Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,029 

Here is the situation on Thursday, December 19:

Fighting

• The governor of Russia’s southern Rostov region said that Ukraine had launched an attack with at least 13 missiles and dozens of drones, triggering a fire at the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery. The Ministry of Defence said Russian air defences shot down 84 drones, including 36 over the Rostov region.
• South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun claimed that at least 100 of the thousands of North Koreans deployed to support Russia’s war effort in Ukraine have been killed since entering combat in December. Nearly 1,000 may have been injured, according to the country’s National Intelligence Service.
• Britain said it would send an additional 225 million pounds ($286m) of military equipment to Ukraine to help it in the war against Russia.
• North Korea would be capable of producing ballistic missiles and supplying them to Russia for use in Ukraine within months, according to the United Kingdom-based Conflict Armament Research organisation. The group’s head, Jonah Leff, informed the United Nations Security Council that remnants of four North Korean missiles found in Ukraine included one that indicated it was produced in 2024.
• Authorities in Russia arrested a suspect over the killing of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons division, and his aide in Moscow earlier in the week. The Investigative Committee said the 29-year-old Uzbekistan national had been “recruited by Ukrainian special forces” to carry out the assassination, which involved the remote triggering of a bomb hidden in an electric scooter.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed the capture of two new settlements – Stari Terny and Trudove – in the Donetsk region of east Ukraine. Both are located near the industrial town of Kurakhove, which Russia appears close to capturing.
• Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said security agencies had evidence that Ukraine had repeatedly dropped white phosphorus munitions from drones in September. Kyiv denied the allegations.

Politics and diplomacy

• North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs lashed out at “reckless provocation” by the United States and its allies for criticising the country’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, accusing them of “distorting and slandering” Pyongyang’s “normal cooperative” ties with Moscow.
• Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that journalists at The Times were considered “legitimate military targets after the newspaper ran an editorial calling Ukraine’s assassination of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov “a legitimate act of defence”.
• NATO chief Mark Rutte met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders in Brussels to strategise over Russia’s war ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. He said he wanted Ukraine to be “in the best possible position” when peace talks start, specifically alluding to the provision of air defence systems and other weapons.
• French President Emmanuel Macron held separate talks with the Ukrainian president, his office stating that France would make reinforced support for Ukraine its ″absolute priority″ and would continue giving Ukraine ″the means to defend itself and to make Russia’s war of aggression fail″.