Russia-Ukraine war live: Putin said Russia ‘ready to negotiate’ over Ukraine as Zelenskiy gives defiant Christmas message | Ukraine
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Putin: Russia ‘ready to negotiate’ over Ukraine
Russia is ready to negotiate with all parties involved in the war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has said, while accusing Kyiv and its western allies of “refusing” to negotiate.
Speaking in an interview with Rossiya 1 state television, Putin said:
We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions, but that is up to them – we are not the ones refusing to negotiate, they are.
He added that Russia was acting in the “right direction” in Ukraine because the west, led by the US, was trying to cleave Russia apart. He continued:
I believe that we are acting in the right direction, we are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people. And we have no other choice but to protect our citizens.
Moscow has persistently said it is open to negotiations, but Kyiv and its allies suspect Putin’s claims are a ploy to buy time after a series of Russian defeats and retreats on the battlefield.
The Russian president said on Thursday that Moscow “will strive” for an end to the war and that this would inevitably involve “some kind of negotiations on the diplomatic track”. His comments came a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the US.
John Kirby, the White House’s spokesperson, said Putin has “shown absolutely zero indication that he’s willing to negotiate” an end to the war. “Quite the contrary,” Kirby said, adding:
Everything he is doing on the ground and in the air bespeaks a man who wants to continue to visit violence upon the Ukrainian people.
Key events
Russian offensive in Bakhmut area ‘slowing down’, says US thinktank
Russian forces’ rate of advance in the Bakhmut area of eastern Ukraine has likely slowed down in recent days, according to analysts.
In its latest update, the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Russian military bloggers have “acknowledged that Ukraine has managed to slightly slow down the pace of the Russian advance around Bakhmut and its surrounding settlements”.
One military blogger claimed Ukrainian forces had pushed back elements of the Russian private mercenary company, the Wagner group, to positions they held days ago, it said.
Ukrainian social media sources previously claimed that Kyiv’s forces had completely pushed Russian forces out of the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut around Wednesday.
ISW said they had assessed that Russian forces made slightly fewer overall advances in the Bakhmut area in November and December combined as compared to in October.
Here are some of the latest images we have received from Ukraine.
Here’s more from Vladimir Putin’s interview with Russian state television earlier today, in which he claimed Moscow was “ready to negotiate” with all parties involved in the war in Ukraine.
Speaking to the Rossiya 1 channel, Putin blamed the west for starting the conflict in Ukraine in 2014 by toppling a pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in the Maidan revolution protests.
He said:
The fundamental thing here is the policy of our geopolitical opponents which is aimed at pulling apart Russia, historical Russia.
But when asked if the geopolitical conflict with the west was approaching a dangerous level, he replied:
I don’t think it’s so dangerous.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said Vladimir Putin “needs to come back to reality” after the Russian leader claimed Moscow was ready for negotiations.
It is “obvious” that Russia “doesn’t want negotiations, but tries to avoid responsibility”, Podolyak tweeted.
Putin needs to come back to reality.
1. Russia single-handedly attacked Ukraine and is killing citizens. There are no other “countries, motives, geopolitics”
2. Russia doesn’t want negotiations, but tries to avoid responsibility. This is obvious, so we are moving to the Tribunal.— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) December 25, 2022
Peter Beaumont
On Christmas Eve, as Ukrainian Catholics gathered to celebrate in the Latin Cathedral in the western city of Lviv, the electricity was off, the consequence of the recent waves of Russian missile strikes on the country’s power grid.
The family of Oksana Mykhailivna, 50, one of the congregants will be celebrating twice this year, because of a push to move away from the Orthodox calendar – which marks Christmas on 7 January – and because of other consequences of the war.
My husband is in the east right now, so my children will come over for a Christmas Eve supper and we’ll have a sort of celebration. My husband will be back before the 6th and we’ll have a proper celebration then.
But it’s going be simple and more casual. We’re not is in the mood for a big celebration. Usually at work we’d be sharing recipes with my colleagues.
Now we’re only talking about missile strikes. It kills the mood. But we’re still going have supper on the 24th and in the 6th so the family can all gather. But it’s not going to be like before.
Ukraine’s first Christmas since the February invasion has left a country utterly transformed with residents waking on Sunday once again to a nationwide air raid alarm.
In the east, in the Donbas region, and in the south – locations of the two frontlines – those soldiers who are able have sat down with comrades, not families, to eat the traditional Christmas porridge of poppy seeds, wheat and raisins called kutya.
For many, however, it has been a story of relentless conflict as heavy battles raged and Russian continued its shelling of civilian centres, including the southern city of Kherson where 10 people were killed on Christmas Eve.
Read the full story here:
Ukraine gives all-clear after air raid alerts
Unconfirmed reports on social media suggested the sirens may have been triggered after Russian jets took to the skies in Belarus and that the all-clear was sounded after the planes returned to their bases, according to Reuters.
Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force, told national television earlier today that Russian military jets were flying virtually around the clock.
Putin: Russia ‘ready to negotiate’ over Ukraine
Russia is ready to negotiate with all parties involved in the war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has said, while accusing Kyiv and its western allies of “refusing” to negotiate.
Speaking in an interview with Rossiya 1 state television, Putin said:
We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions, but that is up to them – we are not the ones refusing to negotiate, they are.
He added that Russia was acting in the “right direction” in Ukraine because the west, led by the US, was trying to cleave Russia apart. He continued:
I believe that we are acting in the right direction, we are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people. And we have no other choice but to protect our citizens.
Moscow has persistently said it is open to negotiations, but Kyiv and its allies suspect Putin’s claims are a ploy to buy time after a series of Russian defeats and retreats on the battlefield.
The Russian president said on Thursday that Moscow “will strive” for an end to the war and that this would inevitably involve “some kind of negotiations on the diplomatic track”. His comments came a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the US.
John Kirby, the White House’s spokesperson, said Putin has “shown absolutely zero indication that he’s willing to negotiate” an end to the war. “Quite the contrary,” Kirby said, adding:
Everything he is doing on the ground and in the air bespeaks a man who wants to continue to visit violence upon the Ukrainian people.
Anton Gerashchenko, Ukraine’s internal affairs ministerial adviser, has shared the Christmas video message by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Kherson governor issues blood donor appeal after 16 people killed in Russian shelling
At least 16 people were killed and 64 injured in Russia’s shelling of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine on Saturday, the region’s governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said.
Russian forces “opened fire on the Kherson region 71 times” with artillery, multiple launch rocket systems and mortars, Yanushevych said in an update posted on social media this morning.
He continued:
The enemy attacked the regional centre 41 times. Downtown Kherson came under extensive enemy fire: civilians were killed and buildings destroyed. The enemy shelling also affected industrial premises, health facilities, detached houses and apartment blocks.
Among those who were killed were three Ukrainian emergency services workers who died when a mine exploded while they were demining in the Beryslav district, officials said.
Yanushevych said anyone who wished to donate blood to help the victims of yesterday’s shelling may travel by taxi to the Kherson blood centre for free.
Here are some of the latest images we have received from Ukraine.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, has defended his country’s position on the war in Ukraine and indicated that Beijing will deepen ties with Moscow in the coming year.
China will “deepen strategic mutual trust and mutually beneficial cooperation” with Russia, Wang said in a video address, according to an official text of his remarks.
He said:
With regard to the Ukraine crisis, we have consistently upheld the fundamental principles of objectivity and impartiality, without favouring one side or the other, or adding fuel to the fire, still less seeking selfish gains from the situation.
He blamed the US for the deterioration in US-China relations, saying that Beijing has “firmly rejected the United States’ erroneous China policy”, which “continued to see China as its primary competitor and engage in blatant blockade, suppression and provocation against China”.
Isobel Koshiw
Dmytro Perov was at his day job, analysing planning applications for Kyiv city council, when he saw a familiar address – the derelict house in central Kyiv built by his family in the late 1800s that was confiscated by the Bolsheviks.
The owners of the site now wanted to build on it and had made the unlikely claim that their office was based at the house, which Perov knew had no roof and collapsed walls.
When he was a child, his grandmother said somewhere on the land around the former family home were rumoured to be ancient caves. He described it as a “small family legend”. Ukraine is home to a few cave complexes, most of which were built by monks, the most famous being Kyiv’s Pecherska Lavra – or Cave Monastery in English.
Perov decided that this might be his last chance to discover whether his grandmother’s tale was true. He and his friends, who like him are preservation activists, went to the site and climbed around the ruins of his grandmother’s house. Perov spotted some bushes and a pile of bricks in one corner on the hillside. There he found the entrance to tunnel burrowing into the hill. He and his friends climbed in, using their phones as torches.
So far they have discovered the entrances to four tunnels in and around the hills behind the house. The upper tunnel, which is the most accessible, stretches for 40 metres, and the lower one, said Perov, is twice as long. Inside the tunnels are rooms and cubbyholes which leading archaeologists believe may have been used to place lanterns.
Timur Bobrovskyy, head of archaeology at the St Sofia state museum in Kyiv, has hailed it a significant and special discovery and concluded that it must be preserved for its “indisputable and cultural value”. Bobrovskyy assesses that the caves are more than 1,000 years old and have similarities to “medieval monastery cave complexes”. Judging by some of the markings, the caves have had visitors before Perov, but he surmised they had not realised their significance.
Read the full story here:
Three emergency services workers killed while demining around Kherson
Three Ukrainian emergency services workers were killed on Saturday when a mine exploded while they were demining parts of the Kherson region, according to the emergency service in which they served.
“All three selflessly served … and performed the task of demining territories liberated from the enemy in the Kherson region,” the Zhytomyr emergency service said on its Facebook page.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russian forces had heavily mined buildings when they withdrew and explosives experts have been working to clear the area of dangerous devices.
My colleagues Lorenzo Tondo and Isobel Koshiw wrote last month about the danger of these operations last month and heard from experts who said that clearing the entire region could take years.
Good morning everyone. It’s Léonie Chao-Fong here, taking over from Jonathan Yerushalmy to bring you today’s developments from the Russia-Ukraine war. As always, feel free to drop me a message if you have anything to flag. You can reach me on Twitter or via email.
Russia’s parliament is preparing to introduce a higher taxation rate for people who have left the county, as many have since the war in Ukraine began in February.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Duma, said legislation was being worked on.
It is right to cancel preferences for those who have left the Russian Federation and to introduce an increased tax rate for them.
Those who realised that they had made a mistake have already returned. The rest should understand: the vast majority of society does not support their act and believes that they betrayed their country, relatives and friends.”
The number of Russians who have left since the start of the war is unclear.
Some local media reported that as many as 700,000 fled after the announcement of a mobilisation drive to call up new troops to join the fight in September. The government rejected that figure at the time.
Russia’s 13% personal income tax is deducted automatically by domestic employers. Russians working abroad who are Russian tax residents must pay the tax independently, according to the Federal Tax Service of Russia.
Ukraine issues air raid alert in Kyiv and other regions
Air raid sirens are sounding in Kyiv and across other Ukrainian regions.
The Kyiv city administration urged people to go to shelters after the air alert was announced.
The mayor of Mykolaiv in the country’s south posted to his official Telegram channel, warning of the sirens.
We’ll bring you more information when it’s available.
Pope Francis delivered his Christmas Eve mass on Saturday, warning that the level of greed and hunger for power was such that some wanted to “consume even their neighbours”, in an apparent reference to the war in Ukraine.
Men and women in our world, in their hunger for wealth and power, consume even their neighbours, their brothers and sisters.
How many wars have we seen! And in how many places, even today, are human dignity and freedom treated with contempt.”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Francis has spoken out against the war at nearly every public event, denouncing what he has called atrocities and unprovoked aggression.
He did not specifically mention Ukraine on Saturday night.
Earlier this month, the pope urged people to spend less on Christmas celebrations and gifts and send the difference to Ukrainians to help them get through the winter.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy delivers defiant Christmas message
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy used a Christmas Eve video address to say that Ukrainians would create their own miracle this Christmas, by remaining unbowed, despite Russian attacks that have left millions without power.
Most Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians and mark Christmas in early January.
Speaking 10 months to the day since Russia invaded, Zelenskiy said that while freedom came at a high price, slavery would cost even more.
Even in complete darkness, we will find each other to hug each other tightly. And if there is no heat, we will embrace each other for a long time to warm one another.
We will smile and be happy, as always. There is one difference – we will not wait for a miracle, since we are creating it ourselves.”
Referring to Russian strikes on the recently liberated city of Kherson that killed at least 10 on Saturday, Zelenskiy described Russia as a “terrorist country”.
The world must see and understand what absolute evil we are fighting against.”
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to today’s coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Jonathan Yerushalmy and I’ll be with you for the next while.
It’s 9am in Kyiv where some will be celebrating Christmas Day, however most Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians and will therefore mark the occasion in early January.
Nonetheless, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, used an address on Christmas Eve to deliver a message to all Ukrainians who are marking the holiday in the face of ongoing attacks from Russia.
Speaking 10 months to the day since Russia invaded, Zelenskiy said that while freedom came at a high price, slavery would cost even more.
More on that shortly. In the meantime, here are the other key recent developments:
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At least ten people were killed and an estimated 58 wounded on Saturday in Russian shelling on the recently recaptured Ukrainian city of Kherson. The region was targeted by 74 Russian strikes. 66 cars caught fire in a residential area of the city due to the shelling, the emergency services said.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the attacks on Kherson “terror … killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure”. He said: “it is the real life of Ukraine … The world must see and understand what absolute evil we are fighting against.”
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Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said the attack in Kherson is more evidence that Ukraine needs to be supplied with more defence systems and called for more weapons and ammunition.
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Reuters reporters in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol have confirmed that authorities are demolishing and clearing what is left of the smashed rear portion of the cities theatre, where hundreds of Ukrainians were killed in Russian airstrikes after a protracted siege earlier this year.
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Ukraine has announced it has killed another 480 Russian troops, according to its latest casualty figures.
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The Netherlands has pledged €2.5bn ($2.7bn) to help Ukraine in 2023, with most of the money earmarked for military aid.
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The rock band Pink Floyd has raised $600,000 for Ukraine with the song Hey Hey Rise Up.