death of mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash had been orchestrated by Russian security official Nikolai Patrushev.
The WSJ reported that Prigozhin’s private plane was downed by a small bomb placed under a wing, citing interviews with Western intelligence agencies, former US and Russian security and intelligence officials, and former Kremlin officials. The report also said the Kremlin’s denial of involvement and Putin’s suggestion that a hand grenade had detonated onboard were false.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had seen the story but would not comment on it, before adding: “Lately, unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal has been very fond of producing pulp fiction.”
The Journal said the assassination was two months in the making and approved by Putin’s ally and former spy, Nikolai Patrushev, according to Western intelligence officials and a former Russian intelligence officer.
“On the tarmac of a Moscow airport in late August, Yevgeny Prigozhin waited on his Embraer Legacy 600 for a safety check to finish before it could take off,” the report said.
“Through the delay, no one inside the cabin noticed the small explosive device slipped under the wing. When the jet finally left, it climbed for about 30 minutes to 28,000 feet, before the wing blew apart, sending the aircraft spiraling to the ground.”
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Kremlin hits back at claim $300bn in seized Russian assets could be handed to Ukraine
Russia will never leave in peace any country that seizes its assets, the Kremlin said on Friday, saying it would look at what western assets it could seize in retaliation in such a scenario.
The Kremlin was commenting on an idea being actively discussed in the west, where some politicians have suggested that frozen Russian assets worth $300bn be handed to Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a briefing that any such seizure would deal a serious blow to the international financial system and that Russia would defend its rights in the courts and through other means if it happened.
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Here are the latest images coming across the wires from Ukraine:
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Russia is ready to swiftly respond in kind to Washington deploying short- and medium-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said.
Ryabkov said Moscow was closely tracking US missile development and potential deployments and was ready to swiftly take the necessary political decisions to respond in kind, the Interfax news agency reported.
Interfax also cited him as saying that Moscow and Washington remained in contact over a potential prisoner swap between the two countries.
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The Ukrainian military shot down 24 of 28 attack drones launched overnight by Russia, Kyiv’s air force said on Friday.
The Iranian-made drones were destroyed over parts of central, southern and western Ukraine. At least two injuries were reported in the capital, Kyiv.
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Russia may sever diplomatic ties with the US if Washington confiscates Russian assets frozen over the Ukrainian conflict, the Interfax news agency quoted the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, as saying on Friday.
The US “must not act under an illusion … that Russia is clinging with both hands to diplomatic relations with that country,” Ryabkov said.
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Opening summary
Two people were injured in what was Moscow’s sixth drone attack on Kyiv this month, Mayor Vitali Klitschko and other officials have reported.
One drone hit a block of flats in the Solomyanskyi district, south of the city centre, triggering a fire on the upper floors that was quickly brought under control and injuring two people, Klitschko and emergency services said on Telegram.
A video posted on social media showed a giant orange flame going skyward in the night.
Klitschko also said drone fragments had set fire to a house under construction in Darnytskyi district on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River that runs through the city.
Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, reported fragments from a downed drone had struck an apartment building in a third area – Holosiivskyi district – also south of the city centre.
A Russian drone attack hit a residential building and injured one person in Kyiv on Thursday, authorities said, in a rare breach of the Ukrainian capital’s air defences. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that the incident occurred in the Solomianskyi district, reporting “flames on the upper floors” and one man admitted to hospital.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine was receiving signals that Russia’s military planning and activity were slowing. “The enemy’s plans, the work of the Russian defence [industry]. There are signals indicating a slowdown. We will continue to support their slowdown,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, citing a military intelligence directorate (HUR) report. It was not immediately clear whether the president was referring specifically to the Russian defence industry or to Russian tactics and objectives in a broader sense.
Russia has launched about 7,400 missiles and 3,700 Shahed attack drones at targets in Ukraine during its 22-month-old invasion, Kyiv said, illustrating the vast scale of Moscow’s aerial assaults. Ukrainian air defences were able to shoot down 1,600 of the missiles and 2,900 of the drones, air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said in televised comments.
Ukraine has received the last €1.5bn ($1.65bn) tranche from the €18bn package from the European Union for 2023, prime minister Denys Shmyhal said. “Hope for continued unwavering support from the EU,” Shmyhal said on X. The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, last week blocked a €50bn EU aid package for Ukraine.
Orbán insisted on calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “military operation”, mirroring language used by the Kremlin. “It is a military operation … as long as there is no declaration of war between the two countries,” the nationalist leader told reporters during his annual press conference. “When the Russians declare war on Ukraine, then it will be war.
Orbán also said he had accepted an invitation from Zelenskiy to hold a bilateral meeting in the future, a potential first between the two leaders since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Orbán said he agreed to Zelenskiy’s proposal during a brief conversation on the sidelines of the swearing-in ceremony for Argentina’s new president earlier this month. “[Zelenskiy] said, ‘We should negotiate,’ and I told him I’d be at his disposal. We just have to clarify one question: about what?” Orbán said.
Russia issued an arrest warrant for Maria Pevchikh, a longtime ally of jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who has not been seen for over two weeks. The Kremlin has doubled down on its repression of Russia’s already-weakened civil society, since ordering troops into Ukraine early last year.
Ukraine’s parliament voted this week to legalise medical marijuana, after the war with Russia left thousands of people with post-traumatic stress disorder that many believe could be eased by the drug, the AP reported. The new law, which will come into effect in six months and which also allows cannabis to be used for scientific and industrial ends, passed by 248 votes in the 401-seat parliament in Kyiv.
Exports of goods from Russia to China will reach a record of more than $110bn in 2023, the Russian first deputy prime minister Andrei Belousov said. Moscow has deepened its already close ties with China to try to offset western sanctions imposed over what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Ukraine and a group of its western creditors signed an agreement on Thursday to extend through March 2027 a debt payment suspension first agreed in September 2022, the Ukrainian finance ministry said. “I am grateful to our partners from the G7 countries for understanding Ukraine’s needs in the time of war,” Ukraine’s minister of finance, Sergii Marchenko, said in a statement.
Ukraine Russian shelling had left three people dead and several more injured at coalmining facilities in Toretsk, a town in the war-battered eastern Donetsk region. The region has seen the brunt of fighting of Russia’s nearly two-year invasion, and the Kremlin claimed to have annexed it along with three other eastern and southern territories last year.
The Ukrainian infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, said he had met with his newly appointed counterpart in Poland to discuss a cargo blockage on their shared border by Polish truckers. The truckers have been blocking the border for over a month to demand the reintroduction of restrictions to enter the European Union for their Ukrainian competitors.
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