Here are the key developments on the 1,020th day of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Here is the situation on Tuesday, December 10:
Military
- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued orders to increase funding for equipping Ukraine’s brigades with new drones. “We recently approved a decision about the amount of such direct funds. But now I see that the amount is insufficient,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address. “I instructed the prime minister to increase financing for brigades in the coming days, to increase several times over.”
- About 800,000 Russian soldiers are currently deployed in Ukraine, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported, citing Zelenskyy.
Diplomacy
- At a joint news conference with German opposition leader Friedrich Merz, President Zelenskyy made the case for a diplomatic settlement to the war and raised the idea of foreign troops being deployed in Ukraine until it could join the NATO military alliance.
- Merz, a frontrunner in the race to become Germany’s next chancellor, condemned his country’s policy on arming Ukraine as akin to making it fight with one arm tied behind its back.
- Ukraine aims to hold a meeting of its key European allies in December to coordinate a joint position and ensure Kyiv is in a strong position for any potential talks and on the battlefield, a presidential spokesman said.
- Ukraine will soon get another 4.2 billion euros ($4.4bn) in funds after the European Union’s member states approved the planned payment of the money, the EU Council announced.
- The EU needs common instruments to fund defence spending amid a protracted war in Ukraine and calls from the United States for NATO members to increase such expenditure, Portugal’s Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento said.
- Five Ukrainian children sent away or placed in care since Russia’s February 2022 invasion returned to their homeland, Ukrainian officials said, as part of a long-running campaign to bring home more than 20,000 children deported by Russian authorities from occupied regions of Ukraine.
- Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said he discussed planning for the next meeting of the Ramstein Group – an alliance of NATO, the EU and other countries that back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion – with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Austin reportedly reaffirmed the “readiness of the United States to provide Ukraine with everything it needs to effectively fight the enemy”.
- Europe needs to find ways within the next year to fund hundreds of billions of euros in extra military spending to defend against any attack from Russia, the EU’s new defence commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, told the Reuters news agency.
