Here’s where things stand on Tuesday, December 9:
Fighting
- Russian forces killed four people in attacks on Ukraine’s Donetsk, and wounded 12 others in the Sumy region, according to Ukrainian officials. The city of Sumy was without power late on Monday after Russian forces launched more than a dozen drones in the span of half an hour.
- Earlier on Monday, Sumy regional authorities said Russia had launched 130 attacks on the region in one day.
- The death toll from Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Kharkiv on Sunday rose to five, officials said, after a second person died in the Staryi Saltiv settlement.
- Ukrainian forces launched drone attacks on Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia, knocking out power to nearly 12,000 people, according to Moscow-installed official Yevhen Balitsky. He said late on Monday that some 8,000 people remained without electricity.
- Ukrainian monitoring site DeepState reported Russian gains near the embattled town of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, saying Russian troops have seized Lysivka, Sukhyi Yar, Hnativka, Rih and Novopavlivka, and advanced in the towns of Siversk and Myrnohrad.
- In Russia, several regions in the southern and western parts of the country issued warnings about possible drone attacks early on Tuesday, while airports in Vladikavkaz, Grozny, Magas and Mozdok suspended operations over safety concerns.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed that Moscow troops had seized the Ukrainian villages of Novodanilovka in the Zaporizhia region and Chervone in the Donetsk region, according to the TASS news agency.
- The ministry also said Russian forces shot down 171 Ukrainian drones in a day, TASS reported.
Politics and diplomacy
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- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom in London to shore up support for Kyiv as negotiations continue working on a United States proposal to end the war.
- Zelenskyy said the leaders made “small progress” and that Ukraine will share a revised peace plan with the US on Tuesday.
- He told reporters the revised plan comprised 20 points and reiterated that Kyiv had no legal or moral right to give up land to Russia in any peace deal.
- UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer convened a call with Zelenskyy and other European leaders after the meeting in London. “The leaders all agreed that now is a critical moment and that we must continue to ramp up support to Ukraine and economic pressure on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to bring an end to this barbaric war,” Starmer’s office said.
- Zelenskyy later flew to Brussels, where he met European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa.
- The Ukrainian leader said his meeting with the two European Union institution chiefs, as well as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, was “good and productive” and that “we are acting in a coordinated and constructive manner”.
- The two EU leaders said Ukraine’s must be respected and Ukraine’s security must be guaranteed, in the long term, as a first line of defence” for the European bloc.
- Zelenskyy is due to travel to Italy afterwards.
- Earlier, he confirmed reports that unidentified drones had been spotted near his plane during his flight to Ireland last week. “There will be an investigation… There were drones, indeed,” he told reporters.
- Leaders from Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden urged the EU to move quickly with a stalled proposal to use frozen Russian assets to provide funds for Ukraine.
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov says a meeting between Putin and US President Donald Trump is not expected before the New Year, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
- A court in Russian-controlled Donetsk in Ukraine sentenced three Russian soldiers to 12 years in prison for torturing and killing Russell Bentley, a 63-year-old US national who had volunteered to fight for Russia against Kyiv.
- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that Turkiye has agreed to guarantee the flow of Russian gas to his country. He made the comments in a joint news conference with Turkish leader Recep Erdogan in Istanbul.
- German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul, who is visiting Beijing, said he pressed Chinese officials to use their influence on Russia to help end the war in Ukraine. “If there is one country in the world that has a strong influence on Russia, it is China,” Wadephul told a news conference.
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Military aid
- Zelenskyy said that Kyiv is short of about $800m for the US weapons it had planned to buy this year with funding from its European allies.
- The Netherlands said it will earmark another 700 million euros ($815m) to provide Ukraine with military support in the first quarter of 2026. The Dutch government had earlier pledged 3.5 billion euros ($4bn) in support for next year, but a large part of that money has already been spent this year.
- The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office announced a 17 million British pound ($19.78m) investment in green energy innovation projects in Ukraine.
Legal proceedings
- The International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that counterclaims submitted by Russia are admissible in Ukraine’s case against Russia’s invasion. The case was brought under the Genocide Convention.