Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,036

Here are the key developments on the 1,036th day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Here is the situation on Thursday, December 26:

Fighting:

• Russian and Ukrainian forces have once again engaged in fierce battles around the strategically important city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s General Staff said that 35 Russian attacks were reported around the city on Wednesday. “Three Russian armies are concentrated here against us,” Ukraine’s regional commander Viktor Trehubov was quoted as saying.
• Russia launched a huge Christmas Day attack on Ukraine with cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as drones.
• The Russian attack wounded at least six people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and killed one in the region of Dnipropetrovsk, the governors there said.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the “inhumane” attack from Russia, which included more than 170 missiles and drones, some of which knocked out power in several regions of the country.
• United States President Joe Biden said the “outrageous attack was designed to cut off the Ukrainian people’s access to heat and electricity during winter and to jeopardise the safety of its grid”.
• United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned Russia’s strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, saying there was “no respite even at Christmas”.
• Russia meanwhile said five people were killed by Ukrainian missile strikes and from a falling drone in the border region of Kursk and North Ossetia in the Caucasus.
• Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that Australia had contacted Moscow about the possible capture by the Russian army of an Australian citizen fighting with Ukrainian forces and that it was looking into the matter.

Military aid:

• Biden said that he had asked the US Department of Defense to continue its surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, after condemning Russia’s Christmas Day attack on Ukraine.

Diplomacy:

• Pope Francis called for “arms to be silenced” around the world in his Christmas address, appealing for peace in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan as he denounced the “extremely grave” humanitarian situation in Gaza.
• Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who was released in a prisoner swap 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 denouncing “the murder of civilians” in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

Regional security:

• Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused NATO of trying to turn Moldova into a logistical centre to supply the Ukrainian army and of seeking to bring the Western alliance’s military infrastructure closer to Russia.
• Arto Pahkin, the head of operations of the Finnish electricity grid, told the country’s public broadcaster Yle that “the possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out” after an undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia broke down. It is the latest in a series of incidents involving telecom cables and energy pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
• A “terrorist act” sank the Russian cargo ship that went down in international waters in the Mediterranean this week, the Russian state-owned company that owns the vessel said. The Oboronlogistika company said it “thinks a targeted terrorist attack was committed on December 23, 2024, against the Ursa Major”, without indicating who may have been behind the act or why.
• The Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet that crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people, was earlier diverting from an area of Russia that Moscow has recently defended against Ukrainian drone attacks. Authorities in two Russian regions adjacent to Chechnya, Ingushetia and North Ossetia, reported drone strikes on Wednesday morning.