Closing summary
A Russian ballistic missile attack on Kyiv early this morning killed at least one person and injured 12 others. The attack damaged a number of buildings in the capital and left over 600 residential buildings as well as medical facilities and schools.
Ukraine’s air force said it downed five ballistic missiles and 40 drones in overnight attacks, with a further 20 drones failing to reach their targets. It said a total of 65 drones had been launched overnight.
Russia said it targeted arms industry and security service targets in strikes on Kyiv this morning as a “response” to this week’s strikes by Ukraine using Western missiles on a chemical plant in southern Russia. Russia said yesterday that Ukraine had launched six US-made long-range ATACMs missiles and four British-made Storm Shadow missiles at Russia’s southern Rostov region on Wednesday.
Portugal condemned Russia’s early morning attacks on the city after its embassy was damaged. Portugal’s foreign minister said several diplomatic missions that are housed in the same building were also damaged citing Argentina, Albania and Montenegro as examples.
Ukraine’s ministry of defence said Russia has suffered it’s biggest daily losses since its invasion of Ukraine began. The ministry said 2,200 Russian soldiers died in the last 24 hours of fighting – the previous highest total was 2,030, set on 29 November.
Russia has sentenced a resident of east Ukraine’s Luhansk region to 16 years in prison for “high treason”, Moscow’s FSB security service said. The man was sentenced by a military court in Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don. Prosecutors said he had handed information on the Russian armed forces to Kyiv’s security services.
The Russian Defence Ministry said that its forces had taken control of two more settlements in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Uspenivka and Novopustynka. Russia has been moving toward the strategic city of Pokrovsk.
Russia has hit Kyiv with eight powerful ballistic missiles, a day after Vladimir Putin claimed his troops were winning on the battlefield and that his maximalist goals to seize more territory in Ukraine were unchanged, Luke Harding reports.
Several explosions were reported in Kyiv on Friday around 7am local time. Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down eight Khinzal and Iskander-M missiles, with debris falling in several districts of the city. One person was killed and at least 12 were injured.
Residents woke to the sound of loud booms and wailing air raid sirens. One intercepted missile fell on the Toronto business centre, smashing its top storey, and setting fire to cars parked in the street beneath. A mangled vehicle was tossed over a fence.
The complex was home to Superhumans, a prosthetics and rehabilitation centre for wounded Ukrainian soldiers. Its founder Andrey Stavnitser said his office was devastated. “It’s scary to think what would have happened if our glass room had been blown a couple of hours later,” he posted.
The same blast broke stained glass windows in the St Nicholas Roman Catholic church opposite. The church’s facade, rose window and external and internal glazing were damaged. Stairwells leading to its gothic spires, built early in the 20th century, were wrecked.
You can read the full report at the link below.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy hit out at Russian attacks on his country’s energy infrastructure over Christmas. Russia launched a huge aerial attack on Ukraine’s power grid last week.
“For the third year in a row, our energy sector has been a target for Russia, and this enemy is always looking for the most vile options for strikes,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.
“Each time, missile and drone strikes are calculated to cause maximum damage to our generation and networks. And each time, our people do everything possible to provide cities and villages with electricity as soon as possible.
“We thank everyone who works for light for Ukrainians, for warmth in our apartments and houses.”
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has said that European leaders must acknowledge the need to change their strategy regarding Ukraine.
In comments to Hungary’s state broadcaster today, Orbán argued that the current strategy was not working and Russia was advancing on the frontlines. He added that US president-elect Donald Trump’s victory “has changed the state of the war.”
Orbán did not specify what actions he believed Europe should take regarding Ukraine, but reiterated his call for a Christmas truce in the Ukraine war. He suggested the exchange of up to 1,000 prisoners of war between Moscow and Kyiv.
The nationalist Hungarian leader is a vocal supporter of Trump and has long sought to undermine EU support for Ukraine. He has routinely blocked, delayed or watered down the bloc’s efforts to provide weapons and funding and to sanction Moscow for its invasion.
Russia suffers worst daily losses since start of invasion – Ukraine MoD
Ukraine’s ministry of defence said Russia has suffered it’s biggest daily losses since its invasion of Ukraine began.
Kyiv said 2,200 Russian soldiers died in the last 24 hours of fighting – the previous highest total was 2,030, set on 29 November.
In a post on X, the ministry said: “On December 20, russian personnel losses reached 2,200 soldiers. It’s the highest daily number since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. The previous record — 2,030 soldiers — was set on November 29, 2024. We make the occupiers pay the highest price for their terror.
Updated
The town of Rylsk in Russia’s Kursk region came under Ukrainian missile attack on Friday and there were casualties, Russian state news agency RIA reported, citing a local official.
Ukrainian troops still hold part of Kursk region after bursting across the border in a surprise incursion on 6 August. Russian president Vladimir Putin said during his annual press conference yesterday that Ukrainian forces would be expelled, but declined to set a date for when this would happen.
Samya Kullab, the AP’s Ukraine correspondent has provided some analysis of the state of the Ukraine war as we approach the end of 2024.
Ukraine is not winnable in the way maybe Ukrainians had hoped back in 2022, when there were real victories the the failure of the battle for Kyiv the winning back territory and the counter-offensive. The jubilation and the joy from those initial moments has kind of turned into this incredible feeling of gloom and coming to terms with what we’ve always known – that Ukraine is at a terrible disadvantage. I would describe it as being bled out slowly.
A lot hangs on what kind of support Ukraine will get from allies. And that’s also been wanting. One of the reasons Ukrainian military leaders can’t execute battle plans is because the military support they expected coming from Western allies did not arrive. It did not come on time. But at the same time, those decisions, those battle plans, we have to also look at them and question whether they are, in fact, effective on the battlefield.
… A year ago, even, I would never hear soldiers say anything negative on record about their leaders. Now people are not only saying it to me on record, they are going online on their social media, with their names, their rank, their units, and telling everyone they know about what is not working. And that, I think, says a lot about where we are …
Two years ago, Zelenskyy would never have said anything about a ceasefire or any kind of agreement that would not include the return of the occupied territories, and now Zelenskyy has said: “Well, we may not be able to get them back by military force alone it might be a mix of military and diplomacy. That was a signal to all of us that things have changed. My sense from talking to people in Kyiv is everyone is waiting for Donald Trump and what he will decide. And then the other kind of elephant in the room is, does Russia even want to engage in any kind of negotiation? Why would they?
Kyiv said it had received the bodies of 503 killed Ukrainian service members from Russia, in the latest return of remains that points to the hight cost of fighting in the war between Russia and Ukraine, AFP reports.
The exchange of prisoners and bodies of killed military personnel remains one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv since Russia invaded in 2022.
“The bodies of 503 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement on social media.
The repatriation reported today is at least the fourth involving 500 or more bodies since October.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this month that 43,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed and 370,000 had been wounded since the Kremlin dispatched its army to Ukraine in February 2022.
The Coordination Headquarters said Friday that 403 bodies had been returned from the Donetsk region, which has suffered the worst of the fight. The rest were returned from the Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions and from morgues inside Russia.
Five Georgian interior ministry officials who were sanctioned by the West for their role in a violent crackdown on pro-EU protesters will be presented with one of the country’s highest honours, prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze said today, Reuters reports.
Georgians have been protesting daily for three weeks since the government announced it was halting talks on joining the European Union – a longstanding and widely popular national goal – until 2028.
The officials to be decorated include interior minister Vakhtang Gomelauri – who was also promoted to deputy prime minister – and heads of the ministry’s Special Tasks Department, which is accused of orchestrating beatings of opposition politicians and journalists, who were sanctioned by the US and UK yesterday.
Kobakhidze told reporters the government would compensate any officials who suffered financial losses as a result of the “unjust decision” to impose Western sanctions.
Georgia had been seen as among the most democratic and pro-Western of the Soviet Union’s successor states, but critics accuse it of moving in an increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russian direction in the past several years.
Here are some more images showing the disruption and aftermath in Kyiv from Russia’s strikes.
Updated
Portugal condemns Russia's Kyiv attacks after embassy damaged
Portugal said several diplomatic missions were damaged by Russian strikes on Kyiv this morning, AFP reports.
Portugal condemned Russia’s early morning attacks on the city after its embassy was damaged. Among the countries whose diplomatic missions are located “in the same building” that was hit by the explosion, Portugal’s foreign minister cited Argentina, Albania and Montenegro.
“There was a very intense attack by the Russian Federation on the city of Kyiv, and one of the explosions caused relatively light material damage to the diplomatic facilities of several countries, including the chancery of the Portuguese embassy,” Portuguese foreign minister Paulo Rangel told local media.
“It is absolutely unacceptable for attacks to damage or target diplomatic facilities,” he added.
“For the time being, this is the position that the Portuguese Republic must take with the Russian Federation. Other steps will be taken at another level a little later,” he added in response to a question about a possible European reaction to the strikes.
Updated
Ukraine’s intelligence service said it had opened a criminal investigation into yesterday’s cyberattack on the state registers of the Ministry of Justice.
In a post on Telegram the agency said that a hacker group associated with Russia’s spy agency was behind the attack.
“In general, we are working in three directions: repelling the attack, restoring the infrastructure, and documenting this war crime,” said Volodymyr Karastelov, acting head of the SBU’s cyber security team.
Portugal has condemned Russia’s early morning attacks on Kyiv after its embassy in the city was damaged in the strikes, an AFP alert reported without providing further details.
The embassy is located close to the St Nicholas Catholic church that was also damaged in the attack.
Updated
This morning’s air attack on Kyiv damaged the capital’s second-oldest Catholic church.
Windows were broken on the front of the St Nicholas Church, with the building located opposite severely damaged by the Russian attack.
The Ukrainian military said its forces had pulled back from the area around Uspenivka and Trudove villages in the eastern region of Donetsk to avoid being encircled by advancing Russian troops, Reuters reports.
“The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has decided to withdraw the units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces from the area in question to avoid encirclement,” Ukraine’s Khortytsia group of forces said on Telegram.
Military units had avoided being surrounded and would continue operations in the Kurakhove-Konstantinopolske area, a statement said.
Ukraine’s general staff reported 18 battles on the Kurakhove front in the past day with Russian forces attempting to advance to the north of the town.
The Russian Defence Ministry said earlier today its forces had taken control of two more settlements in Donetsk region, Uspenivka and Novopustynka. It claimed control of Trudove on Wednesday as it continues toward the strategic city of Pokrovsk.
AP gives an update on casualty figures of the overnight attacks on Kyiv that killed one.
Kyiv authorities now say 11 people were injured, including five who had been taken to hospital.
AFP reports on the Oskil river in east Ukraine, which has become one of the frontlines of Russia’s invasion.
Lyubov Voronova still remembers a time before the war when the Oskil river flowing by her east Ukraine home was an idyll where families would swim, picnic and make memories.
Now, nearly three years into Russia’s invasion, Kremlin forces have brought panic and destruction to its banks in a war of attrition that has pit invader and defender on opposing banks.
“It’s the front line now. They’re on one side, and we’re on the other,” the 72-year-old said in the emptied out village of Sadovod, her cottage’s plastic-covered windows blown out by a recent strike.
The Oskil, which winds into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region from Russia, is swept by icy winds and surrounded by expansive snow-blanketed fields dotted with Ukrainian bunkers and zig-zagging trenches.
Russian forces crossed it quickly and easily when they invaded in 2022 but were beaten back months later in a rout that embarrassed the Kremlin. But its forces are now sweeping back.
Russian troops are either entrenched on its eastern bank, fighting furiously towards it, or making audacious breach attempts – all at a precarious moment for Ukraine across the sprawling front line.
“It’s a physical barrier that has military utility, but it’s almost a psychological barrier now too,” said Mick Ryan, a retired major general from the Australian army and analyst of the war. “If the Russians get over the Oskil that means things are really bad.”
Earlier this month, in a sleepy river bend near Dvorichne, Russian troops established a bridgehead on the Ukrainian-held side by sending infantry across in small boats. Kyiv said they were destroyed.
Pointing to gradual Russian advances, Ukrainian authorities recently ordered families with children to evacuate from towns near the river in the Kremlin’s sights.
Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have said publicly that their army lacks manpower and firepower to halt the Kremlin’s march.
Updated
Russian airstrikes in Kyiv kill one person and cut heating to hundreds of buildings
The Russian air attacks on Kyiv early this morning killed one and cut heating to hundreds of buildings. The temperature in Kyiv today is about 4C, with the wind making it feel even colder.
The attacks cut heating to 630 residential buildings, as well as dozens of medical clinics and schools.
When 35-year-old doctor Victoria read the warnings on social media, she ran to a shelter.
“Even in the shelter, bricks fell on my head. It’s just horrible when people start running in from the street,” she told AFP.
She had come out to look at the charred cars and buildings with blown-out windows at the site of an attack.
Updated
The Russian Defence Ministry said that its forces had taken control of two more settlements in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Uspenivka and Novopustynka, Reuters reported, citing Russian state news agency RIA.
Russia has been moving toward the strategic city of Pokrovsk, with its forces getting to within 3km (1.9 miles) of it last week. Uspenivka is about 20km of Pokrovsk and Novopustynka is about 16km away from the city.
Ukraine is sitting on a valuable resource for training military AI systems, Reuters reports.
The country has gathered millions of hours of footage from drones which can be used to train AI models to make decisions on the battlefield.
Oleksandr Dmitriev, founder of OCHI, a non-profit Ukrainian digital system which centralises and analyses video feeds from over 15,000 drone crews working on the frontlines, said his system had collected 2 million hours, or 228 years, of battlefield video from drones since 2022. “This is food for the AI: If you want to teach an AI, you give it 2 million hours (of video), it will become something supernatural.”
According to Dmitriev, the footage can be used to train AI models in combat tactics, spotting targets and assessing the effectiveness of weapons systems. “It is essentially experience which can be turned into mathematics,” he said, adding that an AI program can study the trajectories and angles at which weapons are most effective.
Samuel Bendett, senior fellow at the US-based Center for a New American Security, said such a vast pool of data would be extremely valuable in teaching AI systems to identify what exactly they are seeing, and what steps they should take. “Humans can do this intuitively, but machines cannot, and they have to be trained on what is or isn’t a road, or a natural obstacle, or an ambush,” he said.
Thousands of drones are already using AI systems to fly themselves into targets without human piloting, and Ukraine is using AI technologies to help demine its territory.
Ukrainian companies are developing drone swarms, where a computer system will be able to execute commands for an interlinked cloud of dozens of drones.
Russia has also touted its use of battlefield AI, most notably for target recognition in Lancet strike drones, which have proved lethal against Ukrainian armoured vehicles.
AP provides more detail on the Russian air attacks on Ukraine:
A Russian ballistic missile attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv early Friday killed at least one person and injured nine others, officials said, while Moscow claimed it was in response to a Ukrainian strike on Russian soil using American-made weapons.
At least three loud blasts were heard in Kyiv shortly before sunrise. Falling missile debris caused damage and sparked fires in three districts, the city administration said.
The attack knocked out heating to 630 residential buildings, 16 medical facilities, and 30 schools and kindergartens, it said.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said the strike was in response to a Ukrainian missile attack on Russia’s Rostov border region earlier this week. That attack used six American-made Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, missiles and four Storm Shadow air-launched missiles provided by the United Kingdom, it said.
Updated
Russia sentences resident of Ukraine's Luhansk region to 16 years in prison for 'high treason'
Russia has sentenced a resident of east Ukraine’s Luhansk region to 16 years in prison for “high treason”, Moscow’s FSB security service said, AFP reports.
Moscow regularly hands heavy sentences to people it accuses of spying for Ukraine and has also consistently imprisoned Ukrainians in Russia and occupied regions.
The man was sentenced by a military court in Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don.
Prosecutors said he had handed information on the Russian armed forces to Kyiv’s security services.
The FSB, cited by Russian news agencies, said the man was found guilty of state treason, being an accomplice in terrorist acts as well as the illegal handling and transport of explosives.
The court ordered he serve his sentence in a high security penal colony.
Updated
Ukraine’s air force said it downed five ballistic missiles and 40 drones in a Russian attack, with a further 20 drones failing to reach their targets, Reuters reports.
It said a total of 65 drones had been launched overnight.
A Russian missile attack on Kyiv this morning killed one and hospitalised two. Authorities in Moscow claimed the strike was in response to a Ukrainian attack on Russian soil using American-made weapons earlier in the week.
Updated
Photos show the aftermath of this morning’s strike on Kyiv …
Russia said it targeted arms industry and security service targets in strikes on Kyiv this morning as a “response” to this week’s strikes by Ukraine using Western missiles on a chemical plant in southern Russia.
One person was reported killed and two injured in the attacks on Kyiv early this morning.
“In response to the actions of the Kyiv regime, supported by its Western handlers, a combined strike with long-range precision weapons was launched today,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement.
Russia said yesterday that Ukraine had launched six US-made long-range ATACMs missiles and four British-made Storm Shadow missiles at Russia’s southern Rostov region on Wednesday.
Poland will summon the Hungarian ambassador in reaction to Budapest’s decision to grant asylum to former deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski, Poland’s foreign ministry said on Friday, Reuters reports. Poland called the move a “hostile act”.
Romanowski faces a probe in Poland over accusations of misuse of public funds.
The Hungarian prime minister’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, speaking to website mandiner.hu, accused the Polish government of hounding its political opponents. The decision to grant asylum was in accordance with both Hungarian and European Union laws, he said.
“The actions of (prime minister Donald) Tusk’s government have created a situation where the Polish government disregards its constitutional court’s rulings ... and uses criminal law as a tool against political opponents,” Gulyas said.
Poland and Hungary are historically close allies, but the war in Ukraine has driven them apart. Hungary is the Kremlin’s closest ally in the EU.
Tusk’s pro-European government says it has opened the way for prosecutors to investigate wrongdoing under the previous nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government that left office in 2023, that would previously have been covered up.
“If Hungary fails to fulfil its European obligations, Poland will also request the European Commission to initiate proceedings against Hungary,” it said in a statement.
Updated
Opening summary
One person was reported killed on Friday in a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where AFP staff saw smoke rise over parts of the city after a series of explosions.
“According to preliminary reports, one person was killed,” the head of the city’s military administration, Sergiy Popko, said on Telegram.
Popko said Russian forces had used eight Kinzhal and Iskander missiles in the strike at around 7:00 am (0500 GMT).
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that, “as a result of the enemy attack”, two people were hospitalised and debris fell in four areas, setting cars and buildings alight.
“Emergency services are working everywhere,” he said on Telegram.
The blasts came after the Ukrainian air force warned of an impending ballistic missile attack.
“Ballistic missile from the north!” the air force said on Telegram.
Russian President Vladimir Putin at a press conference on Thursday suggested a “hi-tech duel” over Kyiv to test his claims that Russia’s new hypersonic ballistic missile, dubbed Oreshnik, is impervious to air defences.
Ukrainian authorities also reported missile attacks in the southern port city of Kherson, where one person was killed and six injured, as well as several other Ukrainian cities and towns.
More on this shortly, in other developments:
Attacks overnight also hit the southeastern city of Kryvyi Rih, badly damaging a two-storey building and injuring six people, according to officials. A man and a teenage girl had been pulled from the rubble and had been hospitalised, the region’s governor Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to Putin’s comments about testing a new hypersonic missile above Kyiv “to see what happens”. Zelenskyy said: “Do you think that’s a sane person? Simply scumbags.”
Russia has been accused of carrying out a mass cyber-attack on Ukraine’s state registries. Ukrainian deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna said on Facebook late on Thursday: “As a result of this targeted attack, the work of the unified and state registries, which are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, was temporarily suspended.” Stefanishyna said it was clear the attack was “carried out by the Russians to disrupt the work of the country’s critically important infrastructure”. Russia did not immediately comment on the claim.
Vladimir Putin has said he was ready to meet Donald Trump and discuss peace proposals as he used a marathon phone-in event to claim that the war in Ukraine had made Russia “much stronger”. The Russian president said during the annual event that Moscow was “ready for negotiations and compromises” to end the fighting, but later he pointed to a maximalist position that would involve keeping Crimea and other occupied territories, Ukraine not joining Nato, and the lifting of sanctions by the west. He also denied that the fall of his key ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria had hurt Moscow’s standing.
Zelenskyy said Putin was a fantasiser and accused him of wanting to destroy Ukraine’s army. “He (Putin) is an old fantasiser. He lives in a different world. He lives in his own aquarium I am afraid.”
Zelenskyy said he needed both Europe and the United States on board to secure a durable peace, as he huddled with EU leaders at their final summit before Donald Trump’s inauguration. “I believe that the European guarantees won’t be sufficient for Ukraine,” he said after talks with his EU counterparts.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Russian president Vladimir Putin a “dumbass” in a post on X last night.
The post contained a video of the Russian president saying he found the idea of striking Kyiv with a hypersonic Oreshnik missile to test Ukraine’s air defences “interesting”.
“People are dying and he finds it ‘interesting’ ... Dumbass,” Zelenskyy’s post said.
People are dying, and he thinks it’s “interesting”... Dumbass. pic.twitter.com/JyJ9ok0fok
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 19, 2024
