Here is where things stand on Tuesday, December 30:
Alleged attack on Putin’s residence
- Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said that an attack took place on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence in northwestern Russia’s Novgorod on Sunday, “practically immediately after” talks in Florida between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
- The strike “will not go unanswered”, Ushakov said in remarks reported by Russian media, following a call between Trump and Putin.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russian air defence systems shot down 91 long-range strike drones used in the attack and that no one was injured.
- Zelenskyy denied the claim, accusing Russia of trying to derail peace talks.
- However, Trump expressed anger over the alleged attack, telling reporters: “I was very angry about it.” When asked if the United States had evidence of the attack, Trump said, “We’ll find out.”
- Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that “the response to Kyiv’s attacks will not be diplomatic” and that Russia would be revising its negotiating position in the attack’s wake.
- The United Arab Emirates’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that it “strongly condemned” the “deplorable attack” and “the threat it poses to security and stability”.
Diplomacy
- White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that a phone call between Putin and Trump on the issue of Ukraine on Monday was “positive”, without elaborating.
- Zelenskyy said he spoke by phone with the leaders of Germany, Latvia and Finland to update them on the outcomes of his meeting with Trump and where peace negotiations stood.
- Lavrov said in an interview with Russian news agency RIA Novosti that “Kyiv and its Western backers must recognise the new territorial realities that have emerged following the incorporation of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, and the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions into the Russian Federation.” He was referring to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed, which include Donetsk and Luhansk, renamed by Russian-backed separatists as the DPR and LPR.
- A survey published by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF), a Ukrainian think tank, on Monday showed that recognising occupied Ukrainian territories “as part of the Russian Federation” remained deeply unpopular in Ukraine, with 76 percent of Ukrainians saying they considered it “unacceptable”.
Fighting
- Russian forces attacked the front-line town of Orikhiv in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, killing a 46-year-old man and wounding a 49-year-old woman, Governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.
- Russian forces killed one person and injured five in attacks on Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Sunday, Governor Vadym Filashkin said on Facebook.
- Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, said on Telegram that Russian forces killed seven civilians who had been hiding in a basement in the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.
- Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said it had launched an investigation into reports that Russian soldiers shot dead two captured Ukrainian soldiers in the village of Shakhove, Pokrovsky, on Saturday.
- “The deliberate killing of prisoners of war is a gross violation of the Geneva Conventions and qualifies as a grave international crime,” the prosecutor general’s office said.
- Ukrainian attacks injured five civilians in Russia’s Belgorod region, according to Russia’s TASS state news agency, citing local officials.
- Ukrainian attacks also injured four civilians in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Zaporizhia, and three civilians in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Donetsk, TASS reported, citing local officials.
- In a televised address from the Kremlin, Putin made a wide range of claims about Moscow’s ongoing war on Ukraine, including that Russian troops were advancing towards the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia.
- General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s army chief, said during the same address that Russian forces had captured 6,460 square kilometres (2,494sq miles) of territory in Ukraine in 2025, including 334 villages.
- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) quoted its director general, Rafael Grossi, as saying that power line repairs near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant had been successfully completed.
