Ukraine marks first Christmas on 25 December – latest updates

Russian attacks on southern Ukraine’s Kherson region killed five civilians on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said, while Russian-installed officials in the eastern town of Horlivka said one person was killed in result of Kyiv’s shelling.

Russian forces abandoned the city of Kherson, the administrative centre of the Kherson region on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, and the western bank of the River over a year ago but have since subjected many areas there to constant shelling from their positions on the eastern bank.

The deaths in Kherson occurred in an incessant Russian shelling of the city and the region over the preceding 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said.

Regional police said three people died in shelling of an apartment building and a private home in Kherson city. A woman died in a drone attack in a small town south of Kherson and a second woman was killed when a town further north came under heavy fire.

Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, head of the press office of Kherson’s regional military administration, told the Ukrainian public broadcaster that gas and water supplies were partially cut off due to the attacks, which also hit a medical facility. “The windows were broken, the building was damaged,” Tolokonnikov said.

Some 600 km (400 miles) northeast of Kherson in the town of Horlivka, in areas of Ukraine’s Donetsk region under Russian control, Ukraine’s shelling destroyed a shopping centre and several other buildings, a Russian-installed official said.

The attacks killed one woman and wounded six civilians, the Russian-installed mayor of Horlivka, Ivan Prikhodko, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Reuters could not independently verify the Russian and Ukrainian reports.

Russia launched 31 drones and 2 missiles at Ukraine overnight, mostly targeting the south of the country, with air defences destroying 28 drones and both missiles, the Ukrainian military said on Monday.

“As a result of air combat, the Ukrainian Air Force and defence forces destroyed 28 Shahed attack drones in Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Donetsk, Kirovohrad and Khmelnytskyi regions,” Ukraine’s Air Forces said on the Telegram messaging app.

The drones were launched from Russian-occupied Crimea, it said.

No damage or casualties have been reported by military and civilian authorities.

The military also repeated previously issued information that two Russian military aircraft were downed near the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine and near occupied Donetsk city in eastern Ukraine.

On Sunday, Russian and Ukrainian military officials both reported downing enemy aircraft in different areas of the 1,000-km-long (621-mile) front of their 22-month-old war.

Reuters could not independently verify the Ukrainian air force’s report. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

The year started with high hopes for Ukrainian troops planning a counteroffensive against Russia. It ended with disappointment on the battlefield, an increasingly somber mood among troops and anxiety about the future of Western aid for Ukraine‘s war effort.

In between, there was a short-lived rebellion in Russia, a dam collapse in Ukraine, and the spilling of much blood on both sides of the conflict.

Twenty-two months since it invaded, Russia has about one-fifth of Ukraine in its grip, and the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line has barely budged this year.

Russia‘s defence ministry said on Sunday its air defence systems had shot down four Ukrainian military aircraft over the past 24 hours, just two days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv had downed three Russian fighter-bomber jets.

In its daily dispatch, the defence ministry said its air defence shot down three Su-27 fighter aircraft and one Su-24 tactical bomber in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions of southeastern Ukraine.

The dispatch provided no further details.

On Friday, Zelenskiy said the country’s forces shot down three Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber aircraft on the southern front, hailing it as a success in the 22-month-old conflict.

The commander of Ukraine‘s air force also said the planes had been downed.

Reuters was not immediately able to corroborate the battlefield reports from either side.

Former TV journalist, Yekaterina Duntsova, 40, has submitted her documents to the Central Election Commission in Moscow to begin the formal process of entering the running.

Russian attacks on southern Ukraine’s Kherson region killed five civilians, Ukrainian officials said, while Russian-installed officials in the eastern town of Horlivka said one person was killed due to Kyiv’s shelling.

The deaths in Kherson occurred in an incessant Russian shelling of the city and the region over the preceding 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said.

Regional police said three people died in the shelling of an apartment building and a private home in Kherson city.

A woman died in a drone attack in a small town south of Kherson and a second woman was killed when a town further north came under heavy fire.

Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, head of the press office of Kherson’s regional military administration, told the Ukrainian public broadcaster that gas and water supplies were partially cut off due to the attacks, which also hit a medical facility.

“The windows were broken, the building was damaged,” Tolokonnikov said.

Some 600km northeast of Kherson in the town of Horlivka, in areas of Ukraine’s Donetsk region under Russian control, Ukraine’s shelling destroyed a shopping centre and several other buildings, a Russian-installed official said.

The attacks killed one woman and wounded six civilians, the Russian-installed mayor of Horlivka, Ivan Prikhodko, said on the Telegram.

he head of Moldova’s largest Orthodox Church, subordinated to its Russian parent church, has complained that his ranks were coming under attack in the run-up to Christmas — marked on two separate days by rival churches in the former Soviet state.

More than 90% of residents of the country, which lies between Ukraine and Romania, are Orthodox Christians.

With Moldova’s government seeking European Union membership, Metropolitan Vladimir of the larger Russia-linked church complained in a weekend interview that the media “bolstered by political support” was spreading division in the church.

Vladimir’s church, the Moldova Metropolis, last month reaffirmed its allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Church despite misgivings over the latter’s support for the war in Ukraine.

It marks Christmas on Jan. 7, but its hold on the faithful is being challenged by the Metropolis of Bessarabia, which reports to the Romanian church and has welcomed more than 60 priests who have left the rival church in recent months.

Russian shelling in southern Ukraine‘s Kherson region killed four people Sunday, including an 87-year-old man and his 81-year-old wife who died after a strike on their apartment building.

The barrage injured nine other people, including a 15-year-old, sparked fires in homes and at a private medical facility, and set a local gas pipeline alight, the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said.

“There are no holidays for the enemy,” Andrii Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, wrote on social media, commenting on the Kherson attack.

“They do not exist for us as long as the enemy kills our people and remains on our land.”The shelling across Kherson reached the center of the region’s capital city of the same name.