These are important developments since day 1,394 of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Published December 19, 2025
Here’s what happened on Friday, December 19th.
finding
Three people, including two crew members of a cargo ship, were killed in an overnight Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian port of Rostov-on-Don and the city of Bataysk in the country’s southern Rostov region, local governor Yuri Slyusar announced. A Russian airstrike near the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa killed a woman in her car and damaged infrastructure. Odesa Governor Ole Kiper said a Russian drone killed a woman driving across a bridge and injured three children in the incident. Kuiper also urged residents whose homes have been affected by prolonged power outages to be patient and stop blocking roads to protest the power outages. “As a result of enemy attacks, the energy infrastructure in the Odesa region suffered significant damage,” Kuiper said. Artem Nekrasov, Ukraine’s acting energy minister, said about 180,000 customers in five regions of Ukraine were without power after the Russian attack. Nekrasov said the southern regions of Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia, the central regions of Cherkasy and Dnipropetrovsk, and the northeastern region of Sumy were affected. Russian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov announced that Russia has created a military brigade equipped with Moscow’s new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile. Russia first launched the Oreshnik into Ukraine in November 2024, and Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted that the missile was uninterceptable and had a destructive power comparable to nuclear weapons.
sanctions
EU Council President Antonio Costa said European Union leaders had agreed to provide Ukraine with an interest-free loan to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years. EU leaders decided to provide financing to Ukraine through cash loans rather than using frozen Russian assets, avoiding “chaos and division”, Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Weber said. “We remained united,” DeWeber added after EU leaders debated for several hours how to provide the necessary funds to sustain the fight against Ukraine. Earlier, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a summit in Brussels that EU leaders had agreed in principle to finance Ukraine in 2026 and 2027 through the use of frozen Russian assets rather than borrowing from the EU. But attempts to overcome differences over the plan, including talks to reassure Belgium and other countries that Europe would share legal and financial risks, failed. The new draft would provide Belgium and other countries with an unlimited guarantee of damages if Russia successfully sued them for using Russian assets to finance Ukraine. The agreement also offered EU member states and institutions whose assets Russia might seize in retaliation the possibility of offsetting damages for Russian assets held by the EU. Earlier, Russia’s central bank announced it would expand its legal action beyond a lawsuit against Belgium-based deposit insurer Euroclear over the EU’s plan to use frozen Russian assets as a loan to Kiev, and take the European bank to Russian courts. Britain has imposed additional sanctions targeting Russian oil companies, including 24 individuals and entities, describing the move as targeting Tatneft, Rusneft, NNK Oil and Rusneftegaz, Russia’s largest unlicensed oil companies.
peace negotiations
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian peace negotiators were on their way to the United States and were scheduled to meet with a negotiating team in Washington on Friday and Saturday. US President Donald Trump says he believes talks to end the Ukraine war are “getting closer to something” as Trump special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are scheduled to meet with a Russian delegation in Miami this weekend.
assistance
The Ukraine-U.S. Recovery Fund, created as part of the minerals agreement the two countries signed in April promoted by President Trump, has approved its asset policy and is ready to begin considering its first investment opportunities in 2026, the U.S. body that oversees the fund has announced. The Development Finance Corporation (DFC) said the fund’s second meeting “reached the final agreements necessary to bring the fund into full operational status.” The potential deal could focus not only on marine infrastructure, but also on critical mineral extraction and energy development, DFC said. President Zelensky said Ukraine faces a foreign aid shortfall of 45 billion to 50 billion euros ($53 billion to $59 billion) in 2026, adding that if Kiev does not receive the first round of loans backed by Russian assets by next spring, it will have to cut drone production. Ukraine has secured a long-awaited agreement to restructure $2.6 billion of growth-linked debt after creditors overwhelmingly accepted a proposed bond-for-cash swap. This is an important step for the country to emerge from the sovereign debt default it suffered in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
politics and diplomacy
President Zelenskiy said there was no need to change Ukraine’s constitution, which sets out the goal of becoming a NATO member. Preventing Ukraine from joining the military alliance is Russia’s central demand for ending the war. “To be honest, I don’t think there is any need to change our constitution,” President Zelenskiy said. “Of course, it’s not because of the call from the Russian Federation or anyone else,” he said. President Zelenskyy said earlier this week that Ukraine could compromise on NATO membership if it were given bilateral security with protections similar to NATO’s Article 5, which considers an attack on one member state an attack on all members. Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kislysha met with Chinese Foreign Minister Liu Bin in Beijing, and the two “discussed ways to strengthen trade and economic cooperation as well as issues of cooperation within international organizations,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Russian situation
Belarusian Sergei Eremeev, accused by Russia of blowing up two trains in Siberia on behalf of Ukraine, has been jailed for 22 years. Mr. Eremeyev was convicted in 2023 of carrying out acts of terrorism and planting explosives on two freight trains. Hayden Davis, a British national who fought against Russia for Ukraine, was found guilty of being a paid mercenary and sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prisoner of war camp, Russian prosecutors announced. The 30-year-old was tried in a court in a part of Russian-controlled Donetsk.
