As we enter the 666th day of the war, these are the most important developments.

Here is the situation as of Thursday, December 21, 2023.

Battle

• Nine people, including four children, were injured in Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, as Russia also fired drones and missiles at the capital Kiev, the second-largest city Kharkiv and other regions. The Ukrainian Air Force said air defense systems destroyed 18 of 19 Russian attack drones and Russia fired two surface-to-air guided missiles at Kharkiv. No casualties were reported.
• Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun admitted that Russian forces were gaining ground around the industrial city of Avdiivka. Stupun told Ukrainian television that the Russians had “advanced one and a half to two kilometers.” [0.3 to 1.2 miles] in some places” since October 10, but it “cost them a lot.”
• The Ukrainian General Staff’s evening update reported 89 incidents of Russian ground attacks on seven sectors of a front line spanning about 1,000 km (600 miles). There were 31 attacks near Avdiivka, it said.
• Ukraine’s armed forces are adopting a more defensive posture after failing to achieve a significant breakthrough in a months-long counteroffensive, the UK Ministry of Defense said in its latest assessment of the war. It said Ukraine improved field fortifications along the front line.

Politics and diplomacy

• The Kremlin said there was currently no basis for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and that Kiev’s proposed peace plan was absurd because it excluded Russia. “We really believe that the issue of negotiations is not relevant at the moment,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a “tough” response to foreign agents trying to help Ukraine through sabotage in Russia.
• Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich lost his attempt at the European Union’s top court to lift sanctions the EU imposed on him after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• German federal prosecutors said they wanted to seize more than 720 million euros ($789 million) from an unnamed Russian bank suspected of trying to violate Western sanctions.
• Ukraine’s largest mobile operator, Kyivstar, said it has fully restored its services at home and abroad following a recent huge cyberattack that damaged IT infrastructure and affected air raid warning systems. More than half of Ukraine’s population are Kyivstar subscribers.
• According to state news agency TASS, a Russian court has fined Google 4.6 billion rubles ($50.84 million) for failing to delete so-called “false” information about the war in Ukraine and other topics .

• Yekaterina Duntsova, a 40-year-old former broadcast journalist, has run for the presidential election in Russia on the platform “for peace and democratic processes”. Duntsova had previously called for an end to the war in Ukraine and the release of political prisoners, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The 40-year-old needs 300,000 signatures from all over Russia by January 31 to support her candidacy. Vladimir Putin is expected to win in a landslide.

weapons

• Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries, said Kiev plans to produce a million reconnaissance and attack drones and more than 11,000 medium- and long-range attack drones next year. The number includes at least 1,000 drones with a range of more than 1,000 km (620 miles), he said.
• According to a Nikkei report, Japan is considering allowing the transfer of Patriot missiles to Ukraine.