Closing summary
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will address US military officers as part of a last-minute push to convince Congress to provide more money for weapons before funding runs out. On Tuesday, he is expected to go to Capitol Hill to meet with Joe Biden at the White House.
Vladimir Putin attended a televised flag-raising ceremony for two nuclear submarines. The Russian president travelled to Severodvinsk to view the vessels, the Krasnoyarsk and Emperor Alexander III, at the Sevmash shipbuilding yard.
Russia will hold its presidential election in four annexed regions of Ukraine, Interfax news agency quoted the country’s central election commission as saying.
Russian forces have unleashed a major offensive on Avdiivka, with 610 artillery shellings reported near the eastern Ukrainian town over the past day, according to the Ukrainian military.
Britain has said it delivered two mine-hunting ships to Ukraine. The mine hunters, originally HMS Grimsby and HMS Shoreham, were renamed Chernihiv and Cherkasy in Glasgow in June, and will help Ukraine to maintain a critical route for merchant shipping travelling across the Black Sea.
Russia’s federal security service (FSB) has said that it had cracked a network of Ukrainian agents in Crimea who were involved in attempts to assassinate pro-Russian figures, Reuters reported. The FSB also said that, overall, it had prevented 18 “terrorist attacks” this year in Crimea.
Officials have said Russia attacked Kyiv with eight long-range ballistic missiles before dawn on Monday. The strike, at about 4am, marked the first major attack on the Ukrainian capital in recent months using ballistic missiles.
Updated
A decision to start talks on Ukraine’s EU accession is on a knife-edge after Hungary said it would not bow to mounting pressure to give the green light.
Viktor Orbán’s threat to veto the launch of negotiations is being taken seriously, with Ukraine’s foreign minister warning of “devastating consequences” for his country if the talks are blocked.
The 27 EU leaders are due to meet on Thursday and Friday and one diplomat said the mood in Brussels was increasingly bleak.
Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, who boasts about his strong ties to Vladimir Putin, has said he will block the decision on EU enlargement and potentially block continued financial support for Ukraine.
You can read the full story by the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent, Lisa O’Carroll, here:
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Germany’s coalition partners could soon finalise a draft budget for 2024, Olaf Scholz has said.
“We have made so much progress that we can be very confident that we will be able to communicate the results to you soon,” the German chancellor said.
He will continue budget negotiations with the finance minister, Christian Lindner, and the economy minister, Robert Habeck, on Monday evening, Reuters reports.
According to the government spokesperson, Wolfgang Buechner, aid for Ukraine was not up for discussion. “Nothing will change in this regard,” he said.
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Reporters from the Associated Press have witnessed some of the destruction in the district of Bortnychi on the south-eastern outskirts of Kyiv.
A Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s capital was reported to have earlier destroyed several homes and left more than 100 households without electricity.
A home under construction was ripped apart and nearby buildings were partially damaged, with huge holes in the roofs and walls.
Victor Demchenko, the owner of the destroyed house, was clearing debris from his property, next to a crater about 16ft deep in the backyard. He said he was in another part of the city when he heard the explosions.
“Then the neighbour called … and said all that is left of the house is a crater,” he said. “I didn’t believe him, so I took the car and drove here. Well, you can see it yourself, there is nothing to be found here.”
At another home about a mile away, Nadia Matvienko was lucky to escape uninjured when her home was damaged in the attack.
“It’s like I felt something. I couldn’t sleep all night, was turning in my bed back and forth. Then ‘bang, bang’, we rushed to the hallway. Next thing we heard is the house being torn apart,” she said.
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Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he was grateful to Britain and Norway for launching the new coalition to support his country.
Britain said on Monday it would transfer two Royal Navy minehunter ships to the Ukrainian navy, as it sets up a new maritime defence coalition alongside Norway to help strengthen Ukraine’s sea operations.
“Together, we will strengthen the Ukrainian navy, safeguard maritime transportation routes, and secure freedom of navigation,” Zelenskiy wrote on X.
🇬🇧🇳🇴🇺🇦 I am grateful to the United Kingdom and Norway for launching a new Maritime Capability Coalition to support Ukraine.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 11, 2023
Together, we will strengthen the Ukrainian navy, safeguard maritime transportation routes, and secure freedom of navigation.
Building on Ukraine’s 2023…
Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said staff at the IK-6 colony in the town of Melekhovo had told his lawyer waiting outside that the opposition leader was no longer among its inmates.
Navalny’s lawyers have been unable to contact him since last Tuesday, according to Reuters.
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The Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been removed from the IK-6 penal colony in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow, and his current whereabouts are not known, his allies have said.
Aides of Navalny have been preparing for his possible transfer to a harsher-regime colony.
Navalny, 47, is serving more than 30 years in prison after being found guilty of crimes including extremism – charges his supporters say are politically motivated.
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Putin visits shipyard to oversee the commissioning of new Russian nuclear submarines
Vladimir Putin has travelled to a shipyard to attend the commissioning of new nuclear submarines, the Associated Press reports.
The Russian president’s trip to the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk, in Russia’s north-western Archangelsk region, comes three days after he declared his intention to seek another six-year term.
Monday’s visit to Sevmash involved Putin raising the navy’s flag on the newly built Emperor Alexander III and the Krasnoyarsk nuclear submarines.
The Emperor Alexander III is the seventh Borei-class atomic-powered submarine to enter service. Each is armed with 16 nuclear-tipped Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Putin reportedly announced that three more such submarines are under construction. They are part of Russia’s nuclear triad, which also includes land-based nuclear missiles and nuclear-armed strategic bombers.
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New Amnesty International research has revealed how the war in Ukraine has affected the education of those living under Russian occupation.
Amnesty Ukraine wrote on X:
In the words of a regional education official, teachers, students and parents turned into “partisans digging holes in their gardens to hide laptops and mobile phones or hiding in the attics and old sheds to catch the mobile signal”.
A teacher from the occupied Berdiansk community in Zaporizhzhia region told Amnesty how the children are now forced to learn and sing the Russian national anthem. Those refusing are threatened with being taken away from their parents for “re-education in Russian orphanages”.
At the same school, a notice, seen by our researchers, was distributed to all students which said: “Look around you. You can see that Ukraine has destroyed Kharkiv, Mariupol and other cities. If you do not want Ukraine to kill you, tell us everything you see and know about it.”
You can read the research in full here.
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Ukraine may need to cede land to Russia in order to end the Russian invasion there, the Republican US senator JD Vance said on Sunday.
The comments underscore how a bloc of GOP lawmakers are staunchly opposed to extending US support for Ukraine nearly two years on from when the world rallied around it after Russia’s invasion of its borders.
“What’s in America’s best interest is to accept Ukraine is going to have to cede some territory to the Russians and we need to bring this war to a close,” Vance, of Ohio, said on CNN’s State of the Union.
“The idea that Ukraine was going to throw Russia back to the 1991 border was preposterous – nobody actually believed it.”
You can read the full story by my colleague, Sam Levine, here:
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EU member states have added six people and five entities to their Iran sanctions list, regarding their support for Russia in the war against Ukraine.
Those being sanctioned include the company Shakad Sanat Asmari, its chief executive, deputy chief executive and chief scientist, and companies involved in the manufacturing of drones, Reuters reports.
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Ireland is set to introduce significant reduction in benefits for Ukrainian refugees, the Kyiv Independent reports.
The proposed changes would reduce the welfare payments for Ukrainians and offer state-run housing for 90 days, it was reported.
After this point, refugees would have to find their own housing. The existing scheme means that Ukrainian refugees can stay in state-provided housing indefinitely.
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Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, met his Latvian counterpart, Krišjānis Kariņš, on Monday where, according to Kuleba, the pair “agreed that opening accession talks with Ukraine serves the best interests of the EU”.
I met with @KrisjanisKarins to thank Latvia for its solidarity and unwavering support for Ukraine.
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) December 11, 2023
We both agreed that opening accession talks with Ukraine serves the best interests of the EU.
We also focused on Ukraine’s military needs, including ammunition and FPV-drones. pic.twitter.com/Uf86ovmHFp
Updated
Summary of the day so far...
Russia will hold its presidential election in four annexed regions of Ukraine, Interfax news agency quoted the country’s central election commission as saying.
Russian forces have unleashed a major offensive on Avdiivka, with 610 artillery shellings reported near the eastern Ukrainian town over the past day, according to the Ukrainian military.
Britain has said it delivered two mine-hunting ships to Ukraine. The mine hunters, originally HMS Grimsby and HMS Shoreham, were renamed Chernihiv and Cherkasy in Glasgow in June, and will help Ukraine to maintain a critical route for merchant shipping travelling across the Black Sea.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said that it had cracked a network of Ukrainian agents in Crimea who were involved in attempts to assassinate pro-Russian figures, Reuters reported. The FSB said that, overall, it had prevented 18 “terrorist attacks” this year in Crimea.
Officials have said Russia attacked Kyiv with eight long-range ballistic missiles before dawn on Monday. Four people were reportedly injured by debris. The strike – at about 4am – marked the first major attack on the Ukrainian capital in recent months using ballistic missiles.
Updated
Russia to hold presidential election in four annexed Ukrainian regions
Russia will hold its presidential election in four annexed regions of Ukraine, Interfax news agency quoted the country’s central election commission as saying.
Russia claimed last year to have annexed the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, though it does not control all their territory.
Vladimir Putin confirmed last Friday that he will run again for president in the election due in March 2024.
A new decree comes into force today giving some Russians five days to hand over their passports.
The Russian decree states authorities can impose a travel ban on conscripts, employees of the Federal Security Service (FSB), convicts, or people who have access to state secrets or “information of special importance,” among others.
Once notified, people have five days to surrender their documents.
The returned passport will be stored by the authorities that issued it, such as the interior ministry or the foreign ministry authorities.
Ukraine downed eight Russian missiles targeting the capital, Kyiv, on Monday and another 18 attack drones over the rest of the country, AFP cited the air force as saying.
Officials in Kyiv said air defences had downed the missiles at about 4am local time but falling debris over the Darnytskyi district injured four people (see earlier post at 08.26).
“Medics provided them with help at the scene,” said the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, on social media.
“Also, a missile fragment was found on the territory of a warehouse in Darnytskyi district. There was no fire or damage to the building.”
Updated
The EU’s foreign policy chief has urged the bloc to ramp up its backing for Ukraine, AFP reports.
“I hope that European unity will not be broken, because this isn’t the moment to weaken our support to Ukraine,” Josep Borrell said ahead of a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers.
The EU’s 27 leaders will hold a crunch meeting on Thursday at which Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is threatening to block billions in aid and delay EU membership talks for Kyiv.
Finland’s foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, called Hungary’s position “very, very deplorable”.
“It is crucial that we keep on aiding Ukraine for as long as it’s needed, and it’s not only for the cause of Ukraine, but also for our own cause,” she said.
Some European diplomats think Orbán is stalling support for Ukraine to pressure Brussels to release billions of euros of EU support to Budapest frozen over a rule-of-law dispute.
Slovak truckers will restart a partial blockade of the country’s sole freight road crossing with Ukraine at 3pm on Monday, a hauliers’ association has said.
Slovak and Polish truckers have been demanding restrictions on access by Ukrainian trucking firms to the EU that were removed after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
“Entry to Slovakia will be blocked for truck traffic. Personal traffic will not be restrained in any way,” the UNAS trucking association said.
The blockade will be at the Vysne Nemecke/Uzhhorod crossing, it said, according to Reuters.
In Poland, truckers have been blocking crossings since 6 November. Hungarian truckers also planned to start a protest on a Hungary-Ukraine border crossing on Monday.
The protesters want to end Ukrainian truckers’ permit-free access to the EU, saying Ukrainian drivers are undercutting their prices.
Russia unleashes new offensive on Avdiivka, says Ukrainian military
Russian forces have unleashed a major offensive on Avdiivka, with 610 artillery shellings reported near the eastern Ukrainian town over the past day, according to the Ukrainian military.
“The enemy launched yesterday massive assault actions with the support of armoured vehicles in Avdiivka and Mariinka directions,” a military spokesperson, Oleksandr Stupun, told Ukrainian TV.
“The fierce battles continue. Our fighters are firmly holding on defences,” Stupun added.
Avdiivka is a key Ukrainian strongpoint north-west of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in the eastern Donbas region.
Russia launched a renewed bid to capture the town more than two months ago and Moscow’s forces have been inching forward on the flanks to try to cut supply lines.
Only about 1,500 people are left out of its pre-war population of 32,000.
Updated
Nearly half of American voters think the US is spending too much on aid for Ukraine, a poll has found.
The latest FT-Michigan Ross poll found that 48% believed the US was spending “too much” in military and financial aid to bolster Kyiv’s war effort against Russia, compared with 27% who said Washington was spending the “right amount” and 11% who said the US was not spending enough.
Opposition was particularly pronounced among Republicans, with 65% saying the US was spending too much in Ukraine, compared with roughly half – 52% – of independents and just a third – 32% – of Democrats.
The findings come as Biden struggles to cajole a sharply divided Congress into approving a sweeping $111bn security spending package that would include about $60bn for Kyiv, as well as funding for Israel and Taiwan.
Britain delivers two mine-hunting ships to Ukraine
Britain has said it delivered two mine-hunting ships to Ukraine, as Grant Shapps prepares to host a visit from his Norwegian counterpart aimed at bolstering Kyiv’s fragile position in the Black Sea.
The summit in London is aimed at building a “maritime capability coalition” for Ukraine – but it will not be accompanied by an announcement of how much military aid the UK is prepared to provide Ukraine from April 2024.
The mine hunters, originally HMS Grimsby and HMS Shoreham, were renamed Chernihiv and Cherkasy in Glasgow in June, and will help Ukraine to maintain a critical route for merchant shipping travelling across the Black Sea.
You can read more from the Guardian’s defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, here:
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said that the most intense frontline fighting over the last week continued to be in Avdiivka, the beleaguered eastern Ukrainian town.
In its latest intelligence update, the MoD said:
As reflected in official Ukrainian public-release data, on some days approaching 40% of all combat engagements have likely taken place in this small sector.
The Russian offensives have continued to be characterised by largely dismounted infantry assaults, often by Storm-Z penal units.
Ukrainian units have likely conducted successful local counterattacks, denying Russian forces full control of the village of Stepove.
It is here that Russia is attempting one part of a pincer movement to envelop Avdiivka and its heavily defended industrial zone.
Updated
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said it would be “devastating” for both Ukraine and the EU if leaders from the bloc do not give his country the green light for membership talks at a summit later this week.
“I cannot imagine, I don’t even want to talk about the devastating consequences that will occur shall the (European) Council fail to make this decision,” Kuleba told reporters as he arrived for a meeting with EU foreign ministers in Brussels, according to Reuters.
The European Commission recommended in November that formal EU membership negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova should begin, which its president, Ursula von der Leyen, described as a response to “the call of history”.
The EU has said talks should formally be launched once Kyiv satisfied remaining conditions related to stepping up the fight against corruption, adopting a law on lobbying in line with EU standards and strengthening national minority safeguards.
Ukraine’s former president Leonid Kuchma has warned that the US “will lose face before the entire world” if it abandons Kyiv, and said mistakes by the west contributed to Vladimir Putin’s all-out invasion last year.
In his first interview with a western publication since 2015, Kuchma described Putin as a career KGB operative.
“It’s his profession, with everything that implies,” he said, adding: “People say his obsession with Ukraine is a kind of mania or mental disorder. Maybe it’s true.”
You can read the full story by my colleague, Luke Harding, here:
Russia's FSB says it has detained agents of Ukrainian special services
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said that it had cracked a network of Ukrainian agents in Crimea who were involved in attempts to assassinate pro-Russian figures, Reuters reports.
It said the targets included the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, and a former pro-Russian member of the Ukrainian parliament, Oleg Tsaryov.
Tsaryov survived despite being shot twice in an attack in October in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The FSB said the Ukrainian network had also targeted railway and energy infrastructure on the peninsula. It said it had found caches of arms and explosives, and detained 18 “agents and accomplices of the Ukrainian special services”.
It said that, overall, it had prevented 18 “terrorist attacks” this year in Crimea.
The FSB is the successor agency to the KGB, which operated throughout the cold war and was once led by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, for a period in the 1990s.
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Here are some of the latest images coming from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital:
Updated
Four people injured in Russian attack on Kyiv
As we mentioned in the opening summary, the main news so far today is that officials have said Russia attacked Kyiv with eight long-range ballistic missiles before dawn on Monday. Four people were reportedly injured by debris.
The strike – at about 4am – marked the first major attack on the Ukrainian capital in recent months using ballistic missiles.
Four people were injured by shards of shattered glass in the Darnitskyi district in south-eastern Kyiv and needed medical assistance, the national police said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Firefighters dispatched to the south-western Holosiivskyi district put out a fire that broke out when part of a missile landed on the roof of a residential building, mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram. These claims have not been independently verified.
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Four people were injured by falling debris after Ukrainian air defences shot down eight ballistic missiles targeting Kyiv in the early hours of Monday, officials have said, in the latest Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital.
Four people received medical aid in the Darnitskyi district in the south-eastern part of Kyiv, the capital’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on Telegram while emergency services sent to the south-western district of Holosiivskyi quickly doused a fire sparked when part of a missile fell on the roof of a residential building.
Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is heading to Washington, days after the Biden administration warned it would run out of money for aid for Ukraine within weeks due to feuding among US senators.
Republican senators last week blocked $106bn in emergency aid primarily for Ukraine and Israel after conservatives balked at the exclusion of immigration reforms that they had demanded as part of the package.
Here are the latest developments:
Zelenskiy’s office said he would arrive in Washington on Monday and that he would meet Biden during a working visit that would include “a series of meetings and discussions”. Zelenskiy has also been invited to address US senators on Tuesday morning in the Capitol, a Senate leadership aide said, while a private meeting between Zelenskiy and US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson will also be held in the Capitol on Tuesday, Johnson’s spokesperson, Raj Shah, said.
Zelenskiy attended the swearing-in of Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, on his first official trip to Latin America where he is attempting to court support among developing nations. Milei welcomed the Ukrainian at the presidential palace after his inauguration. The two men shared an extended hug, exchanged words, and then Milei, who has said he intends to convert to Judaism, presented his Ukrainian counterpart with a menorah as a gift.
Zelenskiy said he had had a “frank” conversation with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, on the sidelines of the inauguration. “It was as frank as possible – and obviously, it was about our European affairs,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. Orbán has threatened to block more EU aid for Ukraine as well as its membership accession talks.
Britain said it had delivered two mine-hunting ships to Ukraine. The mine-hunters, originally HMS Grimsby and HMS Shoreham, were renamed Chernihiv and Cherkasy in Glasgow in June, and will help Ukraine to maintain a critical route for merchant shipping travelling across the Black Sea.
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