Russia-Ukraine war live: Putin’s ceasefire proposal shows he is ‘trying to find oxygen’, says Biden – as it happened

The German economy minister commented on Germany providing weapons to Ukraine, calling the aid a “good decision”.

“This is a good decision”, said Robert Habeck, whose department has to greenlight weapons exports, during a briefing.

“Since the start of the war we have continuously expanded our support in coordination with our partners. It is only logical that we also take this step. Ukraine has the right to defend itself against the Russian attack, and we have the duty to help her”.

The UN Secretary-General disbanded a fact-finding mission into a July attack in the Ukrainian city of Olenivka, reported Reuters.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres disbanded the mission into the attack that killed prisoners being held captive by Moscow-backed separatists as the UN mission cannot deploy to the site, announced a UN spokesman on Thursday.

Russia and Ukraine both requested an investigation into the attack, which Guterres had announced in August.

The US state department has commented on Putin’s announced ceasefire, describing it as “cynical” and adding that the US has “little faith” in the announcement’s intentions.

During a press briefing on Thursday, US state department spokesperson Ned Price spoke about the 36-hour ceasefire Russia announced in light of Orthodox Christmas.

Price called the ceasefire cynical given Moscow’s recent attacks on Ukraine on New Year’s Day.

Price added that a temporary pause of fighting from Moscow could be used to “refit, to regroup, and ultimately to re-attack.”

From Washington Post reporter John Hudson:

Two US officials provided details on Thursday as to what will be included in a US weapons package for Ukraine, reported Reuters.

According to the unnamed officials, the weapons package will include 50 Bradley fighting vehicles, with the package expected to be worth approximately $2.8b.

On Thursday, Biden and German chancellor Scholz announced that the US and Germany will provide Ukraine with Bradley fighting vehicles, in addition to other weaponry.

Ukraine’s foreign minister of affairs posted on Twitter that Russia’s ceasefire agreement “can not and should not be taken seriously.”

Shortly following an announcement from Putin that Russia would be entering into a 36-hour ceasefire agreement along the entire line of contact in Ukraine to mark Orthodox Christmas, foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba condemned the announcement as skeptical.

From Kuleba’s twitter:

The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, would welcome any ceasefire in Ukraine during Orthodox Christmas, a spokesperson for the organisation said.

The UN spokesperson acknowledged that any temporary truce would not replace a just peace in line with the UN Charter and international law.

The provision of tanks may well be part of “the next phase” of weapons transfers to Ukraine, the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said following a meeting with Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, on Thursday.

Baerbock insisted Germany was willing to provide heavy weapons that Ukraine needs to liberate its occupied territories, and will work in conjunction with Nato partners to achieve this.

She was speaking after France and the US said they are willing to provide forms of tank weapons to Ukraine, placing pressure on the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to abandon his months-long reluctance to provide either Leopard tanks or Marder light infantry.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Baerbock, Cleverly said tanks may well be part of the next phase of weapons transfers, saying the position is kept under constant review.

In Germany, politicians from the FDP and the Greens were quick to welcome the French president Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that he would deliver AMX-10RC armed reconnaissance tanks to Ukraine.

Baerbock, a private advocate of Germany providing more heavy weaponry, did not seek an open clash with the chancellor at her joint press conference with Cleverly, but made her feelings clear saying “if Putin believes he has the longest staying power and Ukraine will run out of weapons soon he is wrong”.

Accusing Putin of a deliberate attack on humanity she said:

If we wish to see Ukraine live in freedom it means we think of offensive weapons, but it also means providing the weapons Ukraine needs to free occupied territories.

She said it was important that Vladimir Putin “does not need to be deluded to cherishing the hope that the policy of annexing land is successful”.

I have pointed out time and time again we work with our partners to see what kind of military support is required by Ukraine.

Her emphasis on working in partnership with allies, the importance of Ukraine’s own assessment of its needs, and the requirement for Putin to be under no illusion that he must give back annexed lands, conveyed an overall impression that she is confident Germany is about to shift its position.

Cleverly praised Baerbock saying she had shown huge political courage in standing by Ukraine, adding the west will continue to have conversations with the Ukrainians about the weapons they need.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he spoke with Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, about “security cooperation” as well as the exchange of prisoners of war and the Black Sea Grain initiative.

Zelenskiy added that he was “glad to hear that Turkey is ready to participate in the implementation” of his “peace formula”, which he first proposed in November.

The Turkish president also spoke with Vladimir Putin in a phone call earlier today. Erdoğan told the Russian leader that peace efforts in the Russia-Ukraine war should be supported by a unilateral ceasefire and a “vision for a fair solution”, according to his office.

Here’s some more Ukrainian reaction to Vladimir Putin’s order for a 36-hour ceasefire over Orthodox Christmas, which presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak earlier dismissed as “hypocrisy”.

Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun points out that Russia’s offer for a ceasefire comes just days after Russia launched a wave of strikes on the country, including the capital Kyiv, as Ukrainians celebrated the new year.

Iuliia Mendel, a Ukrainian former presidential spokesperson, accuses Russia of “killing and torturing people in my country, destroying infrastructure and human lives” while wanting a ceasefire “to celebrate Christmas”.

Euan MacDonald of the New Voice of Ukraine, who is based in Kyiv, warns that the Kremlin’s offer “is not a goodwill gesture” and that it will use the chance to cast Ukraine as an aggressor if it does not agree to the temporary truce.

Vladimir Putin has gambled away his gas leverage over Europe, Germany’s vice-chancellor has claimed as he sounded a note of cautious optimism over his country’s energy supplies during a visit to Norway.

Russia’s war in Ukraine had caught Berlin at a vulnerable moment since it was over-reliant on natural gas deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and had failed to build up infrastructure for alternative supply channels, said Robert Habeck, the German deputy head of government and economic minister.

“The German problem, or the central European problem, was that half of our eggs were in the basket of Putin,” the Green politician said at a joint press conference with the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, in Oslo. “And he destroyed them.”

At the start of 2023, however, Germany was “one-third done” being able to replace ceased Russian deliveries of gas, oil and coal through other channels, such as speedily built liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals and an increase of imports from Norway, now Europe’s largest supplier of gas. Norway’s energy minister, Terje Aasland, announced on Thursday that Oslo would again be able to deliver 122bn cubic metres of natural gas to Europe this year, up 8% from deliveries in 2021.

While emphasising that Germany’s energy situation remained “very very tight and complicated”, Habeck sounded a note of optimism. “Right now, I can say the storages in Germany are full, around 90%, we will withstand this winter, and the prices are going down.” With central Europe enjoying a relatively mild winter so far, he said, there was a “fair chance” its storage tanks would not be completely empty at the end of the cold season.

Read the full story here:

Here’s the statement from President Vladimir Putin ordering a ceasefire in Ukraine over Orthodox Christmas from noon tomorrow until midnight 6 January.

Putin said:

Taking into account the appeal of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, I instruct the minister of defense of the Russian Federation to introduce a ceasefire regime along the entire line of contact of the parties in Ukraine from 12.00 on 6 January 2023 to 24.00 on 7 January 2023.

Proceeding from the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the areas of hostilities, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a ceasefire and allow them to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on Christmas Day.

Ihor Terekhov, mayor of Kharkiv, has posted to Telegram to warn residents of an impeding drop in temperatures. Ukraine has been experiencing unseasonably warm weather for the last few days, but that is expect to change for Orthodox Christmas at the weekend. In his message, he reminded residents of the facilities provided by the city, saying:

All city life support services of Kharkiv have been put on high alert and 24/7 emergency response. I remind you that there are “Points of Unbreakability” in the city, where you can warm up and charge mobile phones if necessary. In addition to the “Points of Unbreakability”, there are heating points in Kharkiv. If necessary, the subway will also operate in the mode of heating points. Hot food distribution points will work as usual from Monday to Saturday inclusive. I am sure that together we will overcome this challenge.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the office of president of Ukraine, has posted to Telegram to report that the Zakarpattia oblast is working with Ukraine’s ice hockey federation to provide three new rinks, in response to the one destroyed in Druzhkivka in Donetsk on Monday. Tymoshenko writes:

In the communities where they will operate, they will create a youth centre with ice hockey departments. They will provide recruitment and a professional training process.

Local children will train here, as well as children who were forced to move from their hometowns and towns due to the war. We will not give the enemy a chance to take the future away from our children. We fight and fight precisely for them. Instead of one destroyed arena, there will be three!

Tass is reporting that the mayor of Horlivka, one of the Russian-occupied cities in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, has said that the armed forces of Ukraine fired at the city, and hits were recorded on the buildings of a hostel and a medical unit.

Earlier today, Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk oblast – one of the regions which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed – reported two people killed in the direction of Horlivka by Russian fire.

Neither sets of claims have been independently verified.

Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said he spoke with the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, about “further coordination in the matter of guaranteeing Ukrainian energy security”.

In a tweet, Yermak said he thanked Sullivan for Washington’s support for Kyiv in its “struggle for independence, freedom, and democratic values”.

Here’s more on the head of the private Russian military group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who today bade farewell to former convicts who had served out their contracts in Ukraine, as my colleague Pjotr Sauer reported earlier.

The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov writes that Russian commentators are beginning to joke that Prigozhin is the country’s real leader.

The Wagner founder has previously criticised the Russian defence ministry for its performance in Ukraine and has lauded Wagner as the country’s most capable fighting force.

In a video published at the end of December and purportedly filmed near the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, two apparent Wagner soldiers are seen insulting the chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov.

The Guardian could not independently verify the footage, but when asked about the video by Russian journalists, Prigozhin appeared to express his approval for the actions of the soldiers, saying he travelled to Bakhmut to meet them.

“The guys asked me to convey that when you sit in a warm office, the problems of the frontline are hard to hear,” Prigozhin said in a statement, in an apparent dig at the country’s top military command.

Germany will always adjust its arms deliveries to Ukraine based on “the needs on the battlefield”, vice-chancellor Robert Habeck said.

Habeck said:

We will not stop to deliver weapons to Ukraine ... We will always adjust our deliveries to the need of the battlefield.

His remarks came a day after France’s Emmanuel Macron told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that his government would send light AMX-10 RC armoured combat vehicles to help in the war against Russia.

In a phone call between the two leaders, Zelenskiy thanked Macron for the announcement and said it showed the need for others to provide heavier weapons, according to a French official.

A wide-ranging public discussion is taking place in Ukraine over what to do with seven street murals painted in November by the British artist Banksy on a series of destroyed buildings in and around Kyiv.

The conversation has grown urgent after thieves last month made off with one artwork from the town of Hostomel, about 15 miles (25km) outside the capital. It shows a woman in a gas mask and dressing gown holding a red fire extinguisher. She is standing next to a real flame-blackened window.

Banksy painted the image and six others during an unpublicised trip to Ukraine. He later acknowledged in a video that they were his work, done “in solidarity” with the Ukrainian people. The Instagram post showed the artist at work – his identity obscured – as well as interviews with local people walking amid ruins.

On 2 December, a group of men chiselled the dressing gown woman from the side of a scorched wall. When challenged by a local person, they claimed to be representatives of Neo-Eco, a French charity which is reconstructing the wrecked Hostomel housing estate using recycled materials.

Suspicious, the person rang the police. Officers arrived at the scene and arrested eight men. The mural was recovered in good condition and is now being kept under guard at Hostomel’s police station. An investigation into the crime has been opened.

Read the full story here:

The Ukrainian president has called on western allies to supply Ukraine with tanks. In a video address, during which he thanked France for providing them, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said: “This is what gives a clear signal to all our other partners. There is no rational reason why western-style tanks have not yet been supplied to Ukraine.” Here is the video clip.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has told Zelenskiy his government would send light AMX-10 RC armoured combat vehicles to help its war effort.

By the way, as I suspect it is going to become a point of contention among military analysts and commentators on Ukraine, if you want to know the difference between a tank and an armoured vehicle, my colleague Helen Sullivan had these quotes earlier from the British Forces Broadcasting Service, saying: “The main difference between a tank and an armoured vehicle is their role on the battlefield. A tank is an armoured vehicle that is specifically used to break enemy lines.”

Tanks “do not typically carry infantry, and are actually designed to fight in direct combat with enemy forces”, using armour to protect themselves, “and their main gun as their offence”, according to the BFBS.

Here is a photograph taken in Dnipro yesterday of the removal of a monument to Soviet soldier Alexander Matrosov as it was dismantled as part of the “decommunisation” process in eastern Ukraine. Matrosov, who was born in Dnipro, was posthumously awarded the title of hero of the Soviet Union in 1943 after he single-handedly tackled a German machine gun position at the cost of his own life.

The Kyiv Post today carries its own analysis of the reaction in Russia to the strike on troops stationed in occupied Makiivka. It writes:

Russia’s top brass on Wednesday tried to shift the blame onto the dead soldiers themselves, accusing them of the banned use of personal mobile phones which were then tracked and located by Ukrainian forces.

It’s feasible that this occurred – since the early days of the war, the lax use of mobile phones by troops has allowed both sides to pinpoint the location of the enemy, but it still doesn’t account for the decision to house the troops in an unprotected building packed with explosive material.

Given the strike has also led to rare public displays of grief, including in Russia’s Samara region on the Volga River, home to some of the victims, it’s not yet clear how far up the chain of command the blame will have to lie in order to assuage public anger.

In a sign of just how seriously the criticism is being taken by the Kremlin, Margarita Simonyan, the influential head of RT, Russia’s state-controlled international TV channel, welcomed the army’s promise that officials “will be held accountable.”

“I hope that the names of these persons will be announced,” she said. “It is time to understand that impunity does not lead to social harmony. Impunity leads to new crimes. And, as a result, to public dissent.”

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was typically blunt yesterday in a response to a question from the media about the stated willingness of Italy to act as a peace guarantor in any eventual settlement between Russia and Ukraine. Zakharova’s response was published in full by the Russian foreign ministry late yesterday, and she said:

Many countries declare their interest in being part of a settlement … and some even directly offer us their mediation services. Pope Francis, President of France Emmanuel Macron, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other heads of state and government, politicians and public figures have talked about this. Some are sincere, others are pursuing their own selfish goals, trying to wedge into the talk process in order to get foreign policy dividends.

However, it is strange to hear offers of mediation from countries that took an unequivocal and very aggressive anti-Russia position from the very beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine, and not only supported the bloody Kiev regime, but also provide it with significant military and military-technical assistance. It is known that Italy, along with an extensive range of weapons and military equipment, is supplying Kiev with anti-personnel mines.

These irresponsible actions not only multiply the number of victims, including Donbas civilians, and delay the end of the conflict, but could also draw Nato countries into a direct military confrontation with Russia. However, Kiev’s western sponsors, among which, unfortunately, Italy is one, are not even thinking about stopping; on the contrary, they are building up their supplies. Obviously, given Italy’s biased position, we cannot regard them as either an honest mediator or a possible guarantor in a peace process.

Viacheslav Chaus, the governor of Ukraine’s Chernihiv region, has posted to Telegram to say that the area has received a donation of 75 boilers from the International Organization for Migration in Ukraine. Chaus said:

This is the first batch of equipment. The second is expected before the end of the month. Everything will be distributed among educational establishments of the residential type and secondary schools in communities according to needs.

Ukraine’s gross domestic product fell by 30.4% in 2022 – the largest annual fall in over 30 years – because of the war with Russia, the economy minister Yulia Svyrydenko said this morning.

Reuters reports that Svyrydenko said in a statement that Ukraine’s economy had suffered its largest losses since it won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 although the fall was less than initially expected.

“The successes of Ukraine’s defence forces on the frontlines, the coordinated work of the government and businesses, the unbreakable spirit of the population and the speed of rebuilding damaged critical infrastructure units and also systemic financial support from international donors have allowed us to keep up the economic front and continue our movement towards victory,” Svyrydenko said.

The economy ministry said Russian missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure continued to put pressure on business activity and sentiment. Ukraine’s GDP had grown by 3.4% in 2021.

Overnight, Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), has said that service personnel injured in the attack on the barracks in occupied Makiivka have been mostly transferred to hospitals within Russia. Donetsk is one of the Ukrainian regions which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed. He posted to his Telegram channel:

The doctors said that the wounded began to arrive very quickly after the incident, thanks to which they were able to provide emergency medical care in a timely manner. Almost all of them have already been transferred to other regions of Russia.

Both the fighters and the commanders behaved heroically, they saved many of their colleagues. And what is important - they have a fighting mood. All as one are eager to avenge their comrades.

Prior to the declaration of annexation, only three UN member states – Russia, Syria and North Korea – recognised the DPR as any kind of legitimate authority. It was established in 2014.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk oblast – one of the regions which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed – has posted a status update in which he says two people have been killed by Russian fire in the last 24 hours. He writes on Telegram:

On the Donetsk side, Kurakhove was the most affected – the city was hit by several shellings. Six private houses, two shops and equipment at an infrastructure facility were damaged. Marinka was subjected to intense shelling, and in the morning isolated airstrikes were recorded in the old part of Avdiivka – without casualties.

Two people died in the Horlivka direction and one person was injured in Bakhmut. In Chasiv Yar, a high-rise building was destroyed, four more houses and a hospital building were damaged. In Soledar, a five-story building was damaged – no one was injured.

The UK’s ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, has posted a picture from Cornwall of people celebrating Christmas with Ukrainian flags, commenting: “Pretty amazing to see how strong support for Ukraine remains in the UK after nearly a year of the Russian invasion.”

Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, governor of Sumy oblast, has said on Telegram that the night passed without incident in his region, which borders Russia.

Maksym Kozytskyi, governor of Lviv, has posted his daily update on events in the region. He states that in the past 24 hours there has been one air alert – on Wednesday morning – but no attack materialised. He said that in the last 24 hours, 60 internally displaced people arrived in Lviv by train, and 58 by bus. They were travelling from what he described as “the epicentres of hostilities”. On the power situation, he writes:

As of this moment, there are no power outages in our region. Ukrenergo provide consumption limits. If they are exceeded, the schedule of hourly outages will be applied.

The New York Times has led its international morning briefing with the reaction to the devastating attack on Makiivka. Natasha Frost writes:

Russian soldiers’ use of open cellphone lines in Ukraine has been a known vulnerability for its military, often revealing forces’ positions. Intercepted calls have revealed the disarray and discontent in Russia’s ranks. Some Russian lawmakers and military bloggers pushed back against the blame, calling it an attempt by the military to avoid faulting commanders.

Kyiv says its forces have killed or wounded more than 1,000 Russian soldiers in a series of pinpoint attacks. Russia has confirmed only one of three waves of strikes.

The United States is not “hand-wringing” over the mass casualties of Russian soldiers in a Ukrainian attack reportedly using US-supplied artillery, a senior White House official said Wednesday.

After criticism in Russia over the use of US-delivered weaponry by Ukrainian defenders, including in the Makiivka strike, the national security council spokesperson John Kirby said Russia is to blame.

There is no “hand-wringing by the administration at all. This is a war. They have been invaded and they (Ukrainians) are striking back and defending themselves,” Kirby said. “Russian soldiers in their territory are legitimate targets for Ukrainian military action, period.”

Kirby would not give a US estimate of the casualties in an attack that all sides agree was unusually fatal, even by the bloody standards of the now more than 10-month-old Russian invasion.

“I’m not going to get into the casualty count. It is war. And it is in a vicious area of fighting right now. And war is a bloody affair,” he said.

A senior US administration official has given a sobering assessment of fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Reuters reports, especially around the largely ruined, Ukrainian-held city of Bakhmut. Fierce combat is likely to persist for the foreseeable future, although Russian forces have made incremental progress, the official said.

“The fighting is still quite hot … I think what we’re seeing in Bakhmut we should expect to see elsewhere along the front that there will be continued fighting in the coming months.”

In his video address, Zelenskiy said Ukrainian troops outside Bakhmut were inflicting numerous losses on the Russians and said Moscow was building up its forces in the region.