We are closing this blog now but you can read all our Ukraine coverage here.
A summary of today's developments
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Sunday proposed holding a global peace summit this winter, in a video message Kyiv was hoping would be broadcast ahead of the World Cup final in Qatar, although it appeared unlikely Fifa would allow the move.It was reported on Friday that Zelenskiy had asked world soccer’s governing body to let him share a message of peace before the final. “We offered peace formula to the world. Absolutely fair. We offered it because there are no champions in war, there can be no draw,” Zelenskiy said in a video message issued by his office.
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had “opened the gates of hell”, unleashing “every evil” force worldwide from murder and rape in occupied territory to famine and debt in Africa and Europe. Welby, the highest-ranking cleric in the worldwide Anglican communion, travelled to Ukraine last month to meet church leaders and Christians as well as those displaced by the conflict. He said he had been struck by the “size of the mass graves in Bucha, the photos of what had been done to the people there, the rape, the massacres, the torture by the occupying Russian forces”.
Fragile morale almost certainly continues to be a significant vulnerability across much of the Russian force, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said in its latest defence intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine. In its daily briefing posted on Twitter, the MoD said soldiers’ concerns primarily focus on very high casualty rates, poor leadership, pay problems, lack of equipment and ammunition, and lack of clarity about the war’s objectives.
Heating has been fully restored to Kyiv after the latest Russian bombardment that targeted water and power infrastructure, the capital’s mayor said on Sunday. Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app: “The city is restoring all services after the latest shelling. In particular, the capital’s heat supply system was fully restored. All sources of heat supply work normally.”
Ukraine worked to restore electricity and water supplies on Saturday after Russia’s latest wave of attacks pitched multiple cities into darkness and forced people to endure sub-zero temperatures without heating or running water. Agence France-Presse reported that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Saturday that while electricity had been restored to almost 6 million Ukrainians, there were ongoing problems with heat and water supplies and “large-scale outages” in many regions.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has held meetings with his military commanders and sought their proposals on how Russia’s campaign in Ukraine should proceed, during a visit to the operation’s headquarters, the Kremlin said.
Russia has claimed its mass strikes against Ukraine on Friday were part of preventing foreign weapons being delivered to Ukraine. On Friday, “military command systems, the military-industrial complex and their supporting energy facilities of Ukraine were hit with a mass strike with high-precision weapons”, Russia’s defence ministry said in its daily briefing. The attacks have prompted accusations from Ukraine’s allies of war crimes.
This is the drone video footage showing the explosions in Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, which has been verified by the Guardian and Reuters.
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Moscow has denied it plans to increase the period of mandatory military service from six months to a year.
A video showing Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Fotin initially making the claim was later deleted, Sky News reported.
The Russian defence ministry said it is “not considering any changes to the legal code of the Russian Federation”, adding this is “concerning changes to the length of military service by conscription”.
It has been more than three months since two of the UK’s most senior judges sifted through thousands of pages of evidence and heard opposing arguments from some of the country’s lawyers about whether or not the government’s controversial plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda are lawful. On Monday at 10.30am, at the Royal Courts of Justice, they will deliver their judgment.
Hayat (not his real name) an asylum seeker from Eritrea, lost both his parents when he was a child. He tried to find safety first in Ethiopia and then Sudan before managing to reach Russia in 2018 and then travelling on to Ukraine, where he claimed asylum.
But no decision had been made about his case when Russia invaded Ukraine in February so, unlike Ukrainian citizens who were eligible to apply for a visa to come to the UK, he fled to France and arrived in the UK using the dangerous small boat route.
“They have accepted thousands of Ukrainian refugees – so what about us? We are from the same place, so why are we being treated differently?” he asked.
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Here is my colleague Jon Henley’s coverage of the restoration of heating to Kyiv, announced this morning by the city’s mayor.
Heating has been fully restored to Kyiv after the latest Russian bombardment, the city’s mayor has said, as Moscow unveiled plans to deploy musicians to the frontline in Ukraine in a drive to boost morale among its troops.
Vitali Klitschko said on Sunday morning the capital was successfully “restoring all services after the latest shelling” and that “in particular, the capital’s heating supply system is fully restored. All sources of heat supply work normally.”
Russia fired more than 70 missiles targeting Ukraine’s water and energy infrastructure on Friday in one of its heaviest barrages since the beginning of its invasion on 24 February, causing power blackouts and removing access to heat and water.
Temperatures in Kyiv and across the country were below freezing on Sunday and forecast to fall to -6C (21.2F) by evening. Up to a third of the capital’s population of 3 million were still without electricity overnight in what officials called a “difficult and critical” situation.
Full story is here:
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has posted images on Twitter of Ukrainian soldiers training in the north of England.
❄️ Ukrainian recruits taking part in the UK-led training programme have been training in snowy Northern England earlier this week, preparing them for frontline combat.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) December 18, 2022
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/RJwHWyaJav
Zelenskiy proposed global peace summit
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Sunday proposed holding a global peace summit this winter, in a video message Kyiv was hoping would be broadcast ahead of the World Cup final in Qatar, although it appeared unlikely Fifa would allow the move.
It was reported on Friday that Zelenskiy had asked world soccer’s governing body to let him share a message of peace before the final.
“We offered peace formula to the world. Absolutely fair. We offered it because there are no champions in war, there can be no draw,” Zelenskiy said in a video message issued by his office.
“I announce the initiative to hold a global peace formula summit this winter. The summit to unite all nations of the world around the cause of global peace. Stadium stands get empty after the match, and after the war cities remain empty,” he said.
Zelenskiy had wanted to appear via video link before Argentina take on defending champions France at Doha’s Lusail Stadium for the final with an expected global audience of hundreds of millions, it was reported.
Fifa did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but it appeared unlikely to give Zelenskiy a platform given its stance on political messages at the World Cup.
Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter that Fifa “shows a lack of understanding of the disaster that the Russian federation is dragging the world into by starting a war in Ukraine”.
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My colleague Julian Borger has written a piece on the role of computer software in the war in Ukraine – a “decisive weapon” in the effort to force back the Russian invasion.
He writes:
Inside, the weapon glows from a dozen computer screens – a constantly updated portrayal of the evolving battlefield to the south. With one click on a menu, the map is populated with hordes of orange diamonds, showing Russian deployments. They reveal where tanks and artillery have been hidden, and intimate details of the units and the soldiers in them, gleaned from social media. Choosing another option from the menu lights up red arrows across the southern Zaporizhzhia region, showing the progression of Russian columns. Zooming in shows satellite imagery of the terrain in sharp detail.
It is called Delta, a software package developed by Ukrainian programmers to give their armed forces an advantage in a contest of which side can see the battlefield more clearly and therefore predict the enemy forces’ moves and strike them faster and more accurately.
While many scenes from the war in Ukraine look like a throwback to the first world war, with muddy trench networks and blasted landscapes, the conflict is also a testing ground for the future of warfare, where information and its dissemination in instantly usable form to individual soldiers will be critical to victory or defeat.
Read the full article here:
Significant fighting is taking place in the eastern Donetsk city of Bakhmut in Ukraine.
Once home to 72,000, the civilian population has dwindled to 12,000 over the past six months, surviving in basements and supplied by mobile grocery trucks that enter the city when they can.
Here are images uploaded today from the city.
Russian military forces on Sunday shelled the centre of Kherson, the major city that Russian soldiers retreated from last month in one of Moscow’s biggest battlefield setbacks in Ukraine, AP reports.
Three people were wounded in the attacks, said presidential deputy chief of staff Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
The southern city and its surrounding region have come under frequent attack since the Russian pullback.
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Volunteers in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv have made a Christmas tree out of camouflage nets, the BBC reports.
After the holidays, the nets will be donated to soldiers fighting on the frontline.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the minister of internal affairs of Ukraine, has posted an image of the tree on Twitter.
Christmas tree from a camouflage net in Mykolaiv 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/xTqVQi0qFM
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) December 16, 2022
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Ukraine invasion opened 'gates of hell' - Welby
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had “opened the gates of hell”, unleashing “every evil” force worldwide from murder and rape in occupied territory to famine and debt in Africa and Europe.
Welby, the highest-ranking cleric in the worldwide Anglican communion, travelled to Ukraine last month to meet church leaders and Christians as well as those displaced by the conflict.
He said he had been struck by the “size of the mass graves in Bucha, the photos of what had been done to the people there, the rape, the massacres, the torture by the occupying Russian forces”.
And he said the repercussions of the invasion were also being felt far beyond Ukraine’s borders.
“Effectively we’re in the same struggle at one remove. When Ukraine was invaded at the decision of President (Vladimir) Putin, the gates of hell were opened and every evil force came out across the world,” he told BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuennsberg.
“I was in Mozambique the week before I was in Ukraine where there is famine all the way up the East African coast,” he said.
“There is inflation … there’s an energy crisis, there’s suffering, there’s shortages of drugs, everything evil has been unleashed and until there is withdrawal and ceasefire we can’t make progress on reconciliation,” he added.
In the UK, he said, rising food and fuel prices at least partly driven by the conflict had resulted in a 400% rise in the past 18 months in people seeking help from food banks.
“We are seeing debt rising, pressures on families just at all sorts of levels,” he added.
Welby has been publicly critical of Russia’s war on Ukraine, calling its invasion in February “an act of great evil”.
Visiting Mozambique the week before his Ukraine trip, he travelled to the jihadist-hit Cabo Delgado region where he met survivors of the insurgency there.
Earlier this month, the US committed a further $2.5bn in food assistance to Africa, pledging to help the continent cope with rising prices blamed in part on Russia’s invasion of breadbasket Ukraine.
The Horn of Africa has been hit especially hard after successive failed rainy seasons, with the United Nations saying that aid has staved off fully fledged famine in Somalia.
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Four people in the southern Russian region of Belgorod near the border with Ukraine were wounded by shelling on Sunday, the governor of the region said, Reuters reported.
“Our air defence system was activated over Belgorod and the Belgorod region,” Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
“Four people are known to have been injured. Medical teams are taking them to hospital,” he said. Gladkov gave no further details of the incident.
Three witnesses told Reuters that loud blasts were heard in the city on Sunday.
Belgorod is one of several southern Russian regions where targets such as fuel and ammunition stores have been rocked by explosions since the start of what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine on 24 February.
Fragile morale among Russian force significant – UK MoD
Fragile morale almost certainly continues to be a significant vulnerability across much of the Russian force, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said in its latest defence intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine.
In its daily briefing posted on Twitter, the MoD said soldiers’ concerns primarily focus on very high casualty rates, poor leadership, pay problems, lack of equipment and ammunition, and lack of clarity about the war’s objectives.
It said the establishment of two frontline “creative brigades” tasked with raising the morale of troops through providing entertainment and musical instruments among other things is “unlikely to substantively alleviate these concerns”.
See the full briefing below:
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 18 December 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) December 18, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/ssnfSJnQ3o
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/e2bZ7yBJJJ
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The people the Greeks called Scythians were formidable warriors and nomads who dominated the Eurasian steppe for more than 1,000 years from about 800BC – long before the creation of national borders.
The fabulous gold weapons and ornaments they left behind ended up in museums across the region, many of them in Ukraine. Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February, however, much Scythian gold – along with millions of other priceless artefacts – has been looted or “evacuated”.
Serhii Telizhenko, of the National Institute of Archaeology in Kyiv, who has been monitoring the wave of destruction, said he realised there would be losses after the invasion, “but I could not imagine the scale”.
The time is approaching for a negotiated peace in Ukraine to reduce the risk of another devastating world war, but dreams of breaking up Russia could unleash nuclear chaos, the veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger said.
Kissinger, an architect of the cold war policy of detente towards the Soviet Union as secretary of state under Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has met Vladimir Putin multiple times since he first became president in 2000.
The Kremlin says Kyiv must acknowledge Moscow’s annexation of southern and eastern regions. Ukraine says every Russian soldier must leave its territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
“The time is approaching to build on the strategic changes which have already been accomplished and to integrate them into a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation,” Kissinger wrote in The Spectator magazine.
“A peace process should link Ukraine to Nato, however expressed. The alternative of neutrality is no longer meaningful,” Kissinger wrote in the Spectator magazine in an article entitled “How to avoid another world war”.
Kissinger, 99, suggested that if it proved impossible to return to the status quo established in 2014, internationally supervised referendums in territory claimed by Russia could be an option.
He warned that desires to render Russia “impotent”, or even seek the dissolution of Russia, could unleash chaos. Neither Ukraine nor any western state has advocated either path.
“The dissolution of Russia or destroying its ability for strategic policy could turn its territory encompassing 11 time zones into a contested vacuum,” Kissinger said.
“Its competing societies might decide to settle their disputes by violence. Other countries might seek to expand their claims by force. All these dangers would be compounded by the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons which make Russia one of the world’s two largest nuclear powers.”
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Russia may attempt to re-enact a version of its original invasion plans, Ukrainian military officials believe, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned this weekend that Vladimir Putin still has enough missiles to order more heavy strikes.
The Ukrainian president was speaking in the aftermath of the latest wave of missiles to target his country’s critical energy infrastructure after Russia launched 98 rockets at 20 cities and towns on Friday.
Officials said on Saturday, however, that repairs had been speedy with water supply restored throughout Kyiv and two-thirds of the capital now connected to electricity while the country’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv, had been reconnected to the grid after suffering a total blackout.
The infrastructure update arrived as a Ukrainian military commander warned Russia may again attempt to seize Kyiv after invading from Belarus in the north, potentially around the late February anniversary of when Putin first ordered his troops to invade.
Mark Townsend and Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv report here:
Germany has inaugurated its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, built in record time, as the country scrambles to adapt to life without Russian energy.
The rig in the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven was opened by the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, at a ceremony on Saturday onboard a specialist vessel known as an FSRU, named the Hoegh Esperanza.
He said from the boat:
It’s a good day for our country and a sign to the whole world that the German economy will be able to remain strong.
Agence France-Presse also reported that the Hoegh Esperanza sounded its horn as the chancellor, dressed in a hi-vis jacket, approached.
The ship has already been stocked with gas from Nigeria that could supply 50,000 homes for a year, and the terminal is set to begin deliveries on 22 December.
Germany plans to open four more government-funded LNG terminals over the next few months as well as a private terminal in the port of Lubmin. Together, the terminals could deliver 30bn cubic metres of gas a year from next year, or a third of Germany’s total gas needs – if Berlin can find enough LNG to service them.
LNG terminals allow for the import by sea of natural gas that has been chilled and turned into a liquid to make it easier to transport.
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The installation of a protective dome has begun over the spent-fuel storage area at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, an official from the province’s Moscow-installed authorities said.
Vladimir Rogov said the dome would protect against fragments of shells and improvised explosive devices carried by drones, Associated Press reported.
The Russian-occupied plant in south-east Ukraine – Europe’s biggest nuclear power station – has been repeatedly shelled and its six reactors have been shut down for months.
The International Atomic Energy Agency recently announced plans to station nuclear safety and security experts at Ukraine’s nuclear power plants to prevent any nuclear accident.
The UN nuclear watchdog has already deployed a permanent mission to the Zaporizhzhia plant.
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Officials have reopened a popular Kyiv pedestrian bridge that had been damaged during an earlier air strike and were setting up a smaller-than-usual Christmas tree in a central square in the gloomy winter haze on Saturday.
The vast space in front of the centuries-old St Sophia Cathedral is traditionally anchored by a hulking evergreen at Christmas, Reuters reported. But officials this year opted for a 12-metre (40ft) artificial tree festooned with energy-saving lights powered by a generator.
Orthodox Christians make up the majority of Ukraine’s 43 million people.
Klitschko said the tree was funded by donors and businesses and that no public celebrations would take place.
Kyiv resident Iryna Soloychuk, who arrived with her daughter to see the tree just hours after another round of air-raid alerts wailed across the country, said:
I doubt this will be a true holiday. But we should understand that we’re all together, that we should help one another.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Here are some of the latest Ukraine images coming in on the wires.
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Kyiv heating fully restored after attacks – mayor
Heating has been fully restored to Kyiv after the latest Russian bombardment that targeted water and power infrastructure, the capital’s mayor said on Sunday.
Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app:
The city is restoring all services after the latest shelling. In particular, the capital’s heat supply system was fully restored. All sources of heat supply work normally.
Reuters also reported that Ukrainian officials said Russia fired more than 70 missiles on Friday in one of its heaviest barrages since the start of its invasion, forcing emergency blackouts nationwide and cutting access to heat and water.
Temperatures in Kyiv and many places across Ukraine were below freezing on Sunday morning, with forecasts expecting them to dip to -6C (21.2F) in the capital by the evening.
Kyiv is by far the largest city in Ukraine with an estimated population of about 3 million, with up to 2 million more in the Kyiv region.
As of late Saturday, a third of the city remained without power.
Sergei Kovalenko, chief executive of Yasno, which provides electricity for Kyiv, said late on Saturday that access to power has been increasing with each hour.
He said on his Facebook account:
The situation remains difficult and critical.
Updated
Electricity restored to 6 million people but ongoing heat and water shortages
Ukraine worked to restore electricity and water supplies on Saturday after Russia’s latest wave of attacks pitched multiple cities into darkness and forced people to endure sub-zero temperatures without heating or running water.
Agence France-Presse reported that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Saturday that while electricity had been restored to almost 6 million Ukrainians, there were ongoing problems with heat and water supplies and “large-scale outages” in many regions.
He said in his nightly address:
The main thing today is energy. There is still a lot of work to do to stabilise the system.
In Kyiv, the metro had stopped running so that people wrapped in winter coats could take shelter at underground stations. But mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Saturday the service had resumed, while water supply had also been restored and 75% of the city’s population had heating back.
In the eastern city of Kharkiv, power had also been fully returned, regional governor Oleg Sinegubov said on Saturday, after the strikes had left Ukraine’s second city without electricity.
Ukraine’s national energy provider Ukrenergo had imposed emergency blackouts in response to the strikes, warning the extent of the damage in the north, south and centre of the country meant it could take longer to restore supplies than after previous attacks.
The country’s energy system “continues to recover”, it said on Saturday.
Updated
Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, inspected the country’s troops involved in Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, the defence ministry said on Sunday.
The ministry said on the Telegram messaging app:
The head of the Russian military flew around the areas of deployment of troops and checked the advanced positions of Russian units in the zone of the special military operation.
Reuters also reported the ministry said Shoigu spoke with troops “on the frontline” and at a “command post”. However, it was not immediately clear when the visit took place or if Shoigu had visited Ukraine itself.
A short video posted with the statement showed Shoigu in a military helicopter and a couple of aerial shots of empty swathes of land.
The announcement comes a day after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, held a meeting with the country’s top brass, including Shoigu, seeking proposals on how they think Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine should proceed.
Summary
Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s continuing live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a brief look at the latest news as it approaches 8.10am in Kyiv.
Power has been restored to nearly 6 million Ukrainians after Friday’s barrage of Russian missile strikes against the country’s infrastructure, including its electricity generating systems.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address on Saturday:
Repair work continues without a break after yesterday’s terrorist attack.
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said on Telegram on Saturday that heat had been restored for three-quarters of the capital’s residents and engineers were continuing to work to stabilise supply.
However, half of the Kyiv province still lacked electricity on Saturday, regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba was quoted as saying, with snow and rain complicating efforts.
In other recent developments:
Russian president Vladimir Putin has held meetings with his military commanders and sought their proposals on how Russia’s campaign in Ukraine should proceed, during a visit to the operation’s headquarters, the Kremlin said.
Russia has claimed its mass strikes against Ukraine on Friday were part of preventing foreign weapons being delivered to Ukraine. On Friday, “military command systems, the military-industrial complex and their supporting energy facilities of Ukraine were hit with a mass strike with high-precision weapons”, Russia’s defence ministry said in its daily briefing. The attacks have prompted accusations from Ukraine’s allies of war crimes.
Rescuers have recovered the body of a one-and-a-half-year-old boy from the rubble of Friday’s Russian strike on a three-storey residential building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipro region, the region’s governor said. In total, four people were killed in the attack on Kryvyi Rih, Valentyn Reznichenko said. Thirteen others, including four children, were injured.
Russia has denounced a decision by Moldova to temporarily ban six television channels as “political censorship”. Moldova accused the channels of airing “incorrect information” about the country and Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
Moldova has reached a short-term energy deal that will help wean it off its dependence on Russian natural gas, a senior official said on Saturday. The Moldovan deputy prime minister, Andrei Spînu, said the state gas firm Moldovagaz would buy 100m cubic metres of gas from domestic supplier Energocom this month.
Russia’s campaign of strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure has largely consisted of air- and maritime-launched cruise missiles but has almost certainly also included Iranian-provided drones, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence. In its latest intelligence update it also said Russia was probably concerned about the “vulnerability” of Crimea.
A Ukrainian military commander has said Russia may try to invade from the north, potentially around the anniversary of when Vladimir Putin first ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. Maj Gen Andrii Kovalchuk told Sky News the fiercest fighting might be ahead and appeared particularly focused on the possibility of Russian troops invading via Belarus, on Ukraine’s northern border, in order to target the capital.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser has said it is “unrealistic” to expect Kyiv to come to an agreement with Russia to end the war. “War must end only with its defeat,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter, saying Ukraine would act with “required proportions of artillery, armoured vehicles, drones and long-range missiles”.
A 36-year-old man was killed inside his car after Russian forces shelled the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Saturday morning, the regional governor, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said. A 70-year-old woman was also injured after Russian troops struck a western district of the city with artillery and multiple rocket launchers, Yanushevych wrote on Telegram.
