Five killed in Russian attacks on Kherson region; Ukrainian Orthodox Christians prepare to mark Christmas on 25 December for first time

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Russian attacks on southern Ukraine’s Kherson region killed five civilians on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said. Regional police said three people died in shelling of an apartment building and a private home in Kherson city. A woman died in a drone attack in a small town south of Kherson and a second woman was killed when a town farther north came under heavy fire.

Ukrainian shelling killed one woman and wounded six civilians in the town of Horlivka, an area of Ukraine’s Donetsk region under Russian control, a Russian-installed official said. A shopping centre and several other buildings were destroyed, the mayor of Horlivka, Ivan Prikhodko, said on Telegram.

Polish farmers have ended their blockade of one of the border crossings between Ukraine and Poland and the movement of lorries has been fully restored, the Ukrainian border service has said. Drivers have been blocking several crossings with Ukraine since 6 November, demanding that the EU reinstate a system under which Ukrainian companies need permits to operate in the bloc, and the same for European truckers seeking to enter Ukraine.

Ukrainian Orthodox Christians attended services on Sunday as the country for the first time celebrated Christmas on 25 December, after the government changed the date from 7 January, when most Orthodox believers celebrate, as a snub to Russia. “All Ukrainians are together,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a Christmas message released Sunday evening. “We all celebrate Christmas together. On the same date, as one big family, as one nation, as one united country.”

Russian and Ukrainian military officials both reported downing enemy aircraft on Sunday in different areas of the 1,000-km-long (621-mile) front. The commander of Ukraine’s air force, Mykola Oleshchuk, said Ukrainian anti-aircraft units had struck a Russian Su-34 fighter bomber near the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine. Oleshchuk, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the aircraft had not returned to its base, but gave no further details.

Russia’s defence ministry said earlier that its air defence systems had shot down four Ukrainian military aircraft over the past 24 hours – just two days after Zelenskiy said Kyiv had downed three Russian aircraft. In its daily dispatch, the Russian defence ministry said its air defence shot down three Su-27 fighter aircraft and one Su-24 tactical bomber in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions of southeastern Ukraine. The dispatch provided no further details.

Hundreds of supporters of Igor Girkin, a jailed former commander of Russian-backed fighters in Ukraine, rallied in Moscow on Sunday to back his bid to stand for president. Better known by his alias Igor Strelkov, Girkin was a key leader of separatist fighters in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The nationalist has strongly criticised Russia’s military strategy in Ukraine for being “too kind”. He was detained in July on an extremism charge after a series of posts critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to easily win re-election.

Russia launched 15 drones at Ukraine, mostly in the south of the country, overnight with air defences destroying 14 of them, Ukrainian military said on Sunday. “As a result of air combat, Ukraine’s air force and defence forces destroyed 14 shaheds in Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro and Khmelnytskyi regions,” the Ukrainian air force said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russian shelling and drone attacks reported in region of Kherson; Ukrainians plan to celebrate Christmas on 25 December for the first time

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Waves of Russian shelling and drone attacks struck the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson on Saturday, killing one person and injuring seven, officials in the region said. Russian forces also shelled a power station closer to the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, injuring five workers and knocking out electricity to the town of Kurakhovo.

Many Ukrainians will on Monday celebrate Christmas Day on 25 December for the first time, after the government changed the date from the Orthodox Church observance of 7 January in a snub to Russia, Agence France-Presse reports. The law signed by president Volodymyr Zelenskiy noted that Ukrainians wanted to “live their own life with their own traditions and holidays”. It allows them to “abandon the Russian heritage of imposing Christmas celebrations on 7 January”, it added. Christianity is the largest religion in Ukraine, with the Russian Orthodox Church dominating religious life until recently.

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.

Poland’s new foreign minister has called on European countries to boost long-term plans for military production after returning from his first foreign visit, to neighbouring Ukraine. “Wars are not decided by tactical engagements but by industrial capacities, and we are behind the curve,” said Radosław Sikorski, in an interview in Warsaw, a few hours after returning from Kyiv on Saturday.

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.

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.

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”.

Both Ukrainian and Russian troops are suffering from “exceptional levels of rat and mice infestation” in some sectors of the frontline, according to UK intelligence. The Ministry of Defence says rodent populations have risen due to milder temperatures in recent months and plenty of food.

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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.

Ukrainian military moving to defensive positions, UK’s MoD says; Russian tax revenue from oil exports slashed by 32%, US says

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Ukraine’s armed forces are 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 major 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 has fallen 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 will 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, Ukraine’s minister for strategic industries said on Wednesday. “All production facilities are ready, and contracting for 2024 begins,” Oleksandr Kamyshin, the minister, said on Telegram messenger. The figure includes at least 1,000 drones with a range of more than 1,000 km (600 miles), 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.

Former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova 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, has called 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 Wednesday they aim 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 720 million euros ($789m) 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 in a statement.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that 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,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy insists US and European support for war will continue; Vladimir Putin says Moscow will ‘not give up what is ours’

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Ukraine’s president is speaking to the world’s media at an end-of-year press conference

Russian air defences downed a hostile drone near Moscow on Tuesday, the city mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has said. No casualties were reported.

Two Moscow airports, Vnukovo and Domodedovo, had restricted flights, a measure often taken during drone attacks.

Russia has destroyed almost every building in easterm Ukranian city of Avdiivka, according to a new report