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The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EST.
11:20 p.m.: A former Russian deputy prime minister and a pro-Moscow official were injured when Ukrainian forces shelled the eastern city of Donetsk on Wednesday, Russian news agencies said, according to Reuters.
Donetsk, controlled by pro-Moscow troops, is in the industrial Donbas region, epicenter of recent bitter fighting between Russia and Ukraine.
One of the injured men was Dmitry Rogozin, a former Russian deputy prime minister who is giving military advice to two occupied regions of Ukraine that Moscow claims as its own, an aide told Tass news agency, his life was not in danger.
Also hurt was Vitaly Khotsenko, the head of government of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, his press secretary told Russian news agencies.
The two men were injured when a hotel on the outskirts of Donetsk came under fire from high-precision weapons, aides told Russian agencies.
10:50 p.m.:
10:16 p.m.: Ukraine's corn production could fall to 22-23 million metric tons this year from 41.9 million in 2021 because of a reduction in the harvested area caused by Russia's invasion, its agriculture minister said on Wednesday.
Russia invaded Ukraine in late February and swaths of land in the east, south and north of the country were occupied or damaged by hostilities.
"It would be good if we harvest 22 to 23 million (metric tons of corn)," Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky, whose country is a major global exporter of corn, told Reuters in an interview.
The ministry in September forecast the 2022 corn crop at 25 million to 27 million metric tons.
The overall grain harvest totaled almost 45 million metric tons as of December 15 and the ministry, which has forecast a total harvest of 51 million metric tons, has said 49.2 million metric tons could potentially be exported, depending on the logistical situation.
9:33 p.m.:
8:59 p.m.: Nearly 10 months into the fighting, Russia has faced a series of humiliating setbacks on the ground in Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday that Russian servicemen in Ukraine are fighting "the combined forces of the West" there.
He added that Moscow plans to use two Ukrainian port cities on the Sea of Azov that its troops seized during the offensive, Berdyansk and Mariupol, as naval bases.
The defense minister also said it was necessary to increase the number of combat personnel in Russia's army to 1.5 million troops.
He also proposed widening the age range for mandatory military service, currently between 18 and 27, to 21 and 30.
8 p.m.:
7:21 p.m.: The Biden administration on Wednesday unveiled new curbs on technology exports to Russia's Wagner military group, in a bid to further choke off supplies to the contractor over its role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Wagner group, which was added to a trade blacklist in 2017 after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region, will now be labeled a military end user and face tough new curbs on access to technology made anywhere in the world with U.S. equipment.
The move, first reported by Reuters, is a show of support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who visited the White House on Wednesday and received renewed assurances of U.S. support amid Russia's continued onslaught on Ukraine.
6:48 p.m.: Germany's massive financial support scheme for businesses grappling with the economic fallout of Russia's aggression of Ukraine is in line with European Union rules, the European Commission said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Berlin's plan of paying up to 49 billion euros ($52 billion) to companies across sectors to help them pay electricity and natural gas bills is "necessary, appropriate and proportionate to remedy a serious disturbance in the economy of a member state," the commission said in a statement.
The EU executive, therefore, said it cleared the support scheme, which is part of a wider policy of the German government that some EU members have criticized as unfair with regard to free competition within the bloc's internal market.
6 p.m.: An Italian news crew were fired on in the Kherson region Monday, media watchdogs report.
Italian journalists Claudio Locatelli and Niccolò Celesti were in a vehicle marked press, with a translator, when they came under fire in Antonivka, a village in the Kherson, according to multiple news reports, social media posts by the journalists, and Celesti, who spoke to the Committee to Protect Journalists by phone.
The attack shattered the car windows and glass shards embedded in Locatelli’s ear and neck, but he did not suffer serious injuries.
Celesti told CPJ, saying the shooting came from across the Dnipro River where Russian forces are located. He believes their vehicle was deliberately targeted.
“No one else was there,” Locatelli wrote on Facebook. “Firing at the press has no excuse.”
5:12 p.m.:
4:43 p.m.: Ukraine is preparing for the possibility of a new, large-scale offensive by Russian forces early in the new year. Russia continues to amass troops in neighboring Belarus, a country that Moscow has used as a launching ground to attack Ukraine, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Thus far, Belarusian forces have not joined Russia's war on Ukraine. However, a recent meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka has fueled speculation that Moscow is trying to pressure Minsk to join the fight.
4 p.m.: U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House on Wednesday with renewed assurances of U.S. support amid Russia's continued onslaught on Ukraine.
"Thank you first of all," Zelenskyy told the U.S. president in a meeting in the Oval Office. "It's a great honor to be here," he said.
The Ukrainian president, who said he had wanted to come to the United States earlier, offered his appreciation to Biden, the U.S. Congress and ordinary Americans for their support.
He gave Biden the Ukrainian cross for military merit, offered by a captain it had been awarded to. Biden promised to give the captain a command coin from a U.S. battlefield in Iraq, where his son Beau had fought.
3:15 p.m.: Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said on Wednesday that Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner private military company that has taken a major part in the Ukraine war, had visited his prison to recruit convicts, Reuters reported.
Navalny, who is held at the maximum security IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo, about 250 km (115 miles) east of Moscow, where he has endured frequent spells in solitary confinement, said an unspecified "eyewitness" had described Prigozhin's visit to him.
He said that Prigozhin had offered convicts a pardon if they survived six months with Wagner, and that between 80 and 90 of them accepted his offer after being given five minutes to consider it. He did not say when the alleged visit took place.
2:30 p.m.:
2 p.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in the United States on Wednesday, a U.S. official said, to meet with President Joe Biden and address Congress in his first known foreign trip since Russia's invasion.
1:25 p.m.: The United States will provide $1.85 billion in additional military assistance for Ukraine, including a transfer of the Patriot Air Defense System, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Wednesday. The announcement comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was headed to Washington on Wednesday to meet President Joe Biden and address Congress in his first known overseas trip since Russia invaded Ukraine 300 days ago.
1:10 p.m.: The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed Lynne Tracy as President Joe Biden's nominee to be ambassador to Russia, hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was to give a rare wartime address to a joint meeting of Congress, Reuters reported.
Tracy, a career diplomat and current ambassador to Armenia, will be the first woman to serve as U.S. ambassador to Russia. It was not immediately clear when she will assume the post, because Russia must agree to accept her.
12:55 p.m.:
12:40 p.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has often astonished the world with his trips to the battlefield but his visit to Washington to press for military aid has delivered the biggest surprise of the 10 months since Russia invaded his country, Reuters reported.
"On my way to the United States to strengthen resilience and defence capabilities of Ukraine," Zelenskyy said on his Twitter account early on Wednesday.
He is due to meet President Joe Biden and visit Congress and to plead for more weaponry to resist Russia's relentless attacks on energy targets that have left millions of Ukrainians without heat and light in the midst of the Ukrainian winter.
Since its forces rolled across the border, Zelenskyy has since addressed tens of parliaments, institutions, non-profit organisations via video links and has held countless calls with world leaders but has not made any known foreign trip since attending a Munich Security Conference on February 19.
12:20 p.m.:
12:05 p.m.: Despite Western sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus continue to ship timber to the EU by labeling the products as coming from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported Wednesday, citing a report by the Belarusian Investigative Center, Lithuanian Siena group, and the OCCRP.
None of the Central Asian nations are leading timber producers, while documents say their timber imports to the EU increased 66.6 times in recent months.
The report says the timber marked as Kazakh or Kyrgyz is, in fact, from Russia and Belarus.
11:50 a.m.: The U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF says it is running over 140 designated locations in Ukraine where children and their families can gather and warm up.
11:35 a.m.: Pope Francis on Wednesday called on people to remember Ukrainian children suffering in the cold this Christmas, Reuters reported.
"Let us think of the many children in Ukraine who suffer, suffer so much, because of this war," he said in unprepared remarks at the end of his weekly general audience in the Vatican.
The pope has been making appeals for Ukraine at nearly every public appearance, usually at least twice weekly, since Russia invaded its neighbor in February.
11:10 a.m.:
10:40 a.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's "extremely significant" visit to the United States on Wednesday will disprove Russian attempts to show that U.S.-Ukrainian relations are cooling, a senior aide to Zelenskyy said.
Political adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Zelenskyy's trip, including talks with President Joe Biden, provided an opportunity to explain the real situation in Ukraine, what weapons Kyiv needs to fight Russia, and why it needs them.
"Mr. Zelenskyy's official visit to the United States, which began immediately after his visit to the hottest point of the war - Bakhmut - is highly symbolic. And extremely significant," Podolyak told Reuters in written comments.
"Firstly, both the visit itself and the level of planned meetings unequivocally testify to the high degree of trust between the countries. Secondly, this finally puts an end to the attempts by the Russian side ... to prove an allegedly growing cooling in our bilateral relations.
"In my opinion, the visit will undoubtedly activate and optimize key areas of military cooperation, further mobilize bipartisan political support and more clearly paint a picture of the future if the war is not ended correctly," he said.
10:05 a.m.: Ukrainian soldiers defending the key eastern city of Bakhmut say the battles are constant and "cruel," describing ineffective Russian tactics that are endlessly repeated. They say Russian soldiers advance, Ukrainian artillery destroys them, then more come the next day. Captured Russians say their comrades face execution on desertion charges if they don't keep moving. Current Time, a co-production of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and VOA, has this report. (Warning: this video contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing.)
9:30 a.m.: Russian President Vladimir Putin described the fighting in Ukraine as a “tragedy” but vowed to pursue his campaign there until its goals are reached, while his defense chief on Wednesday announced a plan to increase Russia’s military from 1 million personnel to 1.5 million, The Associated Press reported.
Speaking at a meeting Putin held with top military brass, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the 1.5 million-member military should include 695,000 volunteer contract soldiers. He didn’t say when the increased strength would be achieved.
Shoigu also declared plans to form new military units in western Russia to counterbalance plans by Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
In Wednesday’s speech, the Russian leader again accused the West of provoking the conflict in Ukraine as part of centuries-long efforts to weaken and eventually break up Russia. Ukraine and its Western allies have rejected such rhetoric and described the Russian attack as an unprovoked act of aggression.
9:15 a.m.: Russia is one of the world's biggest producers of bullion and many gold bars made in Russia have been in the Western financial system for years. But some investors do not want assets linked to Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February.
9 a.m.: President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that the Russian army must learn from and fix the problems it had suffered in Ukraine, promising to give the military whatever it needed to prosecute a war nearing the end of its 10th month, Reuters reported.
In a speech to defense chiefs in Moscow, Putin said there were no financial limits on what the government would provide in terms of equipment and hardware.
"We have no funding restrictions. The country and the government are providing everything that the army asks for," he said.
8:40 a.m.: The Kremlin warned Wednesday that increasing the supply of U.S. arms to Kyiv would aggravate the devastating 10-month war ignited by Russia’s illegal invasion and “does not bode well” for embattled Ukraine, The Associated Press reported.
“Weapon supplies (by the U.S.) continue, the assortment of supplied weapons is expanding. All this, of course, leads to an aggravation of the conflict and, in fact, does not bode well for Ukraine,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Peskov’s comments were the first official Russian reaction to news that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was heading to Washington for a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday. The trip would be Zelenskyy’s first known foreign trip since Russia’s February 24 invasion triggered a war that has killed thousands and laid waste to towns and cities across Ukraine.
Zelenskyy is expected to leave Washington with pledges of a massive $1.8 billion military aid package that would help his country defend itself from Russian aggression. The latest military hardware from the U.S. would include for the first time a Patriot missile battery and precision guided bombs for fighter jets, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
8:25 a.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was en route to Washington on Wednesday to meet President Joe Biden, address Congress and seek "weapons, weapons and more weapons" in his first overseas trip since Russia invaded Ukraine 300 days ago, Reuters reported.
Zelenskyy said the visit was aimed at strengthening Ukraine's "resilience and defense capabilities" amid repeated Russian attacks on energy and water supplies in the dead of winter.
Presidential political adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the visit showed the high degree of trust between the two countries and offered him the opportunity to explain what weapons Kyiv needs.
"...Weapons, weapons and more weapons. It is important to personally explain why we need certain types of weapons," Podolyak said. "In particular, armored vehicles, the latest missile defense systems and long-range missiles."
8:05 a.m.:
7:50 a.m.: Eastern Europe holds the key to keeping Ukraine's power on, Reuters reported Wednesday. While the West rushes to replenish Kyiv's stocks of arms and ammunition, countries in Europe and beyond are also in a race to supply transformers, switches and cables as well as diesel generators needed to light and heat the country in winter.
In Lithuania, a giant, disused electrical transformer built in 1980 in present-day Ukraine has been dusted off and prepared for shipment. It will travel by sea to Romania and then back to Ukraine, possibly in the coming weeks.
Rokas Masiulis, head of Lithuania's power grid, said his company was searching warehouses for anything else Ukraine might need to repair the damage done to its electricity system by repeated Russian missile attacks.
"The Ukrainians say they are fine to receive anything, including things that are not working or broken, as they can fix the equipment themselves," he told Reuters.
Ukraine has shared a list with European countries of some 10,000 items it urgently needs to maintain power.
Former members of the Soviet Union and the ex-Communist bloc have a major part to play based on their proximity and that some grids in the region still have hardware compatible with Ukraine's.
7:35 a.m.:
7:10 a.m.: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday it appeared no European countries were conducting a proper investigation into the series of explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September, Reuters reported.
"After the explosions on Nord Stream - which, it appears nobody in the European Union is going to objectively investigate - Russia stopped gas transportation through the northern routes," Lavrov said on Wednesday.
Russia has blamed Britain for the explosions - claims rejected by London - while investigators in Sweden and Denmark said they were the deliberate results of sabotage, though did not name any possible culprits.
6:45 a.m.: Heavy fighting continued unabated in the east as Ukrainian forces repelled dozens of Russian attacks over the past 24 hours, the General Staff of the Ukrainian military said on Wednesday, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
The General Staff said Russian forces continued their bombardment of Bakhmut and Avdiyivka in Donetsk, where the fiercest battles have been fought for the past months, while also attacking Ukrainian positions and civilian settlements in Luhansk and Kharkiv regions.
The Ukrainian military responded with strikes on the Russian positions that included aviation and artillery, the General staff said. The claims could not be independently verified.
Russian troops shelled the region and city of Kherson dozens of times in the past day, killing one person and wounding six, regional Governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said on Wednesday on Telegram. A day earlier, Russian shelling killed two people and wounded three others.
In Washington, a U.S. government funding bill includes $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies. The money is to be used for military training, equipment, logistics, and intelligence support, as well as for replenishing U.S. equipment sent to Ukraine. Lawmakers are racing to pass the measure before midnight on December 23.
6:15 a.m.:
5:50 a.m.:
5:23 a.m.: Reuters reported that the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, will visit Russia on Thursday for discussions on the creation of a security zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, the RIA Novosti news agency reported, citing Russia's envoy to the international institutions in Vienna.
The plant, in Russian-occupied territory, has come under repeated shelling attacks that each side has blamed on the other, raising fears of a nuclear disaster.
Reuters also reported that the Kremlin said on Wednesday that President Vladimir Putin had no plans to hold talks with Grossi during his trip to Russia.
5 a.m.:
4:22 a.m: UNICEF reports that of around 7 million Ukrainian children, 1.2 million are currently displaced because of the war. 1,300 of these children have passed through a special Kyiv rehabilitation center in a former hotel in the outskirts of the city. During their two-week stay, children are supported by psychologists and staff members as they process the horrors of a war that has often claimed their loved ones.
The Associated Press visited the center as it celebrated St. Nicholas Day, which is marked by many Ukrainians as the start of the Christmas season. When the children were asked what they want for Christmas, their answers: “A generator,” “a power bank,” “a house.”
4:01 a.m.:
3:40 a.m.: Reuters published a new report examining the state of Russia’s telecoms industry once telecoms giants Nokia and Ericsson pull out of the country by December 31.
Senior telecoms executives told Reuters reporters that Russian citizens will most likely experience “slower downloads and uploads, more dropped calls, calls that won't connect and longer outages as operators lose the ability to upgrade or patch software, and battle over dwindling spare parts inventories.”
3:15 a.m.:
2:51 a.m.: According to Reuters, Belarus issued a ruling on Wednesday temporarily restricting access to parts of the southeastern Gomel region that borders Ukraine and Russia.
The government said on its website it would "temporarily restrict entry, temporary stay and movement in the border zone within the Loevsky, Braginsky and Khoiniki districts of the Gomel region."
Russian forces used Belarus as a launch pad for their abortive attack on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in February, and there has been growing Russian and Belarusian military activity in recent months.
The government did not indicate how long the restriction would last but said that it did not apply officials, and workers and residents of those areas.
Belarus began staging what it called anti-sabotage drills in the Gomel region on October 11. Russian servicemen arrived in Belarus four days later to join a regional grouping that the neighbors have set up.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Belarus on Monday, his first trip to the country since 2019, raising fears in Kyiv that he intends to pressure Russia's fellow former Soviet ally to open a new invasion front against Ukraine.
2:15 a.m.:
1:55 a.m.:
1:40 a.m.: On Zelenskyy’s visit, a senior administration official told reporters that “President Putin badly miscalculated the beginning of this conflict when he presumed that the Ukrainian people would yield and that NATO would be disunited. He was wrong on both those counts. He remains wrong about our staying power. And that's what this visit will demonstrate.”
1:01 a.m.: The White House has confirmed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Washington D.C. today and address a joint session of Congress. According to a statement by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, President Biden will also “announce a significant new package of security assistance to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression. The visit will underscore the United States’ steadfast commitment to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes, including through the provision of economic, humanitarian, and military assistance.”
12:35 a.m.: Ukrainians shivering under bombs, frost and power outages will soon get more help from a fund that funnels money to volunteers, community groups and civil society organizations, a United Nations humanitarian leader said Tuesday, Reuters reported.
Denise Brown, humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, said the work being undertaken was "impressive," but resources were being exhausted 10 months into the war. The Ukraine Humanitarian Fund was releasing an additional $20 million to support 300 groups who had been "working around the clock to support millions of people," she added.
The funds’ release comes at a time when U.N. humanitarian projects face record funding gaps, with global needs from Ukraine to the drought-stricken Horn of Africa far outpacing pledges which are themselves at record highs.
The new release brings funds allocated in Ukraine by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to $252 million. More than $55 million has gone to projects supporting hospitals, displacement centers and other facilities that host generators and winter supplies.
12:03 a.m.: Sweden's Supreme Court decision to block the extradition of Turkish journalist Bulent Kenes is a "very negative" development, Reuters reported Turkey's foreign minister said on Tuesday, as Stockholm seeks Ankara's approval for it to join NATO.
Mevlut Cavusoglu was speaking at a news conference in Ankara. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan last month singled out Kenes as a person Ankara wants extradited from Sweden as a condition for Ankara's approval for Stockholm to join NATO.
Ankara says Kenes is a member of an organization that it accuses of orchestrating a 2016 coup attempt.
Sweden's Foreign Ministry said it was bound to act in accordance with the Supreme Court's ruling.
"We cannot speculate on what possible impact this will have on the NATO accession," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in an emailed comment. "Sweden's government has to follow Swedish and international law when it comes to questions of extradition, which is also made clear in the trilateral agreement."
Some information in this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
