Closing summary
Thanks for following the Russia-Ukraine war live blog today. It will be closed shortly but you can continue to follow the Guardian’s latest reporting from Ukraine here.
Chris Stein will be covering Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s address to the US senate later today over on the US politics live blog (he is due to speak at 8pm GMT).
Below is a closing summary of today’s key posts.
Six children will be returned to Ukraine from Russia under a deal brokered by Qatar, according to a Qatari official. The children are en route to Ukraine via Moscow, the source said. This is the second phase of a Qatar-mediated return of children, after four minors were returned in October.
British foreign secretary David Cameron has told the House of Lords that there will be no reduction in UK military support for Ukraine in 2024. The update comes after the White House yesterday warned that “it is weeks away from running out of money to support Kyiv’s defence against Russia’s invasion”.
At least two people were killed and one wounded after Russian forces struck the southern city of Kherson, the head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency said. Regional prosecutors opened a war crimes investigation into one of the strikes, which occurred at about 9am and killed a 48-year-old man and a woman who had not yet been identified.
Russia claims it downed dozens of Ukrainian drones overnight. Russian air defence systems destroyed or intercepted a total of 41 Ukraine-launched drones overnight and early morning, the Russian defence ministry has said.
Ukraine’s military shot down 10 out of 17 attack drones launched overnight by Russia, Ukrainian authorities said. The governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyy, said three drones had struck an unspecified infrastructure target, causing a fire, but damage had been minimal and no casualties had been reported.
Updated
British foreign secretary says there will be no reduction in UK support for Ukraine in 2024
British foreign secretary David Cameron has told the House of Lords that there will be no reduction in UK military support for Ukraine next year.
Cameron said the UK has so far provided humanitarian and economic support worth more than £4.7bn to Ukraine and that it will continue to provide support. Cameron said he did not have the exact figures for next year’s spending to hand, but he said support will continue at the scale it has been before, or beyond that.
