Here is where things stand on Wednesday, December 24:
Fighting
Russian forces began a “massive attack” on Ukraine on Monday night, killing three people and targeting 13 regions with 650 drones and 30 missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
Those killed in the overnight attack included a four-year-old girl in the central Zhytomyr region, Governor Vitalii Bunechko said on Telegram. “Doctors struggled to save the child’s life, but in the end, they were unable to save her,” Bunechko said, adding that five people were also injured in the attack.
Russian forces also launched drones and missiles at the Vyshhorod district of Ukraine’s Kyiv region, killing a woman and injuring three people, Governor Mykola Kalashnyk said.
In Ukraine’s western Khmelnytskyi region, one person was killed by Russian shelling, Governor Serhii Tiurin said.
Russian drone attacks on Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district left five people injured, said Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration.
An injured elderly woman looks out of her broken window after an apartment building was hit by a Russian drone during an aerial attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday [Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo]
Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said that “emergency power outages” were introduced in several regions across the country due to Russian forces targeting energy infrastructure. The ministry said that it was working to restore electricity to the Rivne, Ternopil and Odesa regions. The ministry said that the situation was “most difficult” in the border regions, “as restoring electricity is complicated by continuous fighting”.
Ukraine’s General Staff said Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from the Donetsk region’s Siversk area after heavy fighting, noting that Moscow’s forces had a “significant advantage” there.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Ukrainian F-16 fighter pilots shot down 621 of 673 Russian “aerial targets” on Tuesday night, including 34 of 35 cruise missiles.
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone strike on a car killed three men in the Belgorod region on Monday, the region’s emergency response team reported.
Another Ukrainian drone attack in Belgorod on Tuesday killed one person and injured three, the region’s operational headquarters said on Telegram.
Russian forces shot down 56 Ukrainian drones in a day, as well as a guided bomb, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said, according to the state news agency TASS.
Ceasefire
Zelenskyy said in his nightly address, “We sense that America wants to reach a final agreement” to end the war in Ukraine, and that “there is full cooperation” from the Ukrainian side.
In an earlier post on X, Zelenskyy said that “several draft documents have now been prepared”, following talks in Miami. “In particular, these include documents on security guarantees for Ukraine, on recovery, and on a basic framework for ending this war,” he said.
Pope Leo said that Russia’s apparent refusal to agree to a ceasefire on December 25 is “among the things that cause me much sadness”.
“I will make an appeal one more time to people of goodwill to respect at least Christmas Day as a day of peace,” Leo told reporters outside his residence in Castel Gandolfo, Italy.
