The Russo-Ukrainian War: List of major events, day 1033 | News of the war between Russia and Ukraine

Here are the main developments on the 1,033rd day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is the situation on Monday, December 23:

Fighting:

• South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Monday that more than a thousand North Korean soldiers were killed or wounded in Russia’s war with Ukraine.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense said that its air defense systems destroyed 42 Ukrainian drones over five Russian regions during Sunday night.
• The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that Russian forces took control of two villages in Ukraine, one in the Kharkiv region in the northeast of the country and the other in the eastern Donetsk region.
• A Ukrainian army general said that the village of Sontsivka in the east of the country was in a sector that had been subjected to 26 Russian attacks during the past 24 hours. The General Staff also reported heavy fighting near Pokrovsk, with 34 Russian attempts to break through the defences.
• Russian forces executed five unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war on Sunday, said Dmytro Lobinets, Ukraine’s parliamentary commissioner for human rights.
• The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has announced that Colonel-General Alexei Kim, deputy chief of the Russian General Staff, is one of the people suspected of ordering a missile attack on a hotel in eastern Ukraine in August. The Ukrainian Security Service said he acted “with a deliberate motive.” killing Reuters news agency staff.

Diplomacy and security

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has pledge In retaliation after Ukrainian drones bombed residential buildings in the city of Kazan in Russia’s Tatarstan region.
• Putin met Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in the Kremlin on Sunday in a rare visit by a European Union leader to Moscow as a contract allowing Russian gas to pass through Ukraine approaches expiration.
• South Korea said North Korea is preparing to deploy additional troops and weapons to assist Russia in its all-out war against Ukraine, Yonhap News Agency reported.
• US President-elect Donald Trump Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his desire to meet him “as soon as possible” to discuss the war in Ukraine, he said on Sunday.