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

Russia has no interest in fighting with Nato country, Vladimir Putin says, but says he will send military units near border with Finland. This live blog is closed

• Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 662

A Ukrainian military intelligence officer is undertaking sabotage missions in Russia that he claims do not have the approval of his superiors, according to this dispatch from south-eastern Ukraine in the Sunday Times.

It comes as the frontlines of the war calcify into something of a stalemate with the onset of bitter winter, boosting the significance of other forms of warfare in Kyiv’s fight against Moscow’s invasion. In this case, without the approval of senior officers.

Mykola is an officer in the main intelligence directorate of Ukraine’s defence ministry. He trains operatives for secret missions in Russia: sabotage, poisonings, assassinations, diversions. He claims they are unauthorised by the chain of command above him.

Last week, he invited me to his training centre in south-east Ukraine, a place so secret that before we even got in his car, I had to switch off my phone and seal it in a bag that blocks out all signals.

Often, when Kostiantyn Grygorenko walks the streets of Izium, he spots people he suspects collaborated with the Russians during the five-month occupation of his home town last year.

He used to feel an overwhelming rush of emotions when he saw them. Now, he tries to conserve his energy and nerves and ignore them. But still, it gets to him.

Vladimir Putin vows to make Russia self-sufficient power in face of west and warns of ‘problems’ with neighbouring Finland

Russian president Vladimir Putin vowed to make Russia a “sovereign, self-sufficient” power in the face of the west. In a campaign speech he accused the west of unsuccessfully trying to “sow internal troubles” in Russia.

Putin also warned of “problems” with neighbouring Finland after it joined Nato earlier this year. Russia plans to reorganise military divisions to station more troops in its north-west region, by the EU and Nato border.

But Putin dismissed US president Joe Biden’s claims that Russia could attack a Nato country as “nonsense”. It came after Biden said Putin would not stop at Ukraine if it secures victory, as he pleaded with Republican lawmakers to authorise further aid to Kyiv.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Washington DC last week has yet to bear fruit as Biden called lack of Congressional support for aid a “Christmas gift” to Russia. Biden has requested $61.4bn (£48.4bn) in further aid to Ukraine but Republicans in Republicans in Congress have rejected the proposals.

Russia is not interested in extending the Black Sea grain deal, the agriculture minister said. The deal led to 33m tonnes of grain leave Ukraine’s ports before it collapsed in July.

Ukraine claims Russia has suffered almost 350,000 troops dying or being injured. The figure is higher than the 315,000 estimated by US intelligence, according to reports, but even that represents a significant toll for Moscow.

Ukraine continued its use of ‘memetic warfare’ as the defence ministry posted a video of two Russian tanks being destroyed, with guitar music and the caption “WELCOME TO UKRAINE.” Scholars have tracked the use of memes to try and grab control of the war narrative.

An intelligence report from the UK Ministry of Defence said Russia is likely to deploy “electoral fraud and voter intimidation” when elections take place in occupied Ukrainian territories. Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will vote in March’s presidential elections but they are expected to not be “free or fair”.

It comes as Vladimir Putin was confirmed to be running for president again as an independent candidate in Russia after two decades in power. Russian news agencies reported the news on Saturday, with the victory of Putin, 71, a formality.

Russia continued to batter Ukrainian targets with mortars overnight, with Dnipro in the centre, Sumy in the north and Zaporizhzhia in the south-east hit with artillery.

Russian rocket forces have loaded a new Yars intercontinental ballistic missile into a silo at the Kozelsk base south-west of Moscow. The missiles are capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads.

More than a year after the Russians retreated from Izium, the Ukrainian city is wracked by suspicion and distrust about collaborators. Read Shaun Walker’s Observer dispatch from a city still in ruins here.

Lorry blockades are continuing at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Polish drivers say Ukraine is undercutting them as about 2,150 Ukrainian lorries remain stuck in Poland unable to return.