Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday said Ukraine needed a dozen additional Patriot systems to insulate its economy from the war.

Ten or twelve additional Patriot systems for Ukraine will ensure [that]… no [glide bombs], no missiles, any ballistic missile etc. will be able to hit the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine, the energy sector, our hospitals, schools, universities,” Zelenskyy posted on the Telegram messaging app.

“People will return to normal life, and from abroad too. Children will go to schools, universities. The economy will work.”

In April Zelenskyy had said Ukraine needed a minimum of seven Patriot systems to provide air cover, but Russia has since raised the number of missiles, drones and huge glide bombs launched against Ukraine.

Last week, Zelenskyy said, Russia used almost 500 glide bombs, whose warhead ranges from 250kg (550lbs) to three tonnes, more than 400 strike drones, and almost 20 missiles of various types against Ukraine’s front lines and civilian infrastructure.

This daily terror and this war cannot remain the problem of one people,” he said.

Last June, the United States prioritised delivery of newly built Patriot systems to Ukraine, putting its original customers on a delayed delivery timeline. During the NATO summit in July, partners agreed to provide Ukraine with five additional Patriot systems.

Zelenskyy has said much more military help is needed if Ukraine is to wrest back control of its skies and immunise its civilian population against Russia’s campaign.In recent days, he said the first five operational Danish F-16s were already helping to shoot down incoming missiles, while a second batch of Danish F-16s arrived in Ukraine on Sunday. More are expected from Norway and the Netherlands in 2025, and Zelenskyy is in talks with French President Emmanuel Macron to speed up the delivery of Mirage jets early in the year.

A second plank of Zelenskyy’s strategy in the air war has been counterattacking Russia using long-range unmanned aerial vehicles.

On Wednesday, Ukraine’s general staff said their drones had struck a Russian oil depot in Bryansk, which they described as “a loading point of the Druzhba oil pipeline, the main function of which is the reception, storage, distribution and shipment of diesel fuel to tanker trucks and rail transport. It is actively used to supply the Russian occupation army.”

On Friday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umyerov said Ukraine would build more than 30,000 deep strike drones next year, calling them part of “a techno-army”.

Ukraine has already unveiled the Palyanytsia drone-missile, capable of travelling hundreds of kilometres. On Saturday Zelenskyy revealed that the Ukrainian-built, 700km-range (435-mile) Peklo drone-missile had entered mass production, and the first batch had been delivered to the armed forces.

These weapons are part of a domestic defence industry Ukraine has been building up for the past year. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said it had licensed 120 new weapons in November alone, 90 percent of them of Ukrainian design.

This industrial buildup, along with a ramping up of capacity in Europe’s munitions factories, may have made a difference on the front lines.

Dmitry Voloshyn, a spokesman for the Khortytsia group of forces in Donetsk, said Ukraine had reduced Russia’s artillery advantage from 1:5 at the beginning of the war to 1:3.

Not everyone agrees.“I think 1:3 is the [artillery] ratio in some areas where Russians are not advancing, but in areas where the Russians have the firepower to support operations it’s 6:1,” Oleksandr Danylyuk, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told Al Jazeera.

But where Ukraine cares to become as autonomous as possible is in long-range weapons, to avoid the usage restrictions that encumber Western missiles.

Even though US President Joe Biden last month allowed the use of US ATACMS missiles up to 300km (185 miles) inside Russia, their availability is an issue. The United Kingdom and France have bolstered stocks somewhat with their 200km-range (125-mile) Storm Shadow, but Germany has refused to provide any of its 600 Taurus missiles which have a 500km range (310 miles) – a policy with which the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) disagrees.

“By imposing such range restrictions, we are effectively compelling you to fight with one hand tied behind your back,” CDU leader Friedrich Merz said during a visit to Kyiv on Monday.

 On Saturday, Macron set up a trilateral meeting in Paris with Zelenskyy and US President-elect Donald Trump, who pushed Zelenskyy towards declaring a ceasefire but offered no security guarantees.

The next day, Trump told NBC in an interview that he was open to reducing military aid to Ukraine and pulling the US out of NATO.“Possibly,” he said, when asked if Kyiv should prepare for less aid from the US.Trump has previously pledged to end the Ukraine war quickly, but unlike US President Biden has not upheld Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a priority. It was Zelenskyy’s first meeting with Trump since the November 5 election. The pair did not make a joint statement.On Monday, however, Zelenskyy said he would “soon” organise a meeting of what he considered an essential core of European countries as a coordination group for aid to Ukraine.

“Our approach to this group includes, at a minimum, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Poland. We also hope Denmark and other partners will join,” Zelenskyy said.

The absence of any reference to the US, whose incoming head of state he had just met, was pointed.

Against the threat of a decline in the US military presence in Europe, Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service reported there were talks among EU members to set up a 500bn-euro ($525bn) defence fund to finance Ukrainian defence and European military expansion for a decade. The European Commission floated the idea of a 100bn-euro ($105bn) defence bond early this year to no effect.

Ukraine’s diplomatic overtures for weaponry took place against a slow Russian advance on the ground in Ukraine’s east during the past week, and a Russian humiliation in Syria.

Russia made marginal gains south and east of Pokrovsk, a town it has been trying to capture since the summer. On Tuesday its troops advanced inside Kurakhove and seized the settlement’s grain elevator. Both towns are in the eastern region of Donetsk, and Russia has devoted enormous manpower to capturing them.

On the day of Russia’s advance inside Kurakhove, for example, Ukraine’s general staff reported 208 combat clashes across the front, 98 of them towards Pokrovsk and Kurakhove.

This ratio of attacks has reflected Russian priorities for weeks.Konstantyn Mashovets, a Ukrainian war analyst, said Russia had devoted at least half the personnel of its central and eastern military districts to seizing the villages of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove, as well as two villages on the Donetsk-Zaporizhia border, Velika Novosilka and Vremivka.

Voloshyn, the spokesman for the Khortytsia group of forces defending the area, said Russia had assigned 70,000 soldiers to Pokrovsk and 35,000-36,000 to Kurakhove.

These lines of attack were mutually reinforcing, with pressure on Velika Novosilka and Vremivka designed to cut off lines of supply to Pokrovsk and Kurakhove, said Bogdan Petrenko, a spokesman for the 48th separate artillery brigade fighting in Vremivka.

The manpower Russia was expending on these four villages was reflected in heightened Russian losses.

There were about 3,000 Russian dead and wounded – almost a brigade’s worth – over two weeks in Pokrovsk alone, reported Serhiy Tsekhotsky, an officer of the 59th separate mechanized brigade fighting for the town.

Oleksandr Pavlyuk, commander of ground forces, estimated Russian casualties for the previous week across the front at 11,240 – a daily average of more than 1,600, tolls Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify.

Despite its enormous efforts in Ukraine, Russia’s standing on the world stage diminished last week, as it was forced to evacuate bases in Syria that had been used to prop up the government of Bashar al-Assad.

The opposition Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group took control of Aleppo on November 30 after a short fight, despite Russian air attacks against rebel command posts and troop concentrations.

By December 4, HTS had consolidated its control over the city sufficiently to begin marching on Hama, which fell the following day, followed by Homs on December 7. Damascus toppled on Sunday, December 8.

As opposition forces closed in, Russia withdrew.Satellite images taken on December 9 showed that all Russian ships and submarines had left the port of Tartous.

“The Russians are also transferring the remnants of their weapons and military equipment from Syria by military aircraft from the Hmeimim airbase,” Ukraine’s military intelligence GUR said.

The leadership change in Syria has brought the end of Russia’s standing military presence in the Mediterranean for now.

The GUR said, “The likely loss of Russia’s military bases in Tartous and Hmeimim will finalise the Kremlin’s defeat in the Middle East.”

Speaking after meeting with Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris over the weekend, Zelenskyy said that the talks had been “very productive”, and he was grateful for Trump’s “strong resolve” to bring the conflict to an end.

We know that America has the capacity to accomplish remarkable things – things that others have not been able to achieve. To succeed in ending this war, we need unity – the unity of America, Europe, and everyone in the world who values security – as well as strong positions and guarantees for peace,” Zelenskyy said on X on Tuesday.

Zelenskyy said that he had told the United States president-elect that Putin “fears only him and, perhaps, China”.

“And that’s the truth – only decisiveness can bring this war to a just end and ensure lasting peace,” the Ukrainian leader said.

“Action is needed now to restore the proper international order.”

Zelenskyy’s remarks come two days after Trump called for an “immediate ceasefire” and negotiations to end the conflict.

“Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.

During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed he would be able to bring an end to the conflict within 24 hours, without elaborating on his plans.

While Trump’s strategy for ending the war is unclear, supporters of Ukraine have raised fears that it could involve cutting off military aid to Kyiv and ceding some or all of the Ukrainian territory seized by Russian forces.

“We’re getting ready for the worst-case scenario, when [Trump] stops all the supplies,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, the former deputy head of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said last month.

Trump last month tapped Keith Kellogg, a retired general, as his special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine war.

Kellogg, who served as chief of staff for the White House National Security Council during Trump’s first term, has called for Ukraine’s NATO membership application to be put on hold and for US military aid to Ukraine to be tied to Kyiv’s participation in peace talks with Moscow.

He has also suggested that Moscow could be offered some relief from sanctions in return for a peace agreement and that levies could be imposed on Russian energy sales to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram on Monday that he would be open to the deployment of Western troops in Ukraine to guarantee security as part of a deal to end the war provided there was a “clear understanding of when Ukraine will be in the European Union and when Ukraine will be in NATO”.

In his comments on Tuesday, Zelenskyy also dismissed calls to lower the age of the military draft from 25 following reports that US officials are pushing Kyiv to consider conscripting men as young as 18.

“We must focus on equipping existing brigades and training personnel to use this equipment,” Zelenskyy said.“We must not compensate the lack of equipment and training with the youth of soldiers. The priority should be providing missiles and lowering Russia’s military potential, not Ukraine’s draft age. The goal should be to preserve as many lives as possible, not to preserve weapons in storages.”

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued orders to increase funding for equipping Ukraine’s brigades with new drones. “We recently approved a decision about the amount of such direct funds. But now I see that the amount is insufficient,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address. “I instructed the prime minister to increase financing for brigades in the coming days, to increase several times over.”
• About 800,000 Russian soldiers are currently deployed in Ukraine, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported, citing Zelenskyy.
• At a joint news conference with German opposition leader Friedrich Merz, President Zelenskyy made the case for a diplomatic settlement to the war and raised the idea of foreign troops being deployed in Ukraine until it could join the NATO military alliance.
• Merz, a frontrunner in the race to become Germany’s next chancellor, condemned his country’s policy on arming Ukraine as akin to making it fight with one arm tied behind its back.
• Ukraine aims to hold a meeting of its key European allies in December to coordinate a joint position and ensure Kyiv is in a strong position for any potential talks and on the battlefield, a presidential spokesman said.
• Ukraine will soon get another 4.2 billion euros ($4.4bn) in funds after the European Union’s member states approved the planned payment of the money, the EU Council announced.
• The EU needs common instruments to fund defence spending amid a protracted war in Ukraine and calls from the United States for NATO members to increase such expenditure, Portugal’s Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento said.
• Five Ukrainian children sent away or placed in care since Russia’s February 2022 invasion returned to their homeland, Ukrainian officials said, as part of a long-running campaign to bring home more than 20,000 children deported by Russian authorities from occupied regions of Ukraine.
• Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said he discussed planning for the next meeting of the Ramstein Group – an alliance of NATO, the EU and other countries that back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion – with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Austin reportedly reaffirmed the “readiness of the United States to provide Ukraine with everything it needs to effectively fight the enemy”.
• Europe needs to find ways within the next year to fund hundreds of billions of euros in extra military spending to defend against any attack from Russia, the EU’s new defence commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, told the Reuters news agency.

While they did not capture new settlements, Russian forces maintained their strongest pressure on the towns of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove in Donetsk, devoting almost half of their activity to those fronts.

On Sunday they also appeared to be closing in on Velyka Novosilka on the Donetsk-Zaporizhia border, in an operation coordinated with their assaults on Pokrovsk and Kurakhove.

“We understand that Velyka Novosilka is a continuation of the events taking place in the Kurakhove-Pokrovsk region. This is a logistics hub that also helps our Kurakhove garrison,” said Serhii Bratchuk, spokesman of the volunteer Ukrainian army group “South” on the ArmyTV stream.

He said if Velyka Novosilka fell, pressure was likely to pass onto Orikhiv, 6km (3.7 miles) from the frontline, and Huliaipole, just 2km (1.2 miles) from the frontline, both towns lying south of Zaporizhzhia.

 Russian stamina has not abated since the beginning of the year, when Moscow’s forces began a gradual crescendo of attacks that stole the initiative and put Ukrainian forces on the defensive.

They have paid dearly for it.On November 28, Ukraine estimated Russian casualties at 2,030 for the day, one of the highest daily tallies of the war, and more than 738,000 for the duration of the war.

Mazzaltov World News was unable to confirm the toll.

Until this year, Russia has employed what Ukrainians called “meat assaults”, in which a large number of soldiers charged a target until they overwhelmed it, suffering high casualties.

Since the summer, Russian forces have switched to using small vanguards that establish a bridgehead and are later reinforced – but attrition has remained high, as Ukrainian forces target them with pinpoint precision and drop small munitions on them using drones.

Describing a Russian attempt to reach the Oskil River, Oles Malyarevich, deputy commander of the 92nd separate assault brigade, said: “Out of a hundred people, about 10 reach the line, and the rest die. They do not save manpower. Life is worth nothing to them. They throw them forward in order to grab something.”

Mykola Koval, spokesman of the 14th brigade, described similar enemy tactics in Pokrovsk: “If we repel the assault, we destroy 90% of the group. Another group enters after it.”

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, Russia lost 45,720 soldiers in November, setting a monthly casualty record for the war.

The figure is equivalent to three motorised rifle divisions, said Ukraine.

Ukraine also destroyed or disabled 307 Russian tanks during the month, equivalent to 10 battalions’ worth, after destroying or disabling similar numbers in September and October.

Ukraine estimated it had hit 884 artillery pieces – in all, incurring equipment losses worth $3bn – in November alone.

Yet Russia’s defence industrial base has proven resilient enough to replace these losses and provide firepower.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with Sky News on Sunday: “In just one week, Russia used more than 500 guided aerial bombs, almost 660 attack drones and about 120 missiles of various types against us. No country in the world has faced such attacks every day for such a long time.”

Russia has flown more than 57,000 drones and 13,000 missiles into Ukraine during the war, according to Ukraine’s Radio Engineering Troops, which spot them.

Russia has defied international sanctions that have crimped its earnings from oil exports and restricted the flow of raw materials to increase production of drones and missiles.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published research this week finding that Russia’s biggest defence contractors increased their turnover by 40 percent last year, compared with 2.5 percent increases among their US counterparts and 0.2 percent among their European counterparts.

That, experts said, was because of the reflexes Russia has shown during this war.

“The 40 percent growth in Russian defence revenues reflects preparations made as early as 2022, when state orders and industrial shifts were accelerated,” said Hanna Olofsson, spokesperson for Security and Defence Companies (SOFF), the Swedish defence industry lobby.

“The rapid scaling of production – including arms for prolonged attritional conflict – was facilitated by state planning, multi-shift factory work, and reduced export dependencies,” Olofsson said.

In contrast, Western companies’ revenues “largely reflect delivery timelines on older contracts”, she said. “The disparity emphasises the immediate operational focus of Russian arms production compared to the logistical and structural constraints in Western countries, showing varying capabilities in crisis adaptation.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday signed a three-year budget into law.

It increases 2025 defence spending to $128.6bn, or 6.3 percent of gross domestic product, according to Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet. Military and national security spending will together amount to $162bn – up from $157bn this year – taking up 41 percent of government expenditure.

Russia has also sought additional weapons from North Korea and Iran.

Russian Minister of Defence Andrei Belousov met with his North Korean counterpart No Kwang Chol on Friday, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Saturday to bolster that military relationship.

Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) spokesman Andriy Chernyak said Russia had used 60 out of 100 KN-23/24 ballistic missiles it had received from North Korea.

North Korea had also sent approximately five million artillery rounds, 170 self-propelled artillery pieces and 240 multiple-launch rocket systems, Chernyak told Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

“We discussed what more allies can do to provide critical ammunition and air defences, as Russia steps up its attacks and expands the war with the aid of North Korean troops and weapons,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told journalists on the second day of a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting on Wednesday.

“Allies are working to deliver on the financial pledge of 40 billion euros ($42bn) in security assistance for Ukraine in 2024,” Rutte said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a 650-million-euro ($684m) package of military aid as he paid a visit to Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday.

Germany has been a leading supplier of air defence systems to Ukraine, providing five IRIS-T systems, three Patriot systems, and more than 50 Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns. It is to deliver another IRIS-T system and additional Patriot and Gepard units this month.

Ukraine has sought to shore up military aid pledges from its Western partners to ensure its armies were supplied through the US presidential transition in January.

“It is vital for Ukraine that the level of German support does not decrease in the future. This would be the most important and timely signal to all our other partners,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address.

“During my meeting with the Chancellor, we agreed that Germany will continue to support Ukraine as needed, regardless of what happens in global politics or how sentiments may shift.”

The US Pentagon on Tuesday announced a $725m drawdown on air defence missiles, rocket artillery, man-portable air defence systems and other systems.

Between now and mid-January, we will deliver hundreds of thousands of additional artillery rounds, thousands of additional rockets, and other critical capabilities,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters.

In his interview with Sky News, Zelenskyy said US permission to use long-range weapons in Russia had come late, and the number of available missiles was not enough: “The Russians knew that we could not destroy them. We lost people, territories, initiative at a certain point. Before this decision was made. Is it good? Yes. Is it late? Yes. Are such complexes enough for us? Not enough. And we have the right to attack only military objects.”

The European Union sought to provide political support as it transitioned to a new Commission.

The new president of the European Council, Antonio Kosta, together with the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Kaya Kallas, and the commissioner for enlargement, Marta Kos, arrived in Kyiv for a surprise visit on Sunday.

“In my first visit since taking up office, my message is clear: the European Union wants Ukraine to win this war. We will do whatever it takes for that,” Kallas wrote on X.

• Russian drones struck critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s western Ternopil and Rivne regions overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said. The attack left part of the city of Ternopil without electricity, the city’s mayor said, a week after Russian strikes cut power to much of the city and the surrounding region.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for major reinforcement of eastern sectors in Ukraine’s 1,000-km (600-mile) front line. Zelenskyy said that much depended on Ukraine’s Western allies providing vital weaponry, adding that the “greater our army’s firepower and technological capabilities, the more we can destroy Russia’s offensive potential”.
• Zelenskyy issued his appeal as Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its troops had captured two new front-line villages – the town of Kurakhove in the Donetsk region and the town of Novodarivka in the neighbouring Zaporizhia region.
• Russia’s air defence units were working to repel a Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk, the mayor of the Russian Black Sea port city said early on Wednesday.
• Russian Navy frigates tested new generation Zircon (Tsirkon) hypersonic antiship missiles during drills in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Russian Defence Ministry reported. A Russian submarine also launched a Kalibr cruise missile, another weapon capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, while an Onyx antiship missile was also tested.
• Ukraine has conducted a test on new domestically-made missiles and is ramping up missile production, Zelenskyy said, without providing further details.

• NATO will step up intelligence sharing and improve the protection of critical infrastructure in the face of Russia’s “hostile” acts of sabotage, NATO chief Mark Rutte said in advance of a meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers on Tuesday. Rutte added that the bloc needs to step up military aid to strengthen Kyiv’s position should it enter into peace negotiations with Moscow.
• While NATO political leaders have agreed “in principle” that Ukraine will join the transatlantic alliance, a number of members are waiting for Donald Trump’s administration to take office in the United States before approving the move, Latvian Minister for Foreign Affairs Baiba Braze told the Reuters news agency at the meeting.
• Ukraine declared it would not settle for anything less than NATO membership to guarantee its future security, as the alliance sidestepped Kyiv’s call for an immediate membership invitation at Tuesday’s foreign ministers’ meeting.
• Ukraine needs robust security guarantees and a just peace, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on the sidelines of the NATO meeting, adding that Kyiv alone would decide when to start negotiations with Russia.
• Italy is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, two sources close to the matter have told the Reuters news agency, in a renewed show of support for Kyiv from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
• A Russian presidential aircraft and money were used in a Kremlin-funded programme that took at least 314 children from occupied Ukrainian territories and placed them with Russian families, according to a US State Department-backed report by Yale’s School of Public Health.
• State-owned Polish insurer PZU wants to finance projects of dual military and civilian use, the company’s president Artur Olech said, as the country ramps up defence spending after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Olech did not provide details but ruled out purely military projects.
• The Kremlin said a US decision to send another weapons package to Ukraine worth $725m shows the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden is determined to throw oil on the fire of the war in Ukraine to ensure the conflict keeps going.

These were the key developments on the 1,012th day of the Russia-Ukraine war.

• One person was killed and several others injured following Russia’s drone attack on Ukraine’s western city of Ternopil, according to Viacheslav Negoda, the head of the military administration of Ternopil region. Parts of the residential building, where the victims were staying were also damaged by fire.
• At least three people were killed in a Russian drone attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, according to regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin. Seven others were wounded in the attack.
• A Russian missile strike on a town in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region killed at least four people, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. More than a dozen others were wounded, including a child.
• One child was killed in Russia’s western Bryansk region following a massive Ukrainian drone attack, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said, adding that the attacks destroyed one house in the Starodubsky district.
• Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 15 Ukrainian drones over several Russian regions overnight, the RIA state news agency reported citing Russia’s Ministry of Defence.
• The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces had gained control over two settlements, Illinka and Petrivka, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.The ministry also said its air defence shot down 55 Ukrainian drones in the past 24 hours.

• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pledged additional military support worth 650 million euros ($680 million) as he made a surprise visit to war-torn Ukraine, to reaffirm Berlin’s support for Kyiv in its fight against Russia.
• Zelenskyy called on the outgoing United States President Joe Biden to help convince NATO members to invite Ukraine to join the alliance.
• In Kyiv, Zelenskyy met European Council President Antonio Costa for talks and praised his decision to visit Ukraine immediately after starting his job. He told Costa and the European Union’s new head of diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, that Ukraine needs security guarantees from NATO and more weapons to defend itself before any talks with Russia.
• The US is not considering returning to Ukraine the nuclear weapons it gave up after the Soviet Union collapsed, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said, following reports that some unidentified Western officials had suggested to Biden to do just that before he leaves office.
• German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has accused China of providing Russia with weapons for its war against Ukraine and threatening peace in Europe and the Asia Pacific. Baerbock is scheduled to visit Beijing next week for a meeting with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a military-focused budget for 2025-27, a document published on the official legal acts website showed. It includes a 25 percent hike in military spending as the country continues its military operation in Ukraine.