For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.
The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EST.
9:17 p.m.: As winter comes, residents remain on the front line in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya region: More than 2,000 people still live in the frontline city of Hulyaipole in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya region despite constant Russian shelling and a lack of electricity, gas, and water. RFE/RL's Yevhenia Nazarova traveled with the Ukrainian Army's Mariupol Chaplain Battalion as they delivered essential supplies to the city. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this report.
8:22 p.m.: U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday that price caps on Russian oil being proposed under the Group of Seven nations (G7) scheme were in play, adding that he had spoken to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the issue, Reuters reported.
"Yes, it's in play," Biden told reporters during a Thanksgiving holiday visit to a fire station on Nantucket Island.
European Union governments were set to resume talks on Thursday evening or Friday after failing to reach a deal on Wednesday on the level to cap prices for Russian sea-born oil.
The Biden administration sees the price cap as a way to cut oil revenues for Russia, a major source of its funding for its war against Ukraine, while keeping Russian oil flowing and avoiding price spikes.
The G7, including the United States, as well as the whole of the European Union and Australia, are set to implement the price cap on sea-borne exports of Russian oil on Dec. 5.
7:33 p.m.: The leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic publicly criticized Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Thursday, laying bare tensions within central Europe's Visegrad Group that have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Unity within the Visegrad Group, set up in 1991 as the region emerged from decades of communist rule, has been sorely tested by the war, with Orban opposing harsher European sanctions on Russia including on energy supplies.
By contrast, Hungary's three Visegrad neighbors - which also include Slovakia - are among the EU's toughest critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine.
"This is not the best of times for the (Visegrad) format, and Hungary's different attitudes are significantly influencing and complicating the situation," Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said as he headed for a meeting of Visegrad leaders in Slovakia.
"I make no secret of the fact that the views of the Hungarian prime minister, some of which can even be described as provocative, do not help this cooperation to proceed as well as in the past," Fiala added.
6:55 p.m.:
6:08 p.m.: Kherson on Thursday came under its heaviest bombardment since Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city two weeks ago. The barrage of missiles killed four people outside a coffee shop and a woman was also killed next to her house, witnesses told The Associated Press.
5:35 p.m.: The Christmas tree outside Chancellor Olaf Scholz's office in Berlin will not be lit as long this year, a government spokesman said Thursday, as Germany seeks to save energy through the winter, Agence France-Presse reported.
The lights on the tree will only shine for four hours each evening from four o'clock to eight, instead of burning constantly as they did last year, the spokesman told AFP.
The fir, plucked from the forests of nearby Brandenburg, is decorated with 4,920 low-energy LED lights, which will consume 287 watt-hours.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 upturned global energy markets, sending prices soaring and confronting Europe with the possibility of shortages over the winter.
4:37 p.m.:
3:50 p.m.: Ukraine restored power on Thursday to two of its four nuclear power plants but much of the country remained consigned to freezing darkness by the most devastating Russian air strikes on its energy infrastructure so far, Reuters reported.
Viewed from space, Ukraine has become a dark patch on the globe at night, satellite images released by NASA showed, following repeated barrages of Russian missiles in recent weeks.
3:05 p.m.: It has been exactly nine months since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Here’s what it has cost Ukraine so far, according to The Kyiv Independent.
2:18 p.m.: More than 15,000 people have gone missing during the war in Ukraine, an official at the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) said on Thursday.
The Hague-based organization, created in the wake of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, opened an office in Kyiv in July to help Ukraine to document and track down missing people.
The ICMP's program director for Europe, Matthew Holliday, said it was unclear how many people had been forcibly transferred, were being held in detention in Russia, were alive and separated from their family members, or had died and had been buried in makeshift graves.
The process of investigating the missing in Ukraine will last years even after fighting stops, Holliday told Reuters in an interview. The 15,000 figure is conservative when considering that in the port city of Mariupol alone authorities estimate as many as 25,000 people are either dead or missing.
1:47 p.m.:
1:05 p.m.: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday set the task not only to increase the amount of military equipment produced for the Russian Army but also to improve its characteristics, The Associated Press reported.
"There is no need to introduce any extraordinary measures, but it is necessary to establish clear, high-quality, well-coordinated work," Putin said while addressing the Coordination Council.
The Coordination Council, which is headed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, was established earlier this year to support the needs of Russia's Armed Forces in the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine.
12:10 p.m.:
11:03 a.m.: Russian and Ukrainian officials say the two sides have carried out another exchange of prisoners of war, Reuters reported.
Russia's defense ministry said Ukraine had released 50 Russian soldiers who had been captured.
Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, said on Telegram that Ukraine received 48 soldiers and two officers, among them marines, infantrymen, border guards and members of the territorial defense,
Kyiv and Moscow have so far swapped over 1,000 prisoners of war since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine in February.
9:33 a.m.: Mournful Ukrainians said their final goodbyes on Thursday to a 26-year-old ballet dancer who was killed fighting Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Ukraine’s military said Vadym Khlupianets, of the Kyiv National Academic Operetta Theater, was killed by a sniper near Bakhmut, a strategically important town in the eastern Donetsk region.
Fellow performers and staff members carried his coffin into the theatre, where visitors lined up to tearfully bid farewell. As Khlupianets' coffin was carried away, they erupted into one last round of applause.
8:01 a.m.: Ukrainian authorities are working to restore electricity and water supplies to key cities, including Kyiv, a day after Russia launched more airstrikes targeting civilian infrastructure.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said about 70% of the Ukrainian capital remained without power early Thursday.
"Energy engineers and specialists worked all night" to restore the electricity and water supplies, he wrote on Telegram.
7:16 a.m.: Ukrainian officials are calling for the world to act against Russia for its airstrikes targeting civilian infrastructure.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted Thursday that Russia "wages the most cowardly and barbaric type of war against unarmed civilians."
His comments followed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's appearance by video before the U.N. Security Council during which Zelenskyy said Russian missiles hit hospitals, schools, transportation targets and residential areas. Zelenskyy said Ukraine was awaiting a "very firm reaction" from the world.
Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, rejected what he called "reckless threats and ultimatums" by Ukraine and its Western supporters.
Russian airstrikes Wednesday knocked out power in multiple Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, where authorities said an airstrike killed three people.
5:23 a.m.: Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council that Russia's strategy against Ukraine includes "weaponizing winter," The Washington Post reported.
“He has decided that if he cannot seize Ukraine by force, he will try to freeze the country into submission,” she said.
4:34 a.m.: Ukrainian nuclear power plants have been reconnected to the electrical grid after being knocked out by Russian strikes, Agence France-Presse reported.
4:21 a.m.: As Russian forces continue to shell the recently liberated city of Kherson, doctors are struggling to work with little water, electricity, and poor equipment. An Associated Press photographer captured the story of one boy whose arm had to be amputated following a Russian attack. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has a photo gallery.
3:27 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry said that in the last two weeks, Russia has likely redeployed major elements of its airborne forces to the Donetsk and Luhansk fronts in the Donbas.
2:36 a.m.: The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said in its latest Ukraine assessment that Russian politicians continue to promote openly genocidal rhetoric against Ukraine.
Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut and Avdiivka and defensive operations on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast, the update said, while Russian forces and occupation officials continued to forcibly relocate residents and confiscate their property.
1:18 a.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the U.N. Security Council that Russian missile strikes that caused power failures across Ukraine are "crimes against humanity," the BBC reported.
12:02 a.m.: Ukrainian forces have just liberated the town of Makiyivka in the Luhansk region, but it remains on the front line of fighting with Russian troops, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
Every building is destroyed and shells fall almost every minute on the civilian population. RFE/RL journalists traveled with volunteer Olha Zaitseva to reach one of the most remote streets of the town and help evacuate the people who stayed there during the occupation.
Some information in this report came from Agence France-Presse.
