Summary
It is now approaching 6pm in Kyiv. Here is a roundup of the key events from today:
Russian aerial bombs on Thursday targeted the territories of two coalmines in Ukraine’s eastern town of Toretsk, Donetsk region, killing three and injuring at least five civilians on Thursday, the interior minister said.
Ukraine’s parliament voted today to legalise medical marijuana, including for the treatment of PTSD among military personnel. Recreational use of cannabis remains a criminal offence and will still be investigated by the police
Ukraine’s decision to prevent its former president Petro Poroshenko from leaving the country earlier this month to meet Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, raises questions about Kyiv’s EU ambitions, Orbán told a briefing on Thursday.
Yekaterina Duntsova, who is seeking to run against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s next presidential election, has denied that she was backed by a former oil boss who runs an opposition movement from abroad. The state news agency RIA described her as “supported and financed by fugitive oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, [a foreign agent]”, Reuters reports.
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Thursday it regarded joint military exercises by Japan, the US and Australia near the Japanese island of Hokkaido as a “potential military threat”.
Russia has established “comprehensive” defence cooperation with North Korea and is continuing its course of “strategic partnership” with India and China, the chief of the Russian general staff, Valery Gerasimov, has told a briefing of foreign military attaches.
Ukraine’s air defence shot down 34 of 35 Russian drones launched in a major overnight attack on 12 Ukrainian regions, the air force said on Thursday.
Ukraine has received the final €1.5bn (£1.3bn) tranche of the €18bn package from the EU, the country’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said.
The latest cohort of Ukrainian soldiers trained in the UK have returned to the frontline “after weeks of intense training”. Britain has helped train 32,000 Ukrainian troops, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
Updated
Russian bombs targeted the territories of two coalmines in Ukraine’s eastern town of Toretsk, Donetsk region, killing three and injuring at least five civilians on Thursday, the interior minister said.
Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram:
Two bombs hit the territory of one of the mines in Toretsk. One person was killed and two others were injured.
There was a power outage, and 32 miners remained underground but were successfully rescued.
Russia also dropped two bombs on another mine, killing two and injuring three more people, Klymenko added. Administrative buildings and equipment were damaged.
The general prosecutor’s office said those killed were 41, 42 and 45 years old.
Updated
Ukraine’s parliament voted today to legalise medical marijuana, including for the treatment of PTSD among military personnel.
Recreational use of cannabis remains a criminal offence and will still be investigated by the police.
The new law, which will come into effect in six months’ time and will allow cannabis to be used for scientific and industrial ends, was passed by 248 votes in the country’s 401-seat parliament, according to AP.
A full breakdown of the vote wasn’t immediately available. The law was proposed by the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal.
The legalisation of medical marijuana has long been debated in Ukraine. Many people argued in favour of the benefits it can bring, while others feared that legalising medical marijuana would bring an influx of drugs to the streets of Ukrainian cities.
The legislation imposes strict controls on cannabis production and distribution. A doctor’s prescription will be required to obtain medicine containing cannabis.
Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP and the leader of the liberal Golos party, said her party was one of the first to push for medical cannabis be to legalised.
❕@GolosZmin party was the first in the @verkhovna_rada to insist on the importance of legalizing medical cannabis in Ukraine. Today it’s done ✅ Keep working! pic.twitter.com/ahKDHsGN6R
— Kira Rudik (@kiraincongress) December 21, 2023
Updated
Yekaterina Duntsova, the former journalist who plans to run against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s next presidential election, has denied that she was backed by a former oil boss who runs an opposition movement from abroad (13:55).
Updated
Ukraine’s decision to prevent its former president Petro Poroshenko from leaving the country earlier this month to meet Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, raises questions about Kyiv’s EU ambitions, Orbán told a briefing on Thursday.
Ukraine’s Security Service said on 2 December that it had prevented Poroshenko from leaving Ukraine on gthe rounds that Russia planned to exploit a planned meeting with Orbán to hurt Ukrainian interests, Reuters reports.
Poroshenko’s political party, European Solidarity, said the former president had only scheduled meetings in Poland and the US, and warned the SBU security service against becoming involved in politics. Orbán’s office did not comment at the time.
On Thursday, when asked about the Ukrainian decision directly, Orbán said the fact that the Ukrainians introduced special rules in wartime was “acceptable”.
He said:
But a question arises, if a meeting between a Ukrainian citizen and a Hungarian prime minister carries a national security risk, then how do they want to become members of the EU? But let’s leave that for later.
The SBU said Poroshenko planned to meet Orbán, who maintains ties with the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.
When asked about his latest talks with Putin, held in Beijing in October, Orbán said: “I found it natural that once we are in Beijing we should meet.” He added that he would have initiated the meeting himself, had the Russians not offered it.
Orbán has been at odds with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on some issues related to Ukraine’s EU membership bid.
Every EU state except Hungary agreed last week to start accession talks with Ukraine despite its invasion by Russia, bypassing Orbán’s objections by getting him to leave the room when leaders made the decision.
Poroshenko was president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019.
Updated
Yekaterina Duntsova, who is seeking to run against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s next presidential election, has denied she was backed by a former oil boss who runs an opposition movement from abroad.
Reporting on Duntsova’s formal bid to enter the race on Wednesday, the state news agency RIA described her as “supported and financed by fugitive oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky [foreign agent]”, Reuters reports.
“Foreign agent” is a tag applied by Russian authorities to activists and opposition figures they consider to be engaged in harmful political activity financed from outside the country.
Khodorkovsky was the billionaire head of oil firm Yukos but fell foul of Putin and spent 10 years in jail on fraud charges, which he denied, before being released in 2013.
He is now based in London and leads an opposition alliance called Open Russia. Representatives for Khodorkovsky could not immediately be reached for comment.
The wording used by RIA was a first indication of the obstacles Duntsova will face in obtaining balanced, let alone favourable, coverage of her long-shot presidential bid from state media loyal to the Kremlin.
In an interview on Thursday with an opposition YouTube channel, Chestnoye Slovo or Honest Word, the former TV journalist said RIA’s description was an invention.
She said she had “no direct link” to Khodorkovsky. The allegation may have been based, she said, on the fact that her candidacy was supported by Anastasia Burakova, the head of a project called Kovcheg (the Ark) that Khodorkovsky founded to support people who have fled Russia because they oppose the war in Ukraine. Burakova was designated a “foreign agent” soon after Duntsova announced she wanted to run against Putin.
In the interview, Duntsova avoided criticising Putin directly. But she said there was a certain “stagnation” in Russia after 24 years of his rule.
“Prices are rising in an extraordinary fashion practically every day,” she said. “The stability they tell us about doesn’t altogether correspond to reality.”
Duntsova has called for an end to the conflict in Ukraine and the release of political prisoners including Alexei Navalny, the foremost public critic of Putin still in Russia. She also said she would seek to repeal the law on “foreign agents”.
Updated
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Thursday it regarded joint military exercises by Japan, the US and Australia near the Japanese island of Hokkaido as a “potential military threat.”
In a statement, the foreign ministry said:
We regard such provocative activity involving non-regional states as a potential security threat.
It added that it had issued a formal protest to the Japanese embassy in Russia, Reuters reports.
Updated
Summary
It’s coming up to 3.30pm in Kyiv, here are the day’s main developments so far:
Russia has established “comprehensive” defence cooperation with North Korea and is continuing its course of “strategic partnership” with India and China, the chief of the Russian general staff, Valery Gerasimov, has told a briefing of foreign military attaches.
Ukraine’s air defence shot down 34 of 35 Russian drones launched in a major overnight attack on 12 Ukrainian regions, the air force said on Thursday.
Ukraine has received the final €1.5bn (£1.3bn) tranche of the €18bn package from the EU, the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said.
The latest cohort of Ukrainian soldiers trained in the UK have returned to the frontline “after weeks of intense training”. Britain has helped train 32,000 Ukrainian troops, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
Updated
The US Congress left Washington this week for an extended holiday break with several important issues unsettled, including emergency aid for Ukraine and tighter border security, setting the stage for a complicated January.
Lawmakers will face two government-shutdown deadlines and continue efforts to write one piece of legislation that will fund Ukraine’s defence against Russia and slow the flow of migrants through the US-Mexico border.
Meanwhile, Republican voters will begin to choose their nominee to challenge the Democratic president, Joe Biden, in the 2024 election, Reuters reports.
The Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said of the return of Congress on week commencing 8 January:
We will hit the ground running.
Biden has urged Congress to approve an additional $61bn (£48bn) in support for Ukraine’s war effort, which conservative Republicans have demanded be paired with stronger border security laws at a time of record immigrant arrivals.
The House of Representatives speaker, Mike Johnson, and his fellow Republicans have been hammering Biden on border control, an issue causing increasing restlessness among US voters.
Congress also has deadlines of 19 January and 2 February for funding US government programmes. Failure to reach deals on 12 spending bills, after a full year of deficit-reduction battles, would bring widespread government shutdowns.
Bipartisan Senate negotiations are also continuing over the recess with the aim of producing a deal on reforming antiquated US asylum laws. That would open the door to Senate votes to help Ukraine and send US aid to Israel for its war against Hamas in Gaza and to Taiwan.
Updated
Ukraine receives €1.5bn (£1.3bn) payment from EU
Ukraine has received the final €1.5bn (£1.3bn) tranche of the €18bn package from the EU, the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said.
He posted on X:
Today we have received the last €1.5bn of the €18bn financial aid package. Hope for continued unwavering support from the EU.
Updated
Russia confirms 'comprehensive' defence cooperation with North Korea
Russia has established “comprehensive” defence cooperation with North Korea and is continuing its course of “strategic partnership” with India and China, the chief of the Russian general staff, Valery Gerasimov, told a briefing of foreign military attaches on Thursday.
“The course towards developing a comprehensive strategic partnership with China and India continues. Active, comprehensive cooperation has been established with the DPRK,” Gerasimov said in a year-end address, using an official abbreviation for North Korea.
He gave no further details.
He said Nato’s activity in eastern Europe and the “accelerated integration” of Sweden and Finland into the US-defence alliance were negatively affecting the situation in Europe, “with prospects for increased confrontation”, Reuters reports.
Updated
Ukraine managed to down 2,900 of the 3,700 Shahed attack drones Russia has launched since September 2022, when it started a campaign of drone attacks over the country, the air force spokesperson, Yuriy Ihnat, said on Thursday.
Updated
The latest cohort of Ukrainian soldiers trained in the UK have returned to the frontline “after weeks of intense training”.
The UK has helped train 32,000 Ukrainian troops, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
The UK has helped train 32,000 Ukrainian troops for their ongoing fight for freedom. The latest cohort of soldiers has left the UK to return to the frontline in time for Christmas.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) December 21, 2023
This week their new friends in the UK Armed Forces held a Christmas celebration to wish them well. pic.twitter.com/u6xuPJL6Zs
Hungary believes EU funding to Ukraine must not be granted from the EU’s budget and there should be a “sensible” timeline for any financing for Ukraine, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, told a briefing on Thursday.
According to Reuters, Orbán said:
I am convinced that to give Ukraine €50bn from the EU budget for five years … That’s a bad decision.
Updated
The Ukrainian infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, has met his newly appointed counterpart in Poland to discuss a cargo blockage by Polish lorry drivers on their shared border.
The drivers have been blocking the border for more than a month to demand the reintroduction of restrictions to enter the EU for their Ukrainian competitors.
The Ukrainian ministry said:
We held the first meeting with the newly appointed minister of infrastructure of Poland, Dariusz Klimczak, in Warsaw.
It added in separate comments to Agence France-Presse that the meeting had taken place one day earlier.
We discussed several issues in the transport sector but the main topic was the unblocking of the border.
Kubrakov said the meeting had allowed for both parties to explain their positions and the Ukrainian side had presented data that undermined Polish arguments.
“It is important to come to a common understanding of the figures and data on traffic and on market share held by our and Polish carriers,” he said.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images from the news wires.
Updated
Germany will provide an additional €88.5m (£76.6m) to help strengthen the resilience of the Ukrainian energy system as Russia targets its infrastructure, the foreign and economy ministries have said in a joint statement on Thursday.
The economy ministry is contributing €54.3m via the state-owned bank KfW and the foreign ministry €34.2m to the Ukraine energy support fund, the statement says, Reuters reports.
Updated
Ukraine World, an English-language multimedia news site, has posted a graphic of the approximate Russian losses since the start of the war.
Recent updates as of 21.12 👇 pic.twitter.com/DsjCHcP3oJ
— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) December 21, 2023
It cites general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine. The claims have not been independently verified.
Updated
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air defence shot down 34 of 35 Russian drones launched in a major overnight attack on 12 Ukrainian regions, the air force said on Thursday.
Russia launched Iranian-made Shahed drones in several waves from about 8pm (1800 GMT) to 3.30am the air force said on Telegram, targeting Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy among others.
Air alerts in many Ukrainian regions in the centre, southeast and north lasted for hours. There were no immediate reports of major damage or casualties.
In other developments:
Ukraine’s armed forces were taking up a more defensive posture, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said in its latest analysis of the conflict, after their summer counteroffensive failed to achieve a significant breakthrough against Russia’s army and as winter weather sets in after almost 22 months of war. “In recent weeks, Ukraine has mobilised a concerted effort to improve field fortifications as its forces pivot to a more defensive posture along much of the frontline,” the MoD said.
Russia’s tax revenue from exports of oil and petroleum products fell by 32% after a price ceiling was enacted by the US and its allies to restrict funding for its war in Ukraine, US authorities said Wednesday. In a statement published by the Treasury department, the allies also announced that rules surrounding the price cap would be tightened.
Kyiv plans to produce a million FPV (first-person-view) drones, widely in demand on the frontline, and more than 11,000 medium- and long-range attack drones next year, according to Ukraine’s minister for strategic industries. “All production facilities are ready, and contracting for 2024 begins,” Oleksandr Kamyshin, said on Telegram messenger on Wednesday. The figure includes at least 1,000 drones with a range of more than 600 miles(1,000km), he said.
The international rules-based system needs urgent and fundamental change if it is not to collapse, the Estonian foreign minister has said, calling for “a new global conversation” to begin on how to reform the UN and the international criminal court. Writing in the Guardian, Margus Tsahkna said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had highlighted flaws in the system that risk fatally undermining people’s faith in it.
Moldova plans to leave the Commonwealth of Independent States, a Russia-aligned trade and political body, by the end of 2024, parliamentary foreign policy committee head Doina Gherman said on Wednesday. The announcement followed a gradual drawdown of Moldova’s participation in the bloc since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova has put her name forward to stand in a Russian presidential election in March that Vladimir Putin is expected to win by a landslide. Duntsova, 40, is calling for an end to the conflict in Ukraine and the release of political prisoners including opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
A Russian court fined Alphabet’s Google 4.6bn roubles ($50.84m) for failing to delete so-called “fake” information about the conflict in Ukraine and other topics, the Tass news agency reported. The Ria news agency said the fine had also been imposed due to Google failing to remove “extremist content” and the distribution of what Russia calls “LGBT propaganda”.
German federal prosecutors said on Wednesday they were aiming to seize hundreds of millions of euros from an unnamed Russian bank as part of a western crackdown over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “The aim of these proceedings is to seize more than €720m deposited by a Russian financial institution in a bank account in Frankfurt am Main due to a suspected attempt to violate embargo regulations” under German law, the prosecutors office said.
The Kremlin has said there is no current basis for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and that Kyiv’s proposed peace plan was absurd as it excluded Russia. “We really consider that the topic of negotiations is not relevant right now,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters.
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