These are the main developments since Day 1406 of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Here’s what it looked like on Wednesday, December 31st:

struggle

• Russian troops shelled the town of Kostianyevka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, killing one person, an official said. The deadly attack came a day after an attack in Druzhkivka that left one person dead and four injured, Ukrainian news agencies reported.
• The Ukrainian navy said Russian forces also launched waves of attacks on the Black Sea ports of Pivdeny and Chernomorsk in Ukraine’s Odessa region, hitting two Panamanian-flagged civilian ships – the Emakris 3 and Captain Karam – as they approached to load wheat.
• Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said oil storage tanks were also hit in the port attack.
• Authorities in the Chernihiv region of northern Ukraine issued mandatory evacuation orders for residents of 14 border villages in four regions. An official said the order would affect about 300 people still living in the communities of Novhorod-Siverskyi, Semenivka, Snovsk and Horodnya, which are under daily shelling.
• Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Olha Yukhymchuk said 75,000 homes in the Chernihiv region remained without power after Russia attacked energy infrastructure in the region. She said there were also complete or partial power outages in some settlements in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions.
• Yukhmchuk also said that the repair work of the transmission lines near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant has been completed to ensure “stable and reliable power supply to the nuclear power plant in the event that the Dniprovska overhead lines are damaged or closed due to Russian shelling.”
• The Russian Defense Ministry said it had taken control of two more settlements in eastern Ukraine. It identified them as the village of Lukianivske in the Zaporozhye region and the settlement of Bohuslavka in the Kharkiv region.
• Ukrainian drones struck the Russian Black Sea port of Tuapse, damaging port infrastructure and natural gas pipelines in residential areas, Russian authorities said. No injuries were reported, the regional government said.
• Other Ukrainian drone attacks in Russia’s Belgorod region killed one woman and injured four others, local authorities said.

Putin’s official residence allegedly attacked

• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would “strengthen” its negotiating position in talks to end the war in Ukraine. “Diplomatic consequences” one of Suspected drone attack attempt Russian President Vladimir Putin at his official residence in Novgorod, northwest Russia, on Sunday.
• Peskov said Ukraine’s denial of the attack was aimed at derailing peace talks and accused Western media of cooperating with Kiev’s denials.
• Ukraine dismissed Russia’s claims as lies aimed at justifying more attacks on Kiev and prolonging the war.
• Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andry Sibiha said Russia had not provided any credible evidence to support its accusations. “They won’t. Because there is no. There has been no such attack,” Sibiha said on X.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lashed out at countries including India and the United Arab Emirates for condemning the attack, which he said “didn’t even happen.” He called the moves “confusing and offensive.”
• Asked to comment on the alleged attack on Putin’s official residence, China said “dialogue and negotiation” remained “the only feasible way out of the crisis in Ukraine.”
• Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian also called on “all parties concerned to follow the principles of not expanding the battlefield, not escalating the war, and not accepting provocations from any party” and work hard to ease the situation and “build conditions for a political settlement of the crisis.”
• The Institute for War Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said its analysts found that the “circumstances” of the alleged attack were inconsistent with “observed patterns of evidence” typically seen “when Ukrainian forces launch attacks against Russia.”
• Matthew Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, expressed skepticism about the Russian accusations and said he wanted to know U.S. intelligence on the incident. “It’s unclear if this actually happened,” Whitaker told Fox Business’ Varney.
• The German government also said it shared Ukraine’s concerns that Russian accusations of the attack could be used as a pretext for further escalation of the war in Moscow.

diplomatic

• Zelensky said Ukraine and the Coalition of Voluntary States backing Kiev planned to hold their next meeting in early January. Zelensky said the two countries’ national security advisers will meet in Ukraine on January 3 and meet with the leaders in France on January 6.
• He also told reporters that Kyiv was discussing with U.S. President Donald Trump the possible presence of U.S. troops in Ukraine as part of security guarantees.
• “Of course, we are discussing this issue with President Trump and representatives of the (Western) alliance (that supports Kyiv). We want this. We will like this. It will be a strong position for security guarantees,” the Ukrainian president said.
• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told officials there were reasons to hope for peace in Ukraine soon. “Peace is coming; there is no doubt that what has happened gives people reason to believe that this war can end, and that it will end soon, but that remains a hope and is far from 100 percent certain,” he said.
• Tusk said the security guarantees provided by the United States to Kiev were a reason to hope that the conflict would end as soon as possible, but that Kiev needed to compromise on territorial issues.
• The United States has lifted sanctions against Alexandra Buriko, the former chief financial officer of Russia’s state-owned Sberbank, according to the Treasury Department.
• Briko was among a group of senior executives and board members who resigned from the Western-sanctioned Sberbank shortly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. She sued the Treasury Department in December 2024 in federal court in Washington, arguing that she severed ties with Sberbank just days after the bank was sanctioned and that her continued inclusion on the sanctions list was unlawful.

arms

• Romania’s foreign ministry has announced that the country will spend 50 million euros ($58 million) to support a European initiative to buy weapons for Ukraine made by American companies, known as “Ukraine Arms.” Ukraine Priority Requests List (PURL).
• Belarus has released a video purportedly deploying Russia’s nuclear-capable hypersonic Oreshnik missile system on its territory, a development aimed at boosting Moscow’s ability to strike targets across Europe in the event of war.