Ukraine president says his only wish for 2023 is victory. This blog is now closed

• Russia launches fresh strikes on Ukraine as Zelenskiy delivers new year message of hope
• What we know on day 312 of Russia’s invasion

The Ukrainian ministry of foreign affairs has posted a video illustrating how new year was celebrated under curfew in Kyiv last night.

Stefania, Ukraine’s Eurovision song contest winning entry, featured in London’s new year fireworks display last night, as did the colours of the Ukrainian national flag as England expressed solidarity with those under bombardment.

President says country ready to fight for return to normal life as Moscow launches latest wave of attacks

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Ukraine was targeted by a fresh wave of strikes overnight as Russia’s attack on the country continued into a second year and the embattled President Zelenskiy said in a new year’s message that he hoped for victory.

Blasts were heard in Kyiv after midnight as people celebrated the new year indoors, but the destruction appears to have been limited to two cases of rocket debris falling on the city, damaging a car in the city centre.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy pledges to fight for freedom in 2023; Putin says Moscow will ‘never give in’ to west

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President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that his only wish for Ukrainians for 2023 was victory and he resolved to stay the course. “I want to wish all of us one thing – victory,” he said in a video message shortly before midnight as Ukrainians marked their first new year since the invasion. Zelenskiy reiterated that he would stay with his people while they were fighting for freedom. “We were told to surrender. We chose a counterattack,” he said. “We are ready to fight for it [freedom]. That’s why each of us is here. I’m here, we are here, you are here, everyone is here. We are all Ukraine.”

Russia has claimed its strikes against Ukraine on New Year’s Eve that killed three people were targeting its neighbour’s drone production. A children’s hospital was among the buildings said to have been hit by Russian shelling. Ukrainian officials claim Russia is deliberately targeting civilians to sow fear.

Russian leaders issued a series of defiant messages ahead of new year. President Vladimir Putin said Russia would “never give in” to the west, and was fighting for its “motherland, truth and justice … so that Russia’s security can be guaranteed”. It was his longest new year’s address in his two decades in charge.

Russia launched more than 20 cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets on Saturday, killing at least one person in Kyiv, the capital, and injuring another 20 people in what one Ukrainian official described as “terror on New Year’s Eve”. Fourteen of the injured were taken to hospital and at least one was in critical condition after Moscow’s second major missile attack in three days.

Ukrainian air defence forces destroyed 45 Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including 32 during attacks on Kyiv as its citizens attempted to welcome in the new year, Ukrainian command said.

Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said Russia may be preparing a new mobilisation order and could close its border to men eligible to fight within a week.

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged more than 200 captured soldiers, the latest prisoner swap between the two sides.

The US is concerned by China’s alignment with Russia as Moscow continues its invasion of Ukraine, the US said after the presidents of Russia and China, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, held a video meeting on Friday.

Russian authorities have announced that soldiers and state employees deployed in Ukraine will be exempt from income tax, in the latest effort to encourage support for its military operation there.

Ukrainian minister tells Russians that Putin is set to begin a new round of troop mobilisations. This blog is now closed

The governor of the Mykolaiv region, Vitalii Kim, has said there is an incoming missile attack on Ukraine.

Posting on his Telegram account, he said it applied to “all regions”.

Defence ministry says drone was shot down on approach to Engels airbase but falling debris killed three

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Three Russian servicemen have died after a Ukrainian drone attack on a crucial airbase deep inside Russian territory, Moscow has said.

According to the defence ministry, a Ukrainian drone was shot down on the approach to Engels base early on Monday morning but falling debris killed three service personnel.

Ten dead and more than 50 injured in Russian strikes on Kherson; ‘We will endure this winter,’ Volodymyr Zelenskiy says in Christmas eve message

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At least ten people were killed and an estimated 58 wounded on Saturday in Russian shelling on the recently recaptured Ukrainian city of Kherson. The region was targeted by 74 Russian strikes. 66 cars caught fire in a residential area of the city due to the shelling, the emergency services said.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the attacks on Kherson “terror … killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure”. He said: “it is the real life of Ukraine … The world must see and understand what absolute evil we are fighting against.”

Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said the attack in Kherson is more evidence that Ukraine needs to be supplied with more defence systems and called for more weapons and ammunition.

In a message on Saturday, Zelenskiy said Ukrainians will create their own miracle this Christmas by showing they remain unbowed despite Russian attacks that have plunged millions into darkness. The president made his remarks in a video address to Ukrainians who celebrate Christmas in December. Most Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians and mark the occasion in early January.

Reuters reporters in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol have confirmed that authorities are demolishing and clearing what is left of the smashed rear portion of the cities theatre, where hundreds of Ukrainians were killed in Russian airstrikes after a protracted siege earlier this year.

Ukraine has announced it has killed another 480 Russian troops, according to its latest casualty figures.

A Ukrainian official has called for Iranian drone and missile factories to be destroyed because of their use by Russia in the war. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Iran “blatantly humiliates the institution of international sanctions”.

The Netherlands has pledged €2.5bn ($2.7bn) to help Ukraine in 2023, with most of the money earmarked for military aid.

The rock band Pink Floyd has raised $600,000 for Ukraine with the song Hey Hey Rise Up.

Eight people confirmed dead and more than 50 injured as Russian shelling hits city of Kherson

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the shelling on Kherson that has killed five and injured 20 others is “terrorism”.

Posting photographs of the aftermath of the attacks, including casualties lying on the street, he said: “The terrorist country continues bringing the Russian world in the form of shelling of the civilian population. Kherson. In the morning, on Saturday, on the eve of Christmas, in the central part of the city.

Putin orders defence chiefs to quickly get military all it needs; Russian forces accused of cover-up in demolishing Mariupol theatre after deadly airstrike

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British ministry of defence says Russian soldiers also troubled by lack of equipment and uncertainty over war’s objectives

• What we know on day 298 of the invasion

The time is approaching for a negotiated peace in Ukraine to reduce the risk of another devastating world war, but dreams of breaking up Russia could unleash nuclear chaos, the veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger said.

Kissinger, an architect of the cold war policy of detente towards the Soviet Union as secretary of state under Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has met Vladimir Putin multiple times since he first became president in 2000.

Russian barracks hit in strategically important city and German chancellor Olaf Scholz says Vladimir Putin is determined to conquer parts of Ukraine

A neo-Nazi paramilitary group linked to the Kremlin has asked its members to submit intelligence on border and military activity in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, raising concerns over whether far-right Russian groups are planning an attack on Nato countries.

The official Telegram channel for “Task Force Rusich” – currently fighting in Ukraine on behalf of the Kremlin and linked to the notorious Wagner Group – last week requested members to forward details relating to border posts and military movements in the three Baltic states, which were formerly part of the Soviet Union.

I’m not really seeing anything coming from the Russian side that gives me confidence that Vladimir Putin is entering these talks in good faith. The wider rhetoric is still very confrontational.

Any negotiations need to be real, they need to be meaningful, they can’t just be a fig leaf for Russian rearmament and further recruitment of soldiers.”