The Russo-Ukrainian War: List of major events, day 1036 | News of the Russian-Ukrainian war

Here are the main developments on the 1,036th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is the situation on Thursday, December 26:

Fighting:

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

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the “inhumane” attack carried out by Russia, which included more than 170 missiles and drones, some of which led to a power outage in several regions of the country.
• “The horrific attack was aimed at cutting off access to heating and electricity to the Ukrainian people during the winter and endangering the safety of its grid,” US President Joe Biden said.
• UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, saying there was “no respite even at Christmas”.
• Meanwhile, Russia said five people were killed in Ukrainian missile strikes and the downing of a drone in the Kursk-North Ossetia border region in the Caucasus.
• The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that Australia had contacted Moscow about the possibility of the Russian army capturing an Australian citizen fighting with Ukrainian forces, and that it was investigating the matter.

Military aid:

• Biden said that he asked the US Department of Defense to continue increasing arms shipments to Ukraine, after condemning the Russian Christmas Day attack on Ukraine.

Diplomacy:

• Pope Francis called for “silencing the guns” around the world in his Christmas address, calling for peace in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan and denouncing the “extremely dangerous” humanitarian situation in Gaza.
• Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who was released by Moscow in a prisoner swap in August, has been placed on Russia’s “most wanted” list, according to an Interior Ministry database seen by Agence France-Presse. Yashin (41 years old) was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison at the end of 2022 for being convicted of “murdering civilians” in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

Regional security:

• The Russian Foreign Ministry accused NATO of trying to turn Moldova into a logistical center to supply the Ukrainian army, seeking to bring the Western NATO military infrastructure closer to Russia.
• Arto Pahkin, head of operations for the Finnish power 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 failed. This is the latest in a series of incidents involving telecommunications cables and power pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
• The Russian state-owned company that owns the ship said an “act of terrorism” led to the sinking of the Russian cargo ship that went down in international waters in the Mediterranean this week. Oboronlogicika said it “believes that a targeted terrorist attack was committed on December 23, 2024 against Ursa Major,” without indicating who might be behind the act or its cause.
• The Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane, which crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people, had earlier diverted from an area of ​​Russia that Moscow had recently defended against Ukrainian drone attacks. Authorities in two Russian regions bordering Chechnya, Ingushetia and North Ossetia, reported drone strikes on Wednesday morning.