These are important developments since day 1,393 of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Published December 18, 2025
Here’s what happened on Thursday, December 18th.
finding
A Ukrainian drone attacked a tanker ship at the port of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, killing many people and causing a fire, the city’s mayor, Alexander Skryabin, announced. “Emergency teams are extinguishing the fire on a tanker that was hit by a drone attack while it was at anchor,” Skryabin said, according to Russian news agency. The Ukrainian military said it attacked the infrastructure of the Slavyansk oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region overnight. A Russian glide bomb attack on an apartment building in Zaporizhia, Ukraine, injured 26 people, including children, regional governor Ivan Fedorov announced. Mr Fyodorov said three strikes had hit the regional capital and its suburbs, with two apartment blocks badly damaged. Ukrainian forces said they now control nearly 90% of Kupiansk, refuting Russian claims that a Ukrainian counterattack against the strategic northeastern town had failed. Last month, Kiev denied Moscow’s claims that Russian forces had taken full control of the town, but last week announced it had retaken parts of Kupiansk in a Russian siege operation. Moscow’s Ministry of Defense announced that Russian troops have captured the village of Helasymivka in eastern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
peace agreement
Russian President Vladimir Putin told an annual defense ministry meeting that Russia would seize even more land in Ukraine by force unless Kiev and its European allies, whom he branded “young pigs,” accepted U.S. offers for a peace deal to end the war. “If the hostile sides and foreign sponsors refuse substantive talks, Russia will achieve the liberation of historical lands by military means,” Putin told the conference. U.S. and Russian officials are scheduled to meet this weekend in Miami, Florida, to discuss a possible deal to end the war in Ukraine, Politico reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. Politico reported that US special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected to be part of the Washington delegation for the Miami talks. Politico also reported that Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian sovereign wealth fund, will be part of Moscow’s negotiating team.
military aid
The U.S. Senate passed a compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2026 that provides $800 million to Ukraine ($400 million in each of the next two years) as part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. This provides funding to US companies to produce weapons for the Ukrainian military. The law also authorizes the Baltic Sea Security Initiative, which provides $175 million to support the defense of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and limits the Pentagon’s ability to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Europe to less than 76,000. The nearly $1 trillion bill passed by the House of Representatives last week will now go to the White House for President Trump to sign into law. The Norwegian government announced it would buy ammunition for Ukraine’s F-16 fighter jets and other air defense systems, including long-range missiles, worth 3.2 billion Norwegian crowns ($290 million).
sanctions
The European Parliament has approved the European Union’s plan to phase out Russian gas imports by the end of 2027, clearing the penultimate legal hurdle before the ban becomes law. The Russian gas ban still requires formal approval at a European Union ministerial meeting scheduled for early next year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on allies in Kiev to show Russia that continuing the war is “pointless” ahead of a key EU summit on Russia’s frozen assets on Thursday. At the summit, some $250 billion in Russian government debt currently frozen in EU banks could be used to lend to Ukraine. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said ahead of an EU summit that finding a legal way to use frozen Russian assets remains “not at all easy”. Meloni warned that doing so without a solid legal basis would hand Moscow its “first victory since the beginning of the war.” A Moscow court will hold a preliminary hearing on January 16 in Russia’s central bank’s case against Belgian depository institution Euroclear over plans to use frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine. Russia’s central bank filed a lawsuit in Moscow this week seeking $230 billion in damages against Euroclear, the first step in what the Kremlin has warned would be a legal nightmare if the EU uses Russian assets to aid Ukraine. The United States is ramping up pressure on Russia by preparing additional sanctions against Russia’s energy sector in case President Vladimir Putin rejects a peace deal with Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The United States has extended an exemption allowing oil sales from Russia’s Sakhalin 2 project until June 18 next year, which will likely allow the project to continue producing liquefied natural gas. The general permit, issued by the U.S. Treasury Department, is important for Japan, which sources about 9% of its LNG from Russia. Britain says it is giving Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich one last chance to give Ukraine 2.5 billion pounds (about $3.33 billion) for the sale of Chelsea Football Club or face legal action. After Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Britain sanctioned Abramovich for his crackdown on the Russian oligarchy, triggering a hasty sale of football clubs and a freeze on profits. Britain wants to spend money on humanitarian causes in Ukraine. Abramovich has 90 days to act on the terms of the government’s new license. If the Russian businessman fails to release the funds quickly, the government said in a statement that it is prepared to take him to court.
regional security
Poland has decided to start producing anti-personnel mines for the first time since the Cold War and plans to deploy them along its eastern border and potentially export them to Ukraine, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Pawel Zalewski told Reuters. Poland wants to use anti-personnel mines to strengthen its borders with Belarus and Russia.
Russian situation
Russia will spend 5.1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on the Ukraine war in 2025, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said, providing the first official estimate of how much the conflict will cost this year’s state budget. Based on the Ministry of Economy’s 2025 GDP estimate of 217 trillion rubles ($2.7 trillion), the war’s costs would amount to 11 trillion rubles ($136 billion).
