Here are the highlights of the 1,036th day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Here's what's happening on Thursday, December 26:
Fighting:
- Russian and Ukrainian forces have also engaged in fierce fighting around the key city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff said 35 Russian attacks were reported around the city on Wednesday. “Three Russian military units are here to oppose us,” said Ukrainian regional commander Viktor Trehubov.
- Russia launched a massive Christmas Day attack on Ukraine with cruise missiles and missiles, as well as drones.
- The Russian attack wounded at least six people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and killed one in Dnipropetrovsk region, governors there said.
- The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized the “inhumane actions” from Russia, which included more than 170 missiles and drones, some of which defeated the forces in several parts of the country.
- The President of the United States, Joe Biden, said that “the malicious threat was designed to reduce the Ukrainian people's access to heat and electricity in the winter and to endanger its grid”.
- United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has criticized Russia's actions on Ukraine's electricity grid, saying there is “no relief even at Christmas”.
- Meanwhile, Russia said five people were killed by Ukrainian artillery and a drone strike near the border of Kursk and North Ossetia in the Caucasus.
- The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that Australia had spoken to Moscow about how the Russian military could capture an Australian citizen fighting with Ukrainian forces and was looking into the matter.
Military support:
- Biden said he asked the US Department of Defense to continue sending weapons to Ukraine, after criticizing Russia's Christmas attack on Ukraine.
Diplomacy:
- Pope Francis has called for an “end to war” around the world in his Christmas speech, calling for peace in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan while criticizing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
- Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who was released from prison by Moscow in August, has been placed on Russia's “wanted” list, according to an Interior Ministry database seen by the AFP news agency. Yashin, 41, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison at the end of 2022 for protesting the “massacre of civilians” in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
Regional security:
- The Russian Foreign Ministry accused NATO of trying to turn Moldova into a hub for supplies to the Ukrainian military and of wanting to bring weapons of the Western Alliance closer to Russia.
- Arto Pahkin, who is the head of the Finnish Electricity Authority, told the country's Yle news agency that “it is possible that people will be destroyed” due to the breakage of the cable connecting Finland and Estonia. It is the latest in a series of incidents involving telecom cables and power pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
- “Terrorist acts” have sunk a Russian submarine that went down in international waters in the Mediterranean this week, the Russian state-owned company that owns the ship said. The Oboronlogistika company said that it “thinks that the targeted attacks were carried out on December 23, 2024, against Ursa Major”, without indicating who did it or why.
- The Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people, was flying out of Russian territory that Moscow has recently secured in Ukraine. Officials in two Russian regions bordering Chechnya, Ingushetia and North Ossetia, reported the incident on Wednesday morning.