Here’s where things stand on Wednesday, December 3:
Fighting
- Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s Kherson region, using “rocket launchers, mortars and drones”, killing a 76-year-old woman and injuring at least two other people, the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office said in a post on Telegram.
- A Russian drone attack killed one person and injured five people in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, the head of the city’s military administration, Oleksandr Honcharenko, wrote on Facebook.
- Rescuers on Tuesday recovered the body of one person who was killed in a Russian attack on a nine-storey residential building in Kramatorsk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on Monday, the State Emergency Service (SES) said.
- A woman who was injured in Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s Ternopil on November 19 has died, bringing the death toll from the bombardment to 36, said Serhii Ziubanenko, the head of the Ternopil regional police.
- Four adults and one child are still missing following the attack on Ternopil, and forensic scientists and investigators are still combing the site, Ziubanenko added in a post on Facebook.
- In the front-line Zaporizhia region, Governor Ivan Fedorov said that a Russian drone attack left 5,000 people without electricity.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence released video footage again claiming to show that its forces have captured the key city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian army says it is still in control of the northern part of the city, and fighting is ongoing.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin challenged foreign and Ukrainian journalists to visit Pokrovsk, as well as Kupiansk, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, “to objectively inform their listeners and readers about what is happening in the world, including in Ukraine”.
Regional Security
- The Russian-flagged MIDVOLGA-2 oil tanker has arrived in northern Turkiye after it reported coming under drone attack in the Black Sea. Russia has blamed Ukraine for the attack, a charge Kyiv has denied.
US-Russia talks
- Putin met with United States special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for a five-hour meeting in the Kremlin on Tuesday.
- Putin aide Yury Ushakov doused hopes of a swift breakthrough in talks aimed at ending Russia’s war on Ukraine, saying the meeting was “constructive”, but no compromise was reached, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
- Putin earlier accused European countries of intentionally scuttling attempts to reach a peace deal by including proposals that are “absolutely unacceptable” to Russia. “They are on the side of war,” Putin said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Putin was stringing along the Trump administration in the hopes that it would lose interest in resolving the conflict.
- Trump briefly referred to the talks during a cabinet meeting in Washington, DC. “Our people are over in Russia right now to see if we can get it settled,” Trump said. “Not an easy situation. What a mess.”
Economy
- Zelenskyy said he looks forward to Irish companies investing in his country, following a meeting with Irish President Catherine Connolly in Dublin.
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said India’s imports of Russian oil may decline for “a brief period” as Moscow plans to boost supplies using “sophisticated” technology to offset the impact of Western sanctions.