Summary
That is the end of today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here’s a summary of the main events. Head over to our Europe blog, helmed by my colleague Lili Bayer in Brussels.
Vladimir Putin has held his annual end-of-the-year press conference, saying Russia’s sovereignty is under threat and “the very existence of our country without sovereignty is impossible … the whole country cannot exist without sovereignty.
“There will be peace when we achieve our goals. They haven’t changed. Denazification of Ukraine, the demilitarisation of Ukraine.”
Putin also said he was open to repairing relations with Europe and the US but added that Russia had done nothing wrong in its invasion of Ukraine. He blamed the west for “spoiling relations” with Russia.
The Russian president has held similar media events, where journalists or carefully selected Russians are chosen to ask him questions on national television, for most of his 24 years in power.
The Kremlin cancelled last year’s event after a series of humiliating military defeats in Ukraine. The resumption of the call-in show – this year featuring members of the public and journalists in a single format – indicates the Kremlin is hoping to show that its Ukraine strategy is back on track and that Putin is firmly in control.
Ukraine said on Thursday that its air defence systems had downed dozens of Iranian-designed drones launched by Russian forces targeting the southern city of Odesa, in Moscow’s latest overnight barrage that wounded 11 people.
At the EU summit on Thursday, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, told reporters that Ukraine did not yet meet the “merit-based” criteria to join the EU and that the issue should not even be discussed.
The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in Russia on espionage charges, lost an appeal on Thursday to be released from jail and must remain in custody until at least 30 January.
When asked about a possible prisoner swap for the jailed Wall Street journalist Evan Gershkovich and former US marine Paul Whelan, Putin said he hoped to find an agreement with the US that was “satisfactory to both sides”.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, urged a summit of EU leaders on Thursday to open membership talks with his country, warning that Europe would not understand if the meeting resulted in a “satisfied smile” for Putin.
There is a “real risk” that Putin will not stop with Ukraine if he achieves military victory there, the Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, has warned.
A Moscow court on Thursday has ordered a retrial in the case of a veteran Russian human rights campaigner who is fighting charges of discrediting the country’s armed forces.
Finland will sign a defence agreement with the US, the Finnish government has said, to grant the US military broad access across the Nordic country to the vicinity of its long border with Russia.
Romania has identified a drone crater near its border with Ukraine after an overnight Russian attack on Ukrainian port infrastructure, its defence ministry has said.
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Finland will again shut its entire border with Russia to stop the inflow of asylum seekers, the country’s interior minister, Mari Rantanen, said on Thursday, just hours after the Nordic nation ended a two-week closure of all roads between the two countries.
Helsinki has said a recent rise in asylum seekers arriving via Russia was an orchestrated move by Moscow in retaliation for the Nordic country’s decision to increase defence cooperation with the United States, a charge the Kremlin denies.
The arrivals stopped when Finland shut the border in late November but resumed on Thursday when two of the eight crossings were opened, with some 36 people seeking asylum, the Finnish border guard said.
“Now the phenomenon has restarted and we will close the entire border,” Rantanen told parliament.
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Hundreds of protesters angered by what they view as wasteful spending by municipal officials gathered outside Kyiv city hall on Thursday and demanded that the money should go to Ukraine’s war against Russia instead of local projects.
The Money for the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) civic group, which organised the protest, was formed in September by people concerned by what they term “unnecessary” and “poorly timed” spending by the Kyiv city council.
The protesters, who appeared to be mostly in their 20s and 30s, gathered despite air alerts and cold, damp weather. They dispersed in the afternoon when air defence systems burst into action to fend off a missile attack.
Protesters chanted: “It’s better to buy drones than build a new park,” and: “The more money we spend on the army, the faster Ukraine will win this war.”
“At a time when our friends, parents and acquaintances are dying at the front, we have more pressing matters than rebuilding roads and beautifying parks,” Kateryna Zaderey, one of the protesters, told the Associated Press.
Street protests in Ukraine were rare after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, which brought regular bombardment of the capital. Recently, though, demonstrations have gathered momentum, and Thursday’s protest was the largest so far over municipal spending.
Municipal graft was regarded as a deep problem in Kyiv before the war. Corruption allegations have dogged Ukraine as it has received billions of dollars of western support for its war effort. The issue has also been a hurdle for Ukraine’s ambition to join the European Union, which was holding a summit to discuss providing Ukraine with €50bn ($54bn, £43bn) in budget assistance and the country’s prospects of EU membership.
In June, there was a wave of public outrage after three people died in a missile attack on Kyiv. They had been unable to enter a hospital bomb shelter that turned out to be locked.
The incident drew public attention to the state of the city’s bomb shelters and sparked criticism of Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko.
A subsequent investigation by Kyiv prosecutors found multiple violations in how 1.2 billion hryvnias ($32.5m) from the city budget for the repair and maintenance of bomb shelters in 2022-2023 was spent.
Among the surprising ways money was spent on making bomb shelters comfortable were the purchases of 306 leather drums for “psychological relief of children during air raids”, which cost the city almost a million UAH ($27,000), a professional electric fryer stand for 720,000 UAH ($19,500), and 12 vegetable cutters totalling 1.6 million UAH ($43,300).
Recent protests have focused on city maintenance and infrastructure projects worth millions of dollars that demonstrators said should have been spent on the Ukrainian military.
During Thursday’s protest, Klitschko told a city council meeting that Kyiv will spend an additional 600 million UAH ($16.2m) on the needs of the military in addition to the 7bn UAH ($190m) that was already spent on the military’s needs in 2023.
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Don’t betray Ukraine over EU accession, Zelenskiy urges leaders
Ukrainian leader says delay would give Vladimir Putin a ‘satisfied smile’, as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán threatens veto
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has made an impassioned plea to European leaders gathered for talks on Ukraine not to “betray” his country by dithering on EU membership, which he said would put a “satisfied smile” on Vladimir Putin’s face.
In one of the most important summits in recent EU history, leaders of 26 member states are trying to find another €50bn (£43bn) for Ukraine and to approve the start of accession talks with the war-torn country. Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, has threatened to veto both.
“I ask you one thing today: do not betray the people and their faith in Europe,” Zelenskiy said in an address by video link to the leaders in Brussels. “It’s very important that Europe doesn’t fall back into indecision today. Nobody wants Europe to be seen as untrustworthy. Or as unable to take decisions it prepared itself.”
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A Moscow court on Thursday ordered a retrial in the case of a veteran Russian human rights campaigner who is fighting charges of discrediting the country’s armed forces.
Oleg Orlov, 70, has been for more than two decades one of the leaders of Memorial, which won a share of the Nobel peace prize in 2022 a year after being banned and dissolved in Russia.
A district court in October fined Orlov 150,000 roubles ($1,687) – a relatively light sentence for a critic of the Ukraine war, due to his age and health – after he wrote an article saying that Russia under President Vladimir Putin had descended into fascism.
Orlov appealed against that verdict and prosecutors then sought a three-year jail sentence, accusing him of “political hatred of Russia”, something he denies.
In Thursday’s hearing, Orlov insisted he was a true patriot and repeated his criticism of the Ukraine war and of the erosion of human rights in Russia, according to Memorial’s Telegram channel.
The retrial was ordered on a legal technicality after prosecutors shifted their position. Since sending its tanks into Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has intensified a long-running clampdown on all forms of political dissent and made it an offence to discredit the armed forces or deviate from government accounts of what it calls its “special military operation”.
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Here are the latest images on the wires from Ukraine and elsewhere:
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Finland will sign a defence agreement with the US, the Finnish government has said, to grant the US military broad access across the Nordic country to the vicinity of its long border with Russia.
Russia’s Nordic neighbour Finland became the Nato military alliance’s newest member earlier this year in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Finland’s foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, said in comments reported by Reuters: “The fact that there will be no need to agree on everything separately, makes organising peace time operations easier, but above all it can be vital in a crisis.”
The agreement with the US was aimed at allowing swift military access and aid to Finland in case of conflict, officials said.
It lists 15 facilities and areas in Finland to which the US military will have unimpeded access and where it can also store military equipment and ammunition.
The areas will include four airbases, a military port and railway access to northern Finland, where the US military will have a storage area alongside a railway that leads to the Russian border, the agreement shows.
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Vladimir Putin has issued a rare apology after a woman complained to him about the price of eggs.
During the Russian president’s end-of-year question and answer session with the media, and with members of the public calling in from across Russia, an elderly woman was shown seated at her kitchen table and addressing Putin by video link. Irina Akopova complained that the price of eggs, chicken breasts and wings had skyrocketed.
“Sort this out - we have no one to turn to,” she said in comments reported by Reuters. “I’m very grateful to you, I’m counting on you to help.”
The question reflected concern among Russians over the cost of living, and came after Putin had acknowledged that inflation could rise to almost 8% this year.
“I apologise for this, but this is a failure of the government’s work,” Putin said. “I promise that the situation will be corrected in the near future.”
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Romania will summon Russia’s ambassador after it discover a drone crater near its border with Ukraine [see 12.47].
According to the defence ministry, a crater was found in an uninhabited area close to the town of Grindu in Tulcea county, which faces the port of Reni in southern Ukraine across the Danube.
In response to the “new violation of Romania’s airspace, contrary to international law”, the head of Russia’s diplomatic mission will be summoned, the Romanian mnistry of foreign affairs said in a statement reported by Agence France-Presse.
The ministry said it strongly condemned Moscow’s “repeated attacks” and consultations with “Nato allies on developments at the Romanian-Ukrainian border, including today’s incident” were under way.
Romania’s army also spotted the drone on its radar surveillance system that “indicated a possible unauthorised entry into national airspace, with a signal detected at low altitude en route to Grindu”, it added.
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Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding is in Ukraine, near Avdiivka, where Russian forces have been intensifying their attacks. He has filed this special report:
For two months, the Russian army has been trying to seize the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka. First, it launched a massive frontal assault. Dozens of pieces of equipment were destroyed. Then it dispatched armoured columns in different directions. Now, in a third wave, small groups of infantry are being sent to penetrate Ukrainian positions.
“There are dozens of bodies. They try to advance. We kill them. They send more,” said Ivan Smaga, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s 25th storm battalion, which is defending Avdiivka. “To begin with it was groups of 10 men. Now it’s one or two or three without support. Their commander uses them like live meat.”
Smaga said the Russians ordered into battle used ingenious methods to survive. Some crawled over the icy ground. Others dug holes “like mice”. A few pretended to be dead, lying for hours next to the corpses of their fallen comrades. “We watch them. They lie under warm bodies. Eventually they get up, move.” Ukrainian drones and artillery picked them off, he said.
The fighting in Adviivka and southern and eastern Ukraine continued as EU leaders met in Brussels for talks on Ukrainian membership of the bloc and billions in economic and military support for the country, amid fears in Kyiv over the strength of western backing. Meanwhile in Moscow, Vladimir Putin vowed to press ahead. “There will be peace when we achieve our goals,” he said on Thursday. “They haven’t changed. Denazification of Ukraine, the demilitarisation of Ukraine.”
Read the full story here:
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In a nod to rumours that he has a body double, Vladimir Putin received a question by a digitally generated version of himself about whether he has concerns over the future of artificial intelligence and if he employs any body doubles.
“Hello, I am a student and study at the St Petersburg State University,” said the Putin lookalike, who sat at a table wearing a business suit and dress shirt with no tie.
“Is it true that you have many doubles,” the fake Putin continued, shown on a split-screen with the genuine Putin. “And what is your attitude toward the dangers from neural networks and artificial intelligence?”
The question prompted audible laughter in the crowd. Most criticism and rumours that could actually be damaging to the Kremlin are kept off television during the event.
But the show’s producers do sometimes project critical questions on the walls of the studio during Putin’s broadcast as part of a survey of the nearly 2 million questions received for the event.
And rumours about Putin’s use of body doubles have been persistent, especially since Putin largely disappeared from public in 2020 and adopted a stringent set of quarantine restrictions. This year, he began to suddenly appear to meet with crowds of ecstatic Russians, raising questions and conspiracy theories about whether it was Putin himself appearing or if the Kremlin was using a body double.
“I see you can look like me and speak in my voice,” Putin replied. “But... only one person should be like me and speak in my voice – that person will be me.”
He went on to deny that he employed body doubles. “As for artificial intelligence, yes, this is my first double, by the way,” Putin said.
The deepfake of Putin introduced himself as a "student from St. Petersburg" and asked how many doubles Putin has
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) December 14, 2023
"You can be like me and speak in my voice. But I thought and decided that only one person can be like me and speak in my voice, and that person is me. By the way,… pic.twitter.com/YNq5a8ZhMC
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Romania finds drone crater on its territory after Russian attack on Ukraine
Romania has identified a drone crater near its border with Ukraine following an overnight Russian attack on Ukrainian port infrastructure, its defence ministry said.
The crater, about 1.5 metres deep, was caused by the “uncontrolled crash of a drone used in the attack on Ukrainian port infrastructure”, said Romania’s defence ministry. Romania is a Nato member.
The drone fell in an unpopulated area near the village of Grindu, the ministry added, saying Romanian F-16 fighter jets and German Eurofighter Typhoon planes carried out surveillance of Romania’s air space following the attack.
Russia and Ukraine did not immediately comment on the defence ministry statement, Reuters reports.
Since pulling out of a deal allowing the safe export of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea in July, Russia has been attacking Ukrainian ports and warehouses across the Danube River from Romania. Since then, there have been isolated incidents of drone parts landing in Romania.
Nato has a mutual defence commitment if one of its members is attacked, but Nato and Romanian officials have said they have found no evidence of any deliberate attacks on Romania.
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The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, urged a summit of European Union leaders on Thursday to open membership talks with his country, warning that Europe would not understand if the meeting resulted in a “satisfied smile” for Vladimir Putin.
“I ask you one thing today do not betray the people and their faith in Europe,” he said in an address to the leaders via video link, according to the text of his speech.
Among the leaders of the EU’s 27 member countries, only Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has spoken out against giving Ukraine the green light for membership talks as the country continues to fight Russia’s invasion.
As such decisions require unanimity, the EU will not be able to give Ukraine the go-ahead without Orbán’s approval.
“Today is a special day. And this day will go down in our history. Whether it’s good or bad for us, history will capture everything. Every word, every step, every action and inaction. Who fought for what,” Zelenskiy said.
“It’s very important that Europe doesn’t fall back into indecision today. Nobody wants Europe to be seen as untrustworthy. Or as unable to take decisions it prepared itself,” he said.
“People in Europe won’t understand if Putin’s satisfied smile becomes the reward for a meeting in Brussels.”
He said Ukraine had met EU conditions on reforms to be granted membership talks.
“Ten years ago, in Ukraine, people rose up under the flags of the European Union. It was a symbol of truth for them, and it should remain so,” Zelenskiy said. “I ask you one thing today: do not betray the people and their faith in Europe.”
You can follow updates from the EU summit from my colleague Lili Bayer:
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Vladimir Putin held his first annual press conference since the start of the war in Ukraine. Russian citizens were expected to phone in with questions for the president along with those asked by journalists.
Putin’s last such news conference was in 2021 and he has had limited interaction with foreign media since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Russia is open to talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and other European Union leaders if they are interested in such contacts, Vladimir Putin said at an annual press conference on Thursday.
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When asked about a possible prisoner swap for the jailed Wall Street journalist Evan Gershkovich and former US marine Paul Whelan, Putin said that he hoped to find an agreement with the US that was “satisfactory to both sides.”
Responding to a question asked by a reporter from the New York Times, Putin added that Russia was in contact with the US over a possible exchange.
Earlier today, a court in Moscow upheld the detention of Gershkovich, a ruling that means the Wall Street Journal reporter will remain in custody at least till the end of January on an allegation of espionage that he, his newspaper and the US government vehemently deny.
Gershkovich appeared in court for the appeal of last month’s ruling that extended his detention until 30 January.
Gershkovich was arrested on 29 March in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on charges of espionage that carry up to 20 years in prison. He has spent almost eight months in the notorious Lefortovo prison since.
Moscow claims Gershkovich was “caught red-handed”, but Russia has yet to publish any evidence to support that.
Last week, the US said Moscow rejected what it said was a “substantial” proposal to secure the freedom of Gershkovich and Whelan.
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Here are the latest images coming across the wires from Ukraine and elsewhere:
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Putin’s annual press conference shows that the Kremlin is eager to place the war in Ukraine at the centre of the event, with many questions for Putin about the conditions of Russian troops on the frontlines.
In one question, a woman in military fatigues flanked by two men holding guns complains about not getting benefits while fighting in Ukraine, an issue Putin promises to fix.
In another question, a former Russian soldier who fought in Ukraine as part of an unnamed private military group says that he was not given a veteran status on his return to Russia.
Without mentioning the Wagner group, Putin says he will make sure that former mercenaries are respected, adding that he knows people from “private military companies” who died fighting for “Russian interests.”
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'Real risk' Vladimir Putin will not stop with Ukraine if he achieves military victory, says Nato chief
There is a “real risk” that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will not stop with Ukraine if he achieves military victory there, the Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Thursday.
That prospect is why Ukraine’s Nato allies must continue supporting Kyiv militarily, Stoltenberg stressed:
If Putin wins in Ukraine, there is real risk that his aggression will not end there. Our support is not charity. It is an investment in our security … The only way to reach a just and lasting solution is to convince President Putin that they will not win on the battlefield. And the only way to ensure that President Putin realises that he is not winning on the battlefield is to continue to support Ukraine.
The Nato secretary general’s comments came as support for further aid to Ukraine faltered in the United States and the European Union as a result of internal political manoeuvring.
Opposition Republicans in the United States have opposed to providing more US military aid, while in the EU, Hungary has held up approval of a €50bn ($55bn) package to stabilise Ukraine’s war-hit finances over the next three years.
EU leaders were gathered in Brussels on Thursday for a summit at which aid to Kyiv and Ukraine’s bid to one day join the bloc were the headline issues.
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EU countries should give Ukraine and other countries such as Moldova and Georgia looking to enter the European Union their support as they meet the criteria set for accession, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said before a meeting of the bloc’s leaders on Thursday.
“Especially in the case of Ukraine, it is a necessary sign we support their activities to meet all the measures that we ask them to meet,” Scholz said before the meeting, where the decision to open accession talks with Ukraine is one of the main issues.
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Putin blames West for 'spoiling relations' with Russia
Putin has said he is open to repairing relations with Europe and the United States but has also said that Russia has done nothing wrong in its invasion of Ukraine and blamed the west for “spoiling relations” with Russia.
“We didn’t ruin relations with the west,” he said, launching into a long lecture on the Kremlin’s view of Ukrainian history. “They ruined relations with us and they always tried to push us into second or third place ignoring our interests.”
At one point, he adds recounting the history of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, “they left us no choice in our actions”.
Putin has not made much news today but the Russian leader has hewed an aggressive line, speaking extensively about the war and doing little to show he was pulling back from Russia’s maximalist goals.
He also offered praise for the Hungarian leader, Victor Orbán, and Slovakia’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico. Orban in particular has held up EU aid to Ukraine as he pushes Brussels to release billions of euros in aid held up due to rule-of-law concerns.
“They’re not pro Russian politicians,” he said of Orbán and Fico. “They’re pro-nationalist.”
Decrying the United States’ “imperialist” behaviour, he said: “We’re ready to arrange relations with them ... We think the US is an important, needed country in the world. But their imperial politics hamper them.”
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Vladimir Putin said Thursday that a total of 617,000 Russian troops are currently fighting in Ukraine. Some 244,000 of them are soldiers who were called up to fight alongside professional Russian military troops, according to the president.
The rare detail on Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine came during Putin’s year-end press conference Thursday that the Kremlin doesn’t need a second wave of mobilisation of reservists.
He said 1,500 men were being recruited into the army every day across the country. As of Wednesday evening, he said a total of 486,000 soldiers had signed a contract with the Russian military.
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Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in Russia on espionage charges, lost an appeal on Thursday to be released from jail and will remain in custody at least until 30 January.
Gershkovich was arrested on 29 March in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on charges of espionage that carry up to 20 years in prison.
Gershkovich, 31, is the first American journalist to be held in Russia on spying charges since the end of the cold war. He was detained in the Urals while on a reporting trip at the end of March.
Russia’s FSB security service has claimed he was collecting state secrets about the country’s military-industrial complex. Gershkovich and the Wall Street Journal have denied the charges.
Read more on the case here:
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At the EU summit on Thursday Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, told reporters that Ukraine did not yet meet the “merit-based” criteria to join the EU and that the issue should not even be discussed.
“There is no reason to discuss anything because preconditions were not met,” Orbán said, citing the European Commission’s advice to leaders on Ukraine’s reform progress.
“We’re not going to move away from this,” he warned, according to AFP.
The European Commission has advised the 27 leaders that Ukraine is making good progress towards enacting the necessary political and judicial reforms to meet EU standards. Most EU leaders want this week’s summit to approve the start of formal membership talks, in a sign of solidarity with Ukraine almost 22 months after Russia launched an all-out invasion.
They also want to approve a €50bn ($54bn) four-year financial aid package for Kyiv.
But any decisions must be unanimous and Orbán said that firstly any aid would have to be enacted outside the EU budget and secondly he would not allow membership talks to begin.
“Enlargement is a merit-based, legally detailed process which has preconditions,” he said.
“We have set up seven preconditions and even by the evaluation of the commission, three out of the seven are not fulfilled. So there is no reason to negotiate membership of Ukraine now.”
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Putin says there will only be peace in Ukraine when Russia achieves its goals
Putin begins the press conference by saying that Russia’s sovereignty is under threat and that “the very existence of our country without sovereignty is impossible ... the whole country cannot exist without sovereignty.”
He is quickly given a question about the war in Ukraine, and Pavel Zarubin, a state television anchor, asks: “When will there be peace?”
“There will be peace when we achieve our goals,” Putin said. “They haven’t changed. Denazification of Ukraine, the demilitarisation of Ukraine.”
Those are some of the more aggressive terms that Putin used at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, before Russia suffered a series of military setbacks last year. But with the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Putin indicates that Russia is still seeking a full capitulation.
Putin is also asked if there is to be a new round of mobilisation in Russia, to which he says that Russia has enough men under arms and willing conscripts at the moment to raise the size of the Russian armed forces to 500,000 by the year’s end.
“Why do we need a mobilisation? There’s no need for a mobilisation today.”
Putin also claimed that military aid to Ukraine from the west was drying up and that the country would soon run out of foreign arms to resist the Russian invasion.
“Ukraine produces nearly nothing, everything is coming from the west, but the free things will run out some day, and it seems it is already happening,” he says.
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A Russian court began on Thursday hearing the appeal of Oleg Orlov, a veteran human rights campaigner and co-chair of the Nobel prize-winning group Memorial, who has been convicted of discrediting Russian forces.
Since Vladimir Putin dispatched Russian forces to Ukraine nearly two years ago, Moscow has jailed or forced into exile the country’s most prominent rights defenders and shuttered leading advocacy groups.
“Some may tell themselves that it is better to be silent. But my entire previous life and my position obliged me not to be,” Orlov told AFP in an interview ahead of his trial.
Orlov was found guilty and fined 150,000 rubles ($1,670) in October. His sentence was relatively light, compared with the long jail terms handed to other critics of the conflict. The 70-year-old denied he was guilty and appealed against the ruling.
But the prosecution, which requested the initial fine, then asked the court to jail Orlov for three years instead.
Prosecutors, who accused Orlov of harbouring “political and ideological hatred” of Russia, had initially requested a fine rather than prison time because of Orlov’s age and health. They had brought charges against him for organising one-man protests and writing an opinion piece in French media.
In the article, Orlov said Russian troops were committing “mass murder” in Ukraine and that his country had “slipped back into totalitarianism”.
His argument was informed by the extensive knowledge of Soviet-era repression that he gained as co-chair of Memorial, an NGO that preserved the collective memory of the Soviet Union. Orlov joined Memorial in the late 1980s when it was being set up to document Soviet-era crimes.
The group went on to become one of the pillars of Russian civil society and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, jointly with a Belarusian human rights advocate and a Ukrainian rights organisation.
Orlov worked on rights abuses in military conflicts, particularly Russia’s two wars in Chechnya in the 1990s. He was part of a group who in 1995 swapped themselves for hostages taken by Chechen fighters and were eventually released. He was abducted, beaten and threatened with execution by a group of masked gunmen in Ingushetia, bordering Chechnya, in 2007.
After serving two years in the mid-2000s on Russia’s presidential human rights council, Orlov became an active opponent to Putin.
Having dedicated much of his life to documenting rights abuses, Orlov remained vocal after the Kremlin launched its fully-fledged assault on Ukraine in February 2022.
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Vladimir Putin is about to begin a marathon press conference that he will use to boast about his army’s success in the Ukraine war and set the tone for his presidential campaign in next year’s elections, where his victory is a foregone conclusion.
Putin has held similar media events, where journalists or carefully-selected Russians are chosen to ask him questions on national television, for most of his 24 years in power. But the Kremlin cancelled last year’s event after a series of embarrassing military defeats in Ukraine. The resumption of the call-in show – this year with both members of the public and journalists in a single format – indicates the Kremlin is hoping to show that its Ukraine strategy is back on track and that Putin is firmly in control.
In terms of the war, Putin is likely to emphasise the modest gains made by Kyiv during its summer counteroffensive and the difficulties securing a new round of military aid from the United States due to infighting between the Biden administration and the Republican party. The possible reelection of Donald Trump, who has spoken fondly of Putin and is sceptical of US support for Ukraine, will also give Putin a chance to claim that Russia will be able to outlast Ukraine.
In public comments several days ago, Putin said:
They’re running out of [everything], they don’t have their own base … when there is no own base, no ideology of its own, no industry, no money of its own, nothing of its own, then there is no future. And we have [our own].
The event comes just days after Putin announced his reelection campaign to a potential fifth term as president. Many of his rivals, such as Alexei Navalny, are in prison or have fled the country and he is the presumptive victor in an election that is considered neither free, nor fair. Yet the Kremlin is still keen to claim that Putin is broadly popular and uses the event to bolster his bonafides as a problem solver who is in touch with the nation and its people.
Putin is likely to emphasise the resilience of Russia’s economy despite foreign sanctions. He may also seek to turn away from the war slightly and speak more about Russia’s investments in social policy, although many Russians still say they feel that the economy is in decline.
And often, a Russian from a far-flung town will ask for something far below the remit of the president – a renovation of the local playground for instance – and by the end of the show the Kremlin will announce that the work is under way.
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Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, said on Thursday that the EU has to reach an agreement on Ukraine’s EU accession, adding that Hungary’s prime minister, Victor Orbán, told her he does not see an agreement on Ukraine’s EU accession.
“I just had a talk with Viktor Orbán. He said he does not see an agreement right now,” Kallas told reporters upon her arrival to an EU summit in Brussels.
She said Ukraine has fulfilled the criteria to open accession talks which would take several years.
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Here are the latest images coming across the wires from Ukraine and elsewhere:
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Kyiv says Russia attacked south Ukraine with 42 drones overnight
Ukraine said on Thursday that its air defence systems had downed dozens of Iranian-designed drones launched by Russian forces targeting the southern city of Odesa, in Moscow’s latest overnight barrage that wounded 11 people.
“In total, launches of 42 enemy attack UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) were recorded,” the Ukrainian air force said, adding that it had destroyed 41 of the Shahed drones deployed from Russian-controlled territory, including the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Falling debris damaged a dormitory in Odesa, AFP reports. Eleven people including three children were wounded, governor Oleg Kiper said. “Russian devils started the second evening in a row with an attack on Odesa,” he added.
Russia said on Thursday that its air defence systems had downed nine Ukrainian drones headed towards the capital, hours ahead of a highly anticipated news conference from President Vladimir Putin since launching the Ukraine offensive in February 2022.
“On-duty air defence units destroyed and intercepted nine Ukrainian UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) over the territory of the Kaluga and Moscow regions,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement, blaming Kyiv for the attack.
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European Union leaders struggled at the start of a two-day summit on Thursday to keep their two most elementary promises to Ukraine at war intact — to give it the money and wherewithal to stave off the Russian invasion and maintain its hope that one day it will be able to join the wealthy bloc.
And stunningly, the threat to that commitment does not come from outside, but from within, from its increasingly recalcitrant member Hungary, AP reports. The country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, came into the summit vowing to both block the plans by his 26 fellow leaders to officially declare that membership negotiations with Ukraine can start, and more pressingly, deny Kyiv €50bn ($54bn, £43bn) in financial aid that the country dearly needs to stay afloat.
The challenge comes at an especially dire time for the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, straight off a trip to Washington where his pleas for more aid from the US Congress fell on deaf ears. He was widely expected to come to Brussels to make his case heard here too but there was no official confirmation early on Thursday that he would attend.
“We absolutely have to provide a sense of security on the budget, especially after the disappointment in the United States,” said a high-level EU diplomat who requested anonymity because the summit talks had not yet begun.
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Opening summary
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Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is expected to hold his annual end of the year press conference after cancelling last year’s set-piece event. Russian citizens will phone in their questions along with those asked by journalists. His last news conference was in 2021 amid warnings that Russia was on the brink of sending troops into Ukraine. Putin has limited his interaction with the foreign media since the fighting began in Ukraine.
It comes against the backdrop of an EU meeting with an expected face off against the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, as he threatens to veto a massive aid package and start membership talks for Ukraine.
The crunch summit in Brussels – which diplomats fear could drag on longer than the two days planned – comes as fears mount over western backing for Ukraine nearly two years into Russia’s war.
Kyiv is desperately seeking to improve the narrative after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, failed in Washington to win over Republican lawmakers blocking US support.
But Orbán - Russia’s closest ally in the European Union - stands in the way of Ukraine’s hopes for €50bn ($54bn) in financial aid and progress towards its goal of one day joining the bloc.
Meanwhile, Moscow said it had shot down two drones targeting the Russian capital overnight. No casualties or damage were reported. Separately, the Ria news agency cited Russia’s defence ministry as saying a total of nine drones had been destroyed over the Moscow region and the adjacent Kaluga region. It did not provide a breakdown.
Key developments:
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is expected to hold his annual end of the year press conference on 14 December. The event will include a call-in known as the “direct line”, in which Russians can ask Putin for his advice. “On December 14, Vladimir Putin will sum up the results of the year. It will be a combined format of the direct line and the president’s final press conference,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.
Russia launched a massive missile attack on Kyiv in the early hours of Wednesday in an apparent show of strength, minutes after Volodymyr Zelenskiy met his US counterpart, Joe Biden, for talks in Washington. Ukraine’s air defences shot down all 10 Russian missiles targeting the capital but least 53 people were injured by falling debris.
Ahead of Thursday’s EU leaders summit, Zelenskiy said that Orbán had no reason to block Ukraine’s EU membership. “I was very direct … He has no reasons to block Ukrainian membership in the EU. I asked him to tell me one reason … I’m [still] waiting for an answer,” Zelenskiy said about his short encounter with Orban in Argentina on Sunday.
Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, also urged EU countries to recognise that Ukraine has “much to offer” the bloc. “Values-wise and ideologically, Ukraine is an indisputable part of Europe – which is precisely why Russia attacked us … Without Ukraine, the ‘Europe’ puzzle cannot come together,” he said.
Arriving at the summit in Brussels, Poland’s new prime minister, Donald Tusk, said that “apathy on Ukraine” was “unacceptable”. Poland’s previous government had become embroiled in a row with Ukraine over grain exports but new foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, also stressed that supporting Ukraine would be a “priority” for the new administration.
The five Nordic nations told Zelenskiy during previously unannounced talks in Oslo that they would support his country “for as long as it takes” in its struggle to drive out Russian forces. Together, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland have provided aid to Ukraine worth €11bn since Russia invaded in February 2022 and are ready to continue giving extensive military, economic and humanitarian support, the five nations said in a joint statement.
Denmark’s government would present a new support package for Ukraine worth €1bn ($1.08bn) to parliament on Thursday, the country’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said at a press conference in Oslo with the Nordic leaders and Zelenskiy in Oslo.
Ukraine’s top mobile phone operator, Kyivstar, started restoring voice services to some clients a day after its networks were knocked out by a major cyber-attack, Kyivstar CEO Oleksandr Komarov said, with data and other services to follow. The company, which provides services to more than half of Ukraine’s population, sustained “huge” damage during the attack on Tuesday, Komarov told Reuters, calling it “the biggest cyber-attack on telco infrastructure in the world”.
A hacking group believed by Kyiv to be affiliated with Russian military intelligence claimed responsibility for the cyber-attack. A group of activist hackers, or “hacktivists”, called Solntsepyok said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that it carried out the cyber-attack, and published screenshots appearing to show that the hackers had accessed Kyivstar’s servers.
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