Vladimir Putin has been speaking in Russia at an annual TV event – where he’s compared the EU to “burglars”, after it agreed a deal overnight to fund Kyiv’s defence efforts for two years. Follow live below – and watch footage of what Ukraine says is a drone strike in the Mediterranean.
Friday 19 December 2025 18:00, UK
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned European leaders and the US about Russia’s imminent relocation of its Oreshnik missile system to Belarus.
“We understand where it will be deployed,” he said on X.
“We are sharing this information with our partners. The partners themselves can assess this threat and understand how to respond to it.”<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy warned the missiles posed “a threat to many European countries”.
“As of now, Oreshnik cannot be intercepted by drones,” he added.
“They have already used Oreshnik against Ukraine. We understand how to counter this threat.”
Belarus confirmed yesterday that Russia had deployed the system to the country.
The \u20ac90bn loan for Ukraine’s defence agreed by the EU in the early hours of this morning won’t be enough to cover the country’s financial needs, its finance minister has warned.
Serhiy Marchenko has today urged partners to continue work on a reparations loan, underpinned by frozen Russian assets held in nations allied to Ukraine.
“The reparations loan is a systemic, long-term solution. It will ensure sustainable defence capabilities and protect Europe from future conflicts,” Marchenko said, according to Ukraine’s finance ministry statement to G7 countries.
“The risks to Europe from a potential defeat of Ukraine far exceed the risks of introducing the reparations mechanism.”
We’ve just heard from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, who claimed that the EU doesn’t want an end to the war in Ukraine.
According to the Russian state news agency Tass, Maria Zakharova said: “The Russophobes in the EU don’t want peace in Ukraine.”
The spokeswoman said that the European Council’s insistence on using frozen Russian assets to fund Kyiv was “legal nihilism”.
We’re hearing from the US secretary of state Marco Rubio, who insists the United States has “invested a lot of time” in attempting to end the Ukraine war.
“There’s a reason why this war hasn’t ended,” Rubio adds before declaring, “it’s not our war”.
“We have been told… there is only one nation on earth that can actually talk to both sides. That’s the United States,” he says.
Ultimately, he tells the media that it’s about negotiating and working out what “Ukraine can live with and what Russia can live with”.
But he says neither side looks like they are going to surrender anytime soon and “in the end, the decision will be up to Ukraine and up to Russia”.
Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff will meet the UK’s national security adviser in Miami, according to a report by US outlet Axios.
The report says Witkoff will also meet the national security advisers from France and Germany at the same meeting, citing two sources.
Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also planned to meet a Russian delegation in Miami this weekend, a White House official told Reuters
Witkoff and Kushner have taken the lead on efforts to secure a peace deal in Ukraine, after doing similar for the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza earlier this year.
It comes as Ukraine’s national security chief Rustem Umerov announced on X that Kyiv’s peace negotiators will start a new round of talks with the US team today.
He added that its European partners would also be involved in the negotiations, which outline “Ukraine’s security must be guaranteed reliably and in the long term”.
We’ve just heard from our Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett<\/b><\/a>, who was in the audience for Vladimir Putin’s “TV extravaganza” in Moscow.
He said the event was “designed to show Russians that their leader is on top of things” as he fielded questions from journalists and from the public.
Bennett said it was “telling of the public mood in the country” that the first question was about the Ukraine war, which Putin “blamed Ukraine for”.
“He also once again reiterated or made it clear that all of Russia’s red lines and maximalist demands remain,” he added.
“In other words, Russia is still not showing any willingness to compromise… I think that diplomacy will once again come up against a brick wall when the Americans meet with the Russians this weekend.”
Watch Bennett’s full reaction to Putin’s address below…<\/b>
Earlier, we heard from Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Ukrainian parliament.
The Ukrainian MP welcomed the financial lifeline given to his country by the EU in the early hours of this morning, in the form of a \u20ac90bn (\u00a379bn) loan.
Speaking to presenter Samantha Washington<\/b><\/a>, he said: “It’s tremendously great news for Ukraine… and it will tremendously enhance our defence capabilities.”
However, Merezhko said estimates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicated that Ukraine needed $137bn to “keep running”.
“The aggressor should be punished”, Merezhko continued, as he argued for frozen Russian assets in Europe being used to help fund his country’s defence.
Ukraine will “continue to fight” for this, he said, adding that “it’s a matter of justice”.
Our military analyst Michael Clarke<\/a><\/b> thinks Ukrainians will be bullish about justifying their drone attack on an oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea, more than 1,000 miles away from Ukraine.
Clarke says Ukraine believes it is a “legitimate target”.
“The Ukrainians obviously feel that they can legitimise this sort of operation,” he added.
Recent US strikes on suspected drug runners and raids on Venezuelan tankers will add their sense of justification, Clarke added, saying: “Ukrainians will take comfort from the fact that the Americans are also acting against top fleet tankers in the Caribbean”.
Clarke added that what Ukraine’s secret service has said about causing significant damage was “probably true” and that the attack had “obviously done some damage” to the tanker, which it says was empty.
“It is dangerous. Hitting tankers that have got oil in them can create an ecological disaster,” he added.
Watch Clarke’s full remarks here…<\/b>
A growing number of people in the UK support deploying European troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal than they did two months ago, new polling shows.
The survey of 1,002 UK adults, conducted by H\/Advisors, shows 40% now back the idea of sending troops to Ukraine to help protect the country from potential future Russian aggression.
That’s up from 34% in October, before the US-backed peace proposal was on the table and the latest talks between Washington and Moscow had taken place.
Despite that, public opinion in the UK is still seemingly at odds with Donald Trump’s approach to ending the war.
While Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has praised Trump as the “only Western leader” showing an understanding of Moscow’s position, only 23% of Brits support US-Russia negotiations without Ukraine at the table, while trust in Vladimir Putin to respect any ceasefire stands at just 19%.
Meanwhile, 88% say Ukraine needs strong security guarantees in any peace deal, and 72% believe Russia would target other European countries if Ukraine loses.
Finally, 69% of Britons want the UK to be among the countries responsible for enforcing any ceasefire agreement – 12 points higher than the European average.
Here are some of the latest images from Ukraine following an overnight Russian air attack in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
As we’ve reported, Ukraine’s air force said Moscow launched 160 drones at the country overnight, with 47 drone strikes recorded at 23 separate locations.
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