Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,380 

Here’s where things stand on Friday, December 5:

Fighting

• Ukraine’s military said its forces had struck a large chemical plant in the Stavropol region in southern Russia, triggering a fire. The military’s General Staff said the Nevinnomyssk Azot plant was hit overnight and added that the facility produced components for explosives.
• Tens of thousands of people were left without power and heating in southern Ukraine after Russian attacks on the front-line city of Kherson and Ukraine’s largest seaport, Odesa.
• State oil and gas firm Naftogaz said a heat and power plant in the southern city of Kherson had been “almost completely destroyed”. “This is a purely civilian facility providing heat to residents,” Naftogaz CEO Sergii Koretskyi wrote on X. “Such targeted bombing is terrorism.” Regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said the attack left 40,500 customers without heat.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed its forces struck Ukrainian transport and infrastructure facilities in the attack, state news agency TASS reported.
• Ukrainian troops have held their positions in the northern part of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskii said. Syrskii said a special focus was on organising additional logistical routes, timely medical evacuation, and countering Russian drones and artillery.
• Ukraine’s military has denied that Russian troops are in control of the southern village of Dobropillia, which is located near a part of the front line where Moscow’s forces have recently advanced.

Peace deal

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will take full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region by force unless Ukrainian forces withdraw, something Kyiv has flatly rejected. “Either we liberate these territories by force of arms, or Ukrainian troops leave these territories,” Putin told India Today news magazine ahead of his two-day state visit to New Delhi to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
• Putin also said that his meeting earlier this week with United States envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had been “very useful”, and that it had been based on the proposals discussed with President Donald Trump in Alaska, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
• Ukraine wants “real peace, not appeasement” with Russia, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the security and rights body seeking a role for itself in a post-war Ukraine.
• “We still remember the names of those who betrayed future generations in Munich. This should never be repeated again,” he said, referring to the 1938 agreement with Nazi Germany in which Britain, France and Italy agreed to Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in what was then Czechoslovakia.
• Seven more Ukrainian children, six boys and one girl, have been returned from Russia to their families, US First Lady Melania Trump has said. “I commend the leadership and persistent diplomacy of Russia and Ukraine in the pursuit of the reunification of children and families. Their bridge-building has created a tangible collaborative environment – an anchor for optimism,” she said in a statement.

Financial aid

• Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said he hopes to have a “fruitful discussion” with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Friday about a European Union plan to use Russian frozen assets to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. Belgium, which holds the majority of the assets, has raised various legal concerns and remains unconvinced of the plan.
• “I hope it will be a fruitful conversation and that we will find a solution that we can then present to Europe over the next two weeks,” De Wever said.
• Chancellor Merz said his aim was to speak with De Wever as soon as possible to convince him to drop his opposition so the parties could move forward on the issue.
• Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reiterated that any “illegal action” by the EU in relation to its frozen assets would elicit “the harshest reaction”, and that Moscow was already preparing a “package of countermeasures”.

Sanctions

• President Putin has challenged heavy US pressure on India not to buy Russian fuel due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine during his ongoing India state visit. Putin’s first visit to India in four years aims to increase sales of Russian oil, missile systems and fighter jets and widen business links beyond energy and defence equipment.
• The US has issued a general licence authorising certain transactions involving Lukoil retail service stations located outside of Russia, according to a post on the US Department of the Treasury website.
• Russia is considering retaliatory measures against the Faroe Islands after the Faroese parliament passed a law giving the government the authority to bar Russian fishing companies from its waters, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
• The Faroese public broadcaster said on Wednesday that parliament had passed a law authorising the foreign minister to bar two big Russian fishing companies, Norebo and Murman Seafood, from fishing in Faroese waters or docking in Faroese harbours.

Europe

• Turkiye summoned Ukraine’s ambassador and Russia’s acting charges d’affaires to convey its concerns over a series of attacks on Russia-linked vessels inside its exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea. “We are witnessing a very serious escalation in recent weeks in the Russia-Ukraine war with reciprocal attacks. And lastly, there were certain attacks in the Black Sea within our exclusive economic zone as well,” Deputy Foreign Minister Berris Ekinci told parliament’s foreign affairs commission.
• President Putin must have ordered the Novichok nerve agent attack on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in 2018, in a “reckless” display of power that led to the death of an innocent woman, a United Kingdom public inquiry has concluded. Skripal was found along with his daughter, Yulia, slumped unconscious on a public bench in the southern English city of Salisbury in March 2018 after Novichok was applied to the front door handle of his nearby home. Four months later, mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess died from exposure to the poison after her partner found a counterfeit perfume bottle which Russian spies had used to smuggle the military-grade nerve agent into the country, the inquiry said.
• The UK government responded to the ruling by sanctioning GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency accused of carrying out the assassination, for which Skripal once worked.
• Germany has deployed five Eurofighter jets and some 150 military personnel to the Polish town of Malbork to help secure the country’s airspace, the German air force said, in response to Russian drone incursions in September.
• An Irish navy ship spotted up to five drones operating near the flight path of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s aircraft as he arrived for a state visit to Ireland on Monday, The Irish Times reported on Thursday. The sighting triggered a major security alert amid fears it was an attempt to interfere with the flight path, the outlet said.