Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,405

On Tuesday, December 30th, 2018, this is how things are going.

allegedly an attack on Putin’s residence

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence in Novgorod, according to Yury Ushakov, a Kremlin aide, “practically immediately following” talks between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Florida on Sunday.
• In response to a call between Trump and Putin, Ushakov said in remarks that “will not go unanswered.”
• No one was hurt, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who claimed that Russian air defense systems shot down 91 long-range strike drones during the attack.
• Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to thwart peace talks, but Zelenskyy refuted that claim.
• Trump, however, said to reporters, “I was very upset about it.” When Trump was questioned about whether there was any proof of the attack in the United States, he responded, “We’ll find out.”
• Maria Zakharova, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that “Russia will not be diplomatic in responding to the attacks” and that it would change its stance on negotiating afterward.
• The “deplorable attack” and “the threat it poses to security and stability,” the United Arab Emirates’ ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement.

Diplomacy

• Without going into further detail, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt described a phone call between Putin and Trump on Monday regarding the Ukraine issue as “positive.”
• Zelenskyy said he called the leaders of Germany, Latvia, and Finland to let them know how the peace negotiations turned out and where they were after speaking with Trump.
• In an interview with the Russian Federation’s RIA Novosti, Lavrov stated that “Kyiv and its Western supporters must acknowledge the new territorial realities that have emerged since the annexation of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the&nbsp, Luhansk People’s Republic, and the regions of Zaporizhia and Kherson.” He made reference to the Russian-backed separatists’ alleged annexes of Donetsk and Luhansk, which Moscow claims to have annexed under the names DPR and LPR.
• According to a survey conducted by the Ukrainian think tank Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF), 76 percent of Ukrainians said they found it “unacceptable” to recognize occupied Ukrainian territories as belonging to the Russian Federation.

Fighting

• Governor Ivan Fedorov posted a message on Telegram about the assault on the front-line town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine, killing a 46-year-old man and injuring a 49-year-old woman.
• In the Sunday attacks in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, Russian forces killed one person and injured five others, according to governor Vadym Filashkin’s Facebook post.
• Russian forces killed seven civilians who were hiding in a basement in Pokrovsk, according to Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, on Telegram.
• The investigation into reports that Russian soldiers shot dead two captured Ukrainian soldiers in the village of Shakhove, Pokrovsky, on Saturday was being opened by the prosecutor general of Ukraine.
• The prosecutor general’s office declared that the deliberate killing of war prisoners constitutes a grave international crime and constitutes a gross violation of Geneva Conventions.
• According to local officials and Russian TASS state news agency, five civilians were hurt by Ukrainian attacks in the Belgorod region, according to local officials.
• According to local officials and TASS, Ukrainian attacks also injured three civilians in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Donetsk and four civilians in the Zaporizhia region, according to TASS.
• Putin made a number of claims in a televised address from the Kremlin regarding the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, including that Russian troops were heading toward Zaporizhzhia, a city in Ukraine.
• Russian forces seized 3, 460 square kilometers (2, 494 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in 2025, according to General Valery Gerasimov, the country’s army chief, during the same address.
• Rafael Grossi, the director general of the organization, was quoted by the IAEA as saying that the power line repairs that are ongoing near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine had been successfully finished.