Closing summary
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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Some of the latest images coming out of Ukraine and Russia.
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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.
Members of the central electoral commission on Saturday voted unanimously to reject her candidacy, citing “numerous violations” in the papers she had submitted in support of her bid.
“With this political decision, we are deprived of the opportunity to have our own representative and express views that differ from the official aggressive discourse,” she said on Telegram.
Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter now labelled by the authorities as a “foreign agent”, said Putin had not wanted to risk the same scenario as Alexander Lukashenko. The Belarusian leader clung to power in 2020 only with the help of what the opposition and western governments said was large-scale ballot rigging to claim victory over opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
“The Tsikhanouskaya effect is absolutely possible, and in the Kremlin they understand that,” Gallyamov wrote on Telegram.
Meanwhile the Communist party, which has finished a distant second to Putin at every election since 2000, named 75-year-old Nikolai Kharitonov as its candidate. Tass news agency quoted him as saying he would not find fault with the Kremlin leader. “He is responsible for his own cycle of work, why would I criticise him?” Kharitonov said.
In a separate development, Russian news outlets said Boris Nadezhdin, an opposition politician who has been critical of Putin and the war, was put forward as a candidate today by the centre-right Civic Initiative party.
One of the nominal opposition parties in parliament, the A Just Russia – For Truth party, said it would support Putin at the election, state news agency RIA reported.
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Ukraine will officially celebrate Christmas on Monday, 25 December, for the first time since 1917 as part of the continued attempt to wipe out Moscow’s influence in the country.
Russia celebrates Christmas on 7 January, in accordance with the Julian calendar. The adoption of the western Gregorian calendar shows the Ukrainian government’s increasing desire to align with Europe.
“Unfortunately for many people in the world, Ukraine is linked to Russia. And Ukraine is always viewed in the context of being a neighbour of Russia,” Father Andriy told the BBC in the Church of St Andrew’s, in Kyiv.
“But I think that we are more a neighbour of Europe. And the fact that we’ve now changed the calendar is not shifting away from Russia. It is us returning back to Europe, where we belong.”
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The Communist party of Russia, the second largest party in parliament, has selected a 75-year-old candidate to stand in the presidential polls against Vladimir Putin.
At a party congress in the Moscow region, the members held a single-candidate vote backing Nikolai Kharitonov. He won just under 14 percent of the national vote when he stood against Putin in 2004.
“Kharitonov’s candidacy was supported by an overwhelming majority of congress participants in a secret ballot,” said fellow party member Alexander Yushchenko, quoted by Interfax news agency.
The ballot paper had just one name on it: Kharitonov’s. The Russian Communist party, led since 1993 by Gennady Zyuganov, fielded an alternative candidate in 2018 presidential polls. On paper the party is in opposition, but in practice it backs up Putin’s party, United Russia.
A fan of martial arts, Kharitonov worked as a collective farm manager in Siberia in the Soviet era. He later became a member of the Agrarian party, an offshoot of the Communists.
This week at a party conference, Kharitonov praised the Soviet forced collectivisation of agriculture as a “correct reform that allowed us to resolve the food problem on the eve of a great war”. He said today that “our task is to consolidate the people during the election campaign so that there is victory, victory on all fronts”.
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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.
“If Ukraine needs it, Estonia can search for this person and extradite him to Ukraine. In general, we know where these people are and what they do. The majority go to work and have a place of residence in Estonia,” minister of internal affairs Lauri Läänemets said.
ERR reported that there has been no formal request from Ukraine regarding the extradition of citizens liable for military service, but Estonia previously offered Kyiv information about refugees from Ukraine. Läänemets said there are about 7,500 Ukrainian men of fighting age in Estonia who have registered with the authorities.
Current Estonian legislation dictates that foreigners can only be extradited to their home countries in the event of criminal prosecution.
Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov said on Friday that Ukrainians aged 25 to 60 in Germany and other countries were “invited” to report to conscription centres.
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Protesting Polish truckers have unblocked the key border crossing of Shehyni-Medyka between Poland and Ukraine, Kyiv’s economy minister Yulia Svyrydenko has announced, hailing an “important improvement”.
The truckers had been blocking several crossings with Ukraine since 6 November demanding the EU reinstate a system whereby Ukrainian companies need permits to operate in the bloc, and the same for European truckers seeking to enter Ukraine.
They were later joined by farmers who demanded government subsidies for corn and no hikes in taxes.
But truckers said they would continue blockades at three other crossings over Christmas and will allow even fewer trucks to pass than earlier. According to data from Poland’s customs office, the wait at the Dorohusk crossing was 77 hours today.
“We are intensifying the protest, [allowing only] one truck every three hours,” Edyta Ozyga’a, one of the leaders of the trucker’s protest in Dorohusk, told Reuters, adding that the transport of humanitarian assistance and military equipment was not being blocked.
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Summary
Former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova has been barred from running against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential election in March because of “mistakes” in her application to register as a candidate, her campaign team has claimed.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and military officials said the country’s forces shot down three Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber aircraft on the southern front yesterday. Air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat described it as a “brilliantly planned operation”.
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 said rodent populations have risen due to milder temperatures in recent months and plenty of food.
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.
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.
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced his support for a plan to send vehicles with poor emissions standards that would otherwise be scrapped to Ukraine for use in the war effort.
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The assassination of the Wagner mercenary army chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was approved by a close ally of president Vladimir Putin, the Wall Street Journal has reported after conversations with western intelligence officials and a former Russian intelligence officer.
The Kremlin has denied involvement in Prigozhin’s death, and Putin offered the closest thing to an official explanation for the plane’s fiery crash, suggesting a hand grenade had detonated onboard. None of that was true.
Hours after the incident, a European involved in intelligence gathering who maintained a backchannel of communication with the Kremlin and saw news of the crash asked an official there what had happened. “He had to be removed,” the Kremlin official responded without hesitation.
In the beginning of August, as most of Moscow went on vacation, [the secretary of Russia’s security council, Nikolai] Patrushev, in his office in central Moscow, gave orders to his assistant to proceed in shaping an operation to dispose of Prigozhin, said the former Russian intelligence officer. Putin was later shown the plans and didn’t object, western intelligence agencies said.
Several weeks later, following his tour through Africa, Prigozhin was waiting at a Moscow airport while safety inspectors finished a check on the plane. It was during this delay that a small bomb was placed under the wing, said western intelligence officials.
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The International Committee of the Red Cross last night reported that it had been able to facilitate an exchange of parcels for prisoners of war which included letters from their families.
Following an agreement between Ukrainian and Russian authorities, today @ICRC teams facilitated an exchange of parcels for POWs on both sides. They contain clothes, items for personal use & letters from their families. pic.twitter.com/lYo6VoDuDg
— ICRC Ukraine (@ICRC_ua) December 22, 2023
A story about a Ukrainian Paralympic athlete who regained his sight last Christmas, after 36 years of being blind, when Polish doctors performed an operation on his cornea.
— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) December 23, 2023
For the first time he could see his wife, kids and a much changed world.https://t.co/mX5VZB6ial
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced his support for a plan to send vehicles with poor emissions standards that would otherwise be scrapped to Ukraine for use in the war effort.
The move was reported as a U-turn, after Khan signalled his opposition towards an initiative which would see the vehicles – typically 4x4s and pickup trucks – be sent to the war zone instead of being scrapped under the capital’s ultra-low emission zone rules. He previously said the scheme would not benefit Londoners.
But now, in a joint letter written with Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, Khan urged the transport secretary, Mark Harper, to make it “possible for Londoners, and others across the country, to donate suitable vehicles to Ukraine through scrappage schemes”.
The Telegraph reported the letter as saying:
This could be most-quickly done by altering the national regulations for the Certificate of Destruction, which is required as proof that a vehicle has been permanently scrapped, to instead enable the export of suitable vehicles to Ukraine via a registered charity or national scheme.
We are optimistic you will work with us to enable Londoners and others around the country to receive money for taking polluting vehicles off our cities’ streets while providing vital support towards the people of Ukraine.”
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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.
“This announcement makes clear that those financing and facilitating the transactions of goods that end up on the battlefield will face severe consequences,” deputy US treasury secretary Wally Adeyemo wrote in a Financial Times op-ed.
One senior US official told the FT that Russia had spent “considerable time and resources” – using “both witting and unwitting” financial intermediaries – to sidestep restrictions.
The apparent success of these tactics has led the US to up the ante, and threaten to close the door on institutions which are party to the circumvention of sanctions aimed to weaken Russia amid its war with Ukraine.
A senior US administration official told the paper:
What we’re trying to do is go after materials that are key to Russia’s ability to build weapons of war. In order for them to get those materials, they need to use the financial system, which makes the financial system a potential choke point and this is a tool that’s targeted at that choke point.
Our overall goal here is to put sand in the gears of Russia’s supply chain, which we think is one of the most effective ways to slow Russia down. But in order for the Ukrainians to speed up frankly and go faster, they need our support and that’s going to require Congress to act.
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Russian troops have made small territorial gains in recent weeks on the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, with their manpower advantage seen as one decisive factor, reports the New York Times.
Russia’s recent advances near Avdiivka, as well as around other cities such as Kupiansk, Bakhmut and Marinka, are also further evidence that Russia has firmly seized the initiative on much of the battlefield.
“Currently, the situation on the front line is difficult and is gradually deteriorating,” Yehor Chernev, the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s committee on national security, defense and intelligence, said in an interview. “Without American ammunition, we are beginning to lose territory that was hard won this summer.”
Since launching offensive operations near Avdiivka in October, Russia has gained a total of about seven miles in all directions around the city, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
“But it has cost them dearly,” Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Army, told national television on Wednesday. He noted that Russia had suffered 25,000 casualties in the east over two months, most of them around Avdiivka.
“I would say the motto of their attacks is ‘We have more people than you have ammunition, bullets, rockets, and shells,’” Tykhyi, a major fighting with the Ukrainian National Guard in Avdiivka, said in audio messages, using only his call sign to identify himself, as per Ukrainian military rules.
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The Kremlin yesterday threatened Europe and the US with “serious consequences”, including tit-for-tat financial seizures or even a break in diplomatic relations, if Russian assets held abroad are given to aid the Ukrainian budget and war effort.
A spokesperson for Vladimir Putin said that if the Biden administration and European leaders planned to seize Russian central bank assets believed to be in excess of $300bn (£236bn), which were frozen after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, they should “realise that Russia will never leave those who do it alone”.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the Biden administration had begun urgent discussions with G7 nations on how it could plan the unprecedented seizure of the funds, which are mostly believed to be held in Europe, and whether the funds could be spent directly on the Ukrainian military effort or just for reconstruction and budgetary use.
Joe Biden was said not to have signed off on the strategy, the newspaper reported. But the discussions have accelerated as Republicans have blocked a deal in Congress to provide new military aid to Ukraine, potentially defunding the Ukrainian war effort at a desperate moment after a Ukrainian counteroffensive failed to provide a decisive breakthrough in the war.
“The illegitimate seizure of our assets invariably remains on the agenda both in Europe and in America,” said the Putin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, on reports that the Biden administration is pressing European countries to draw up plans for a potential seizure by February, the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. “This issue is unacceptable to us. Potentially, it is extremely dangerous to the global financial system.”
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Video from a meeting of the central electoral commission shows members voting unanimously to reject Yekaterina Duntsova’s candidacy, according to Reuters.
The head of the commission, Ella Pamfilova, was then shown offering words of consolation to Duntsova. “You are a young woman, you have everything ahead of you. Any minus can always be turned into a plus. Any experience is still an experience,” Pamfilova said.
Screenshots posted by Duntsova’s campaign channel showed documents that it said the commission had highlighted as lacking proper signatures.
When Duntsova said last month that she wanted to stand, commentators had variously described her as crazy, brave, or part of a Kremlin-scripted plan to create the appearance of competition.
“Any sane person taking this step would be afraid – but fear must not win,” she told Reuters in an interview in November.
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Former TV journalist barred from running against Putin in presidential election
Former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova has been barred from running against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential election in March because of “mistakes” in her application to register as a candidate, her campaign team has claimed.
The move came only three days after Duntsova, 40, had applied to the electoral commission. She had planned to run on a platform of ending the war in Ukraine and freeing political prisoners.
A video posted by a Russian news channel showed a meeting of the central electoral commission at which its members voted unanimously not to allow Duntsova’s candidacy to go ahead.
The immediate torpedoing of Duntsova’s campaign will be seized on by Putin’s critics as evidence that no one with genuine opposition views will be allowed to stand against him in the first presidential election since he launched the war in Ukraine.
They see it as a fake process with only one possible outcome. But the Kremlin says Putin will win because he enjoys genuine support across society, with opinion poll ratings of around 80%.
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Here are some of the latest images coming through from Ukraine:
Frontline troops experiencing 'exceptional levels of rat and mice infestation'
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.
It said:
This year’s mild autumn, along with ample food from fields left fallow due to the fighting, have likely contributed to the increase in the rodent population.
As the weather has become colder, the animals are likely seeking shelter in vehicles and defensive positions. Rodents will add further pressure to frontline combatants’ morale.
In addition, they pose a risk to military equipment by gnawing through cables – as recorded in the same area during the second world war.
Unverified reports also suggest Russian units starting to suffer from increased sickness cases which the troops attribute to the pest problem.
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What happened in the war this week?
Every week we wrap up essential coverage of the war in Ukraine, from news and features to analysis, opinion and more.
You can read a selection below:
Mr Fifty Percent: the former Ukraine mayor doing Putin’s work
The Russians were Volodymyr Saldo’s salvation. The wealthy Ukrainian in his 50s had done a stint in the national parliament and won three terms as the mayor of the southern city of Kherson, but at the start of 2022 police had opened a case against him for ordering a contract killing.
“I wanted to jail him,” Oleksandr Prokudin, Kherson’s police chief at the time and now the city’s governor, told Tom Burgis as he sat in the basement he uses for meetings since the Russians blew the roof off his office.
Detectives had found the intermediary they suspected of sending gangland assassins to shoot one of Saldo’s enemies. And the intermediary had told them it was Saldo who had paid for the hit, Prokudin says. “Then the war happened.”
Today, Saldo is beyond the reach of Ukrainian law. He is once again a powerful politician – Vladimir Putin’s chosen ruler of the occupied territory that lies across the river from Kherson. From there, shells, bombs and mortars rain down ceaselessly on the city he used to run.
A Guardian investigation into Saldo’s regime reveals that, under the banner of Russian nationalism, the invaders and their collaborators appear to be using terror tactics to construct on Ukrainian soil an extension of the gangster state Putin has built at home, where cronies grow rich and dissent is punished.
Continue reading here:
Ukraine says it shot down three Russian bomber aircraft
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and military officials said the country’s forces shot down three Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber aircraft on the southern front on Friday, hailing it as a success in the 22-month-old war.
Reuters reports that the Russian military made no mention of the incident. But Russian bloggers acknowledged the loss, and analysts suggested US-supplied Patriot missiles had probably been used.
Air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat described the downing on national television as a “brilliantly planned operation”.
“There haven’t been Su-34s for some time in our positive statistics,” he said, citing the model as one of Russia’s most modern aircraft for bombing and other assaults.
The Ukrainian air force commander, Gen Mykola Oleshchuk, wrote on the Telegram messaging app:
Today at noon in the southern sector – minus three Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers!
Reuters could not independently confirm the reports.
Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, praised the Odesa region anti-aircraft unit for downing the planes in Kherson region.
The region was occupied in the first days of Moscow’s February 2022 invasion. Ukrainian forces have sought to regain territory and in November established positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson.
Eurasia Daily, a Russia-based journal, said the Ukrainian account was plausible. Kyiv could have launched Patriot missiles, which have a range of up to 160km (100 miles) against high-altitude targets, from the western side of the Dnipro River, it said.
Opening summary
Welcome to our continuing live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.
In our top story, Ukraine says its forces have shot down three Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber aircraft on the southern front, hailing it as a success in the 22-month-old war.
The Russian military made no mention of the incident. But Russian bloggers acknowledged the loss, and analysts suggested US-supplied Patriot missiles had probably been used.
The report was unable to be independently confirmed.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, praised the Odesa region anti-aircraft unit for downing the planes in the Kherson region on Friday.
More on that story shortly. In other key developments:
Ukraine shot down 24 of 28 Shahed drones Russia launched in an overnight attack that damaged residential buildings in Kyiv and an infrastructure facility and grain warehouse in southern regions, officials said on Friday. Drones hit three storeys of an apartment block in the Ukrainian capital, injuring two people and causing lesser damage to several other residential buildings.
Russia said its air defences intercepted five Ukrainian drones south of Moscow in the space of less than an hour. The defence ministry said four were intercepted over Kaluga region and a fifth was destroyed in the Moscow region.
Russia may sever diplomatic ties with the US if Washington confiscates Russian assets frozen over the Ukrainian conflict, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, as saying on Friday. The Kremlin said Russia would never leave in peace any country that seized its assets, adding that it would look at what western assets it could seize in retaliation if that occurred. The comments came amid suggestions from some western politicians that frozen Russian assets worth $300bn be handed to Ukraine.
Russia is ready to swiftly respond in kind to Washington deploying short- and medium-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, Ryabkov said. Separately, the deputy foreign minister said Moscow and Washington were still engaged in sensitive negotiations over a prisoner exchange, but accused the US side of leaking details to the media.
The Dutch government will send 18 F-16 jets to Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Friday after a conversation with the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte.
Police have arrested a senior Ukrainian defence ministry official suspected of embezzling €36m (£31m/$40m) for the purchase of much-needed artillery shells in the war against Russia, according to officials. Prosecutors said on Friday that the official, whose identity they did not reveal, had developed a system under which he bought artillery shells at inflated prices. Ukraine has had a series of corruption scandals in recent months, including several in the defence ministry.
The US said it would place sanctions on foreign banks that supported Russia’s war in Ukraine, in a new bid to exert economic pressure on Moscow as it diversifies from the west to China.
The Kremlin accused the Wall Street Journal of publishing “pulp fiction” after it reported that the death of the mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash had been orchestrated by a Russian security official, Nikolai Patrushev.
Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, visited Kyiv on Friday to present an aid package for Ukraine on his first official foreign visit, a ministry spokesperson said.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, held a phone call with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Friday to discuss ways to de-escalate the conflict in Gaza as well as humanitarian relief efforts, the Kremlin said.
The renowned Russian writer Boris Akunin, who was declared a terrorist by Moscow and became the target of a criminal inquiry this week, says he fears the move signals a new milestone in the country’s history under the Russian president. The writer, who lives in exile, told Agence France-Presse: “Putin’s regime has clearly decided to take a very important new step on its way from a police, autocratic state to a totalitarian state.”
