Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,395

Published On 20 Dec 2025

On Saturday, December 20, 2018, this is how things are going.

Fighting

In a post on Telegram, Governor Oleh Kiper wrote that seven people were killed and 15 were hurt in Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports in Odesa.
Russian ballistic missiles, according to Kiper, were used in the “massive” attack, which Kiper claimed was directed at trucks that had caught fire.
Odesa city has been experiencing persistent power outages since December 13 as a result of earlier Russian attacks, according to the Kyiv Independent news outlet.
Vladyslav Hayvanenko, the acting head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, wrote on Facebook that Russian forces shelled homes, power lines, and a gas pipeline as they attacked Ukraine’s Dnipro region.
After isolating Russian forces and continuing Russian claims that the city’s crucial urban center have been seized, Ukraine has regained control of almost all of Kupiansk, its northern city.

Instead of using frozen Russian assets, EU leaders said diplomats, choosing to borrow cash from the capital markets to pay for Ukraine’s defense against Russia.

Zelenskyy’s statements indicate that he isn’t interested in discussing territorial issues, Putin said.
The Russian president also criticized Europe’s handling of frozen Russian assets, blaming plans to use them to fund Ukraine as “robbery” rather than theft because it was being carried out in secret.
Putin vowed to file legal action in courts that he described as “independent of political decisions,” saying, “Whatever they stole, they’ll have to give it back someday.”

In a year-end speech in Washington, DC, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that the Russian-led conflict with Ukraine had been resolved.
The hardest issues are always the last ones, Rubio said to reporters, “I think we’ve made progress, but we still have a way to go.”
Only a negotiated settlement, according to Rubio, and not the US, will be able to decide whether to end the conflict. “We don’t see surrender any time in the near future,” Rubio said.
Rustem Umerov, a top Ukrainian negotiator, stated that the US and Kyiv had agreed to continue working together to achieve a ceasefire while he is in the US for talks about a ceasefire.
Without providing further details, Umerov wrote on Telegram that “we agreed with our American partners about further steps and on continuing our joint work in the near future.” He continued, noting the outcome of the discussions with Zelenskyy.
According to a Russian source, Putin’s special representative, Kirill Dmitriev, is visiting Miami for a meeting with Steve Witkoff, the US president’s son-in-law, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.
Following Witkoff and Kushner’s earlier this week-earlier discussions with Ukrainian and European officials in Berlin in an effort to reach a resolution to end the war, the two leaders met in Miami this weekend.
Any negotiations between Dmitriev and Ukrainian negotiators currently present in the US were reportedly ruled out, according to the Russian source.

According to “initial findings” from an ongoing investigation, Turkiye’s Ministry of the Interior reported finding a Russian-made reconnaissance drone in the Kocaeli district of Kocaeli, in northwest Turkiye.
The ministry stated in a post on X that an “unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of the Russian-made Orlan-10 type, used for reconnaissance and surveillance, was discovered.
Without providing further details, Turkiye’s Ministry of National Defense reported on Monday that it shot down a drone over Turkish airspace as it approached Turkish airspace.
According to a report released on Friday by Ukraine’s Ukrinform news site, Turkiye informed both Kyiv and Moscow that they needed to “agitate cautiously” to prevent “negatively affecting security in the Black Sea.”

Source: Aljazeera