These are important developments since the 1,380th day of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Published December 5, 2025
Here’s what happened on Friday, December 5th.
finding
Ukraine’s military has announced that its troops attacked a large chemical factory in the Stavropol region of southern Russia, causing a fire. The army’s General Staff said the Nevinnomysk-Azot factory was attacked overnight, adding that the facility was producing components for explosives. Tens of thousands of people in southern Ukraine were left without power or heat after Russia attacked the frontline city of Kherson and Ukraine’s largest port, Odesa. State oil and gas company Naftogaz said its thermal power plant in the southern city of Kherson was “almost completely destroyed.” “This is a purely private facility that provides heating to residents,” Naftogaz CEO Sergiy Koretsky wrote in a letter to X. “This kind of targeted bombing is terrorism.” Regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said the attack left 40,500 customers without heat. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that the Russian military hit Ukrainian transport and infrastructure facilities in the attack, state news agency TASS reported. Ukrainian forces maintain positions north of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, according to Kyiv’s top commander, Oleksandr Silsky. Silsky said special emphasis will be placed on organizing additional logistics routes, timely medical evacuations, and countering Russian drone and artillery fire. Ukraine’s military has denied that Russian forces are in control of the southern village of Dobropilya, which is located near a part of the front line where Russian forces have recently advanced.
Another targeted attack by the Russian military damaged the Kherson CHP plant. It was almost completely destroyed after yesterday’s attack. Several employees were injured. This is a purely private facility that provides heating to residents. Targeted bombing like this is terrorism. The photo is… pic.twitter.com/jcFHzG4cpN
— Sergiy Koretskyi (@KoretskyiUA) December 4, 2025
peace agreement
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that unless Ukrainian troops withdraw, Russia will take full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region by force, but Kiev flatly rejects this. “Either we will liberate these territories by force or the Ukrainian military will withdraw from these territories,” Putin told the news magazine India Today before a two-day state visit to New Delhi to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Putin also said his talks with US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner earlier this week were “very useful” and were based on proposals he discussed with President Donald Trump in Alaska, state news agency RIA Novosti reported. Ukraine wants “real peace, not appeasement” with Russia, Foreign Minister Andriy Sibikha told the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, a security and rights organization seeking its role in post-war Ukraine. “We still remember the names of those who betrayed future generations in Munich. Something like this must never happen 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 region of what was then Czechoslovakia. US First Lady Melania Trump announced that seven more Ukrainian children (six boys and one girl) have been returned to their families from Russia. “I commend the leadership and tenacious diplomacy of Russia and Ukraine in their pursuit of reunifying children and families. The construction of bridges between our two countries has created a concrete environment for cooperation – a bastion of optimism,” she said in a statement.
financial aid
Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Weber said on Friday he hoped to have “fruitful discussions” with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz about the European Union’s plan to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine fight Russian aggression. Belgium, which owns most of the assets, remains unconvinced by the plan, raising various legal concerns. “I hope that this will be a fruitful dialogue and that we will be able to find a solution that we can present to Europe in the next two weeks,” de Wever said. Merz said his aim was to talk to Mr de Wever as soon as possible and persuade him to end his opposition so that the parties could move forward on the issue. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reiterated that any “illegal actions” by the EU related to frozen assets would provoke “the harshest reaction” and said the Russian government was already preparing “a series of countermeasures.”
sanctions
President Putin objected to strong US pressure on India not to purchase Russian fuel due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during his state visit to India. Putin’s first visit to India in four years is aimed at boosting sales of Russian oil, missile systems and fighter jets, and expanding business ties beyond energy and defense equipment. The United States has issued a general license authorizing certain transactions involving Lukoil retail service stations located outside Russia, according to a post on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that Russia is considering retaliatory measures against the Faroe Islands after the Faroe Islands parliament passed a law giving the government the power to ban Russian fishing companies from entering its territorial waters. Faroese public broadcaster reported on Wednesday that parliament passed a law giving the foreign minister the power to ban Russia’s two largest fishing companies, Norevo and Murman Seafoods, from operating in Faroese waters or entering Faroese ports.
Europe
President Turkiye summoned the Ukrainian ambassador and the Russian charge d’affaires to convey concerns over a series of attacks on Russian-linked vessels in the Black Sea’s exclusive economic zone. “In recent weeks, we have witnessed a very serious escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war with mutual attacks. And finally, there have been certain attacks in the Black Sea, within our exclusive economic zone,” Deputy Foreign Minister Belis Ekinci told the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee. President Vladimir Putin must have ordered the Novichok nerve agent attack on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in 2018, a “reckless” show of power that led to the death of an innocent woman, a British public inquiry has concluded. In March 2018, Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench in Salisbury, southern England, after Novichok had been applied to the front door handle of a nearby home. Four months later, mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess died of poison exposure after her partner discovered a counterfeit perfume bottle used by Russian spies to smuggle military-grade nerve agents into the country, the inquest said. In response to the ruling, the British government imposed sanctions on the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, which Skripal once worked for and was suspected of carrying out the assassination. Germany has sent five Eurofighter jets and about 150 military personnel to the Polish town of Malbork to secure its airspace in response to a Russian drone invasion in September, the Luftwaffe said. The Irish Times reported on Thursday that an Irish naval vessel spotted up to five unmanned aircraft flying near the flight path of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s plane as he arrived for a state visit to Ireland on Monday. The sighting sparked concerns that it was an attempt to disrupt the flight path and triggered a major warning, the paper said.
