December 30, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage for today. You can read more on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine here, or scroll through the updates below.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address Friday that he thinks Ukraine’s air defense can become “the most powerful in Europe” and can help uphold security for his country and Europe. 

On the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin invited his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to visit Moscow in the spring. Xi vowed more political cooperation with Russia and said that the two countries should “inject more stability into the world,” according to Chinese state media Xinhua.

Catch up below on other key developments:

A US State Department spokesperson expressed concern about China’s “alignment with Russia as Moscow continues its brutal and unlawful invasion of Ukraine” after a call today between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.  

“Beijing claims to be neutral, but its behavior makes clear it is still investing in close ties to Russia,” the spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.

“The United States and Europe have warned the PRC of the consequences of providing Russia military assistance for its war against Ukraine or systematic assistance with sanctions evasion,” the spokesperson continued, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

“The world is watching to see which nations stand up for the basic principles of freedom, self-determination, and sovereignty, and which stand by or tacitly support Russia in its premeditated and unprovoked war of choice,” the spokesperson said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gives his nightly address Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he thinks Ukraine’s air defense can become “the most powerful in Europe” and help uphold security for his country and Europe. 

“Ukrainian air defense can become the most powerful in Europe, and this will be a guarantee of security not only for our country, but also for the entire continent,” Zelensky said in his nightly address on Friday. 

Ukraine’s president also said he held another staff meeting on Friday, with the main point of discussion about the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, “where the fiercest battles are going on.” He said Ukraine is holding its positions in the cities of Bakhmut, Soledar and Kreminna. 

“There are also areas of the front where we are slowly advancing,” Zelensky said, without giving further details. 

Zelensky also called the electricity supply issue “one of the most important tasks for the next year.” 

The backup power line at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was damaged and disconnected due to shelling, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said in a statement on Friday. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team said the connection to the 330 kV backup power line was lost at 9:35 p.m. local time Thursday “as a result of damage on the other side of the Dnipro River, some distance away from the plant itself.” 

The IAEA statement also informed that while there has been no direct shelling of the ZNPP since November, the IAEA experts on site reported on Friday that they heard “the sound of loud explosions today that appeared to come from a distance of a few hundred meters from the facility, in the area of the water channel connecting the nearby Zaporizhzhia thermal power station with the Dnipro River.” 

The status of other nuclear plants: Ukraine informed the IAEA that the country’s three other NPPs, located in Ukrainian-controlled territory, were “in the process of restoring their electrical power production levels following a decrease in output after Thursday’s missile attacks.”

More background: During the first week of December, Ukraine claimed some Russian troops were withdrawing from their positions in Ukraine’s southern region of Zaporizhzhia. The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said Russian units left the settlements of Mykhailivka, Polohy and Inzhenerne, all towns south of the city of Zaporizhzhia.

A total of 1,884 Ukrainian settlements have been liberated from Russian occupation since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to a Ukrainian presidential official.

“Infrastructure is one of our main priorities,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said in a Telegram post on Friday, adding that “15,199 infrastructure objects have already been restored, almost as many are in the process of restoration.” 

Tymoshenko said there are 11,500 so-called “Invincibility Points” in Ukraine that offer emergency shelter and services for Ukrainians without power following Russian attacks. 

He said that Ukraine received another batch of Starlink satellite units from Poland that will power the “Invincibility Points” as well as go toward energy and medical institutions. 

“This is the third batch we have received from Poland and the first part of a large batch that will arrive by the end of January,” he said. 

Rescuers clear debris of homes destroyed by a missile attack in the outskirts of Kyiv, on Thursday, December 29, following a Russian missile strike. Russian missile strikes battered Ukraine including in major cities like Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv on Thursday.

Air attacks: Also on Friday, Serhii Popko, head of Kyiv city military administration, spoke about what he called “air genocide” in Kyiv that “continues to this day.” 

Russia has carried out 52 air attacks on the city of Kyiv since the beginning of war and more than 600 buildings have been damaged, Popko said in a Telegram post on Friday. 

According to Popko, 120 Kyiv civilians have been killed this year due to Russian shelling, including five children. 

Another 495 residents have been injured, with 30 of them being children, Popko added. 

Popko also said air raid sirens have sounded 638 times in Kyiv since the invasion.  

“The total duration of the alarms was 693 hours and 49 minutes,” he wrote. “This makes almost 29 days! The whole calendar month this year the city residents spent in bomb shelters!” 

Xi Jinping delivers a report at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on October 16.

China and Russia should “strengthen strategic coordination” and “inject more stability into the world,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin via video link on Friday, according to Chinese state media Xinhua.

China is “ready to work” with Russia to “stand against hegemonism and power politics” to oppose unilateralism, protectionism and “bullying,” as well as to safeguard sovereignty, security, as well as international equity and justice, Xi said, according to Chinese state media. 

Putin said that China and Russia have maintained a “sound momentum of development” in the midst of the “current complex and severe international situation,” the media report added.

Putin said the two had progressed cooperation in various fields, including energy, agriculture, transportation, infrastructure, sports and people-to-people exchanges, the report further added.

Xi also said China is ready to resume normal cross-border travel with Russia and other countries “in an orderly manner,” Xinhua reported.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine rages on and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping grapples with an unprecedented Covid outbreak, a call between the two leaders on Friday underscored their mutual relationship and increasing isolation.

Meanwhile, a day after what appeared to be one of Moscow’s largest missile barrages since the war began, Ukraine said Russia was continuing to target the country with drone strikes, shelling and artillery attacks.

Here are the latest headlines:

Investigators gather near fragments of a munition downed by Belarusian air defences outside the village of Harbacha in the Grodno region, Belarus, on December 29, 2022.

The Kremlin on Friday expressed “extreme concern” after Belarus said the wreckage of a Ukrainian missile had landed on its soil Thursday. 

“The Kremlin is concerned about the incident with the fall of the Ukrainian rocket in Belarus,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters. 

Peskov’s comments come after the Belarusian defense ministry claimed on Thursday that it had shot down the missile and that fragments from the Ukrainian S-300 anti-aircraft guided missile had then landed on its territory in an area close to the country’s border with Ukraine.

CNN was not able to independently verify the ministry’s report. 

Responding to the allegation, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said it was “aware of the Kremlin’s desperate and persistent efforts to drag Belarus into its aggressive war against Ukraine,” adding it would “not rule out” a “deliberate provocation” from Russia. 

CNN’s Uliana Pavlova, Radina Gigova, Niamh Kennedy and Yulia Kesaieva contributed reporting to this post.

Three people have died in cross-border shelling in northern Ukraine, according to the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko said that two people were killed and another two wounded in Russian shelling on the village of Katerynivka, in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

In the town of Semenivka, in the northern Chernihiv region, artillery fire left one person dead and cut off electricity, according to Tymoshenko.

Workers repair high-voltage power lines damaged by recent missile strikes near Odessa, Ukraine, on December 29.

Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s national energy company, said that the electricity deficit was stable after Russia’s missile attacks on Thursday, but that the situation in the south and east “remains difficult.”

“As of December 30, the power system deficit is at the same level as before the 10th massive Russian missile attack,” it said Friday in a post on the messaging app Telegram.

The company said the situation in Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions was “difficult” due to strikes on some power facilities. “Repair crews together with generation and regional power companies are working to repair the damage,” it said.

Rescuers clear debris from homes destroyed by a missile attack on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on December 29.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has claimed that a wave of missile attacks against Ukraine on Thursday, believed to be one of the biggest barrages yet in the war, “neutralized’” all their assigned targets.

In its daily summary of operations, the ministry said that Russia’s armed forces “launched a massive attack, using high-precision long-range air- and sea-based armament, at the military control framework, and the power facilities that ensured operating of Ukrainian defence industry.”

It added that the attacks had disrupted rail traffic, blocking the delivery of “foreign-manufactured armaments” to Ukraine’s armed forces.

But Ukraine delivered a dramatically different assessment of the damage wrought by Thursday’s onslaught. The Ukrainian military on Thursday said the vast majority of missiles launched by Russia were intercepted by its air and defense forces, and that power capacity was restored in the hours after the attacks. Three people were killed in the attacks, according to Ukrainian officials.

Detailing the ongoing battle in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry also claimed that its forces had inflicted heavy losses on Ukrainian troops in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, killing more than 200 Ukrainian troops. It said Russian forces had successfully targeted US-made equipment and brought down one MiG-29 fighter aircraft over Donetsk, as well as a number of drones.

Ukrainian officials have said that both Ukrainian and Russian forces are suffering significant losses in Donetsk. CNN could not confirm Russia’s claims.

But in spite of Russia’s purported victories on the battlefield, the ministry did not claim any territorial advances against Ukrainian forces, adding credibility to reports that the two sides are locked in a stalemate.

Russian forces shelled the entire frontline of the Donetsk region on Thursday night into Friday morning, according to the head of the regional military administration, as fighting in the eastern Ukrainian region grinds on.

Pavlo Kyrylenko said the towns of Vuhledar and Kurakhivska were among the settlements that came under attack. The city of Kostyantynivka, which is some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the front line, was hit by rocket fire on Thursday, damaging schools and a theater. 

The Ukrainian military also reported artillery shelling of Maryinka and Avdiivka in Donetsk on Friday morning. It said Russian forces were intensifying their assaults around several settlements immediately to the west and north of Donetsk city, an area where the front lines have changed little since the Russian invasion.

Much of the war’s fiercest fighting has raged around the key Donetsk city of Bakhmut. Both sides have been locked in brutal battle there since Russian forces launched their siege on the city in earnest in May.

An adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, Oleksiy Arestovych, said on Thursday that Ukrainian and Russian forces were both experiencing heavy troop losses in Bakhmut, and the nearby city of Soledar, describing the fighting there as “very serious.”

Elsewhere: Russian forces attacked several parts of the eastern Luhansk region, where Ukrainian forces have made modest gains since September, according to the Ukrainian military.

In the north-eastern region of Sumy, officials reported cross-border mortar fire, the consequences of which were unclear. 

And in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, authorities said that nearly twenty settlements were shelled, several of them some distance from the front lines, damaging apartments and civilian infrastructure.

Local resident Klavdia, 82, stands near her house which was destroyed by a Russian military strike in Kherson, Ukraine, on December 29.

Russian forces are relentlessly bombarding Kherson in southern Ukraine with artillery and rockets, shelling the region 81 times on Thursday, Yaroslav Yanushevych, the head of the regional military administration said.

One person was wounded in the shelling on Thursday. There were unofficial reports of further shelling Friday.

Some background: Ukrainian troops reclaimed Kherson city in November, but fighting has still raged in the region in recent weeks, as they try to wrest control of areas still occupied by Russia east of the Dnipro River.

Russia’s retreat from Kherson – the only regional capital that Russian forces had captured since launching their invasion in February – represented a major blow to Moscow’s war effort. Russian President Vladimir Putin formally declared Kherson “independent” in September, illegally annexing the territory.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing was ready to ramp up political cooperation with Moscow on Friday, during a virtual meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, according to a Russian state media translation of their call.

China's President Xi Jinping, left, is welcomed by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during the opening ceremony of "The Year of Chinese Tourism in Russia" in Moscow, on March 22, 2013.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping began a call via video link on Friday by reaffirming their mutual partnership in the face of international condemnation over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

In opening remarks broadcast on Russian state TV, Putin said that the stabilizing force of the Russia-China relationship was becoming even more critical against the backdrop of increasing geopolitical tensions.

He added that relations between the Russian Federation and China were “the best in history” and could “withstand all tests,” and invited Xi to Moscow in the spring of 2023.

The Russian leader also pointed to record growth in trade, despite “unfavorable market conditions,” a veiled reference to sanctions, and said they would increase trade turnover to $200 billion ahead of schedule.

Putin also said that the two countries would strengthen cooperation between their armed forces: “We intend to strengthen cooperation between the armed forces of Russia and China.”

Damage to a residential building by a Russian drone strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, on December 30.

An Iranian-made Shahed drone partially destroyed a four-story administrative building and damaged a nearby residential building in Kyiv on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said, amid a barrage of Russian attacks overnight.

The drone strike on the administrative building in Holosiivskyi, a leafy southwestern district in the capital, started a fire, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said in a post on the messaging app Telegram.

The strike blew out windows in a nearby nine-story residential building. Photos from the scene showed shattered panes of glass and shards strewn on the ground.

Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the damage was a “result of falling debris,” and that no one was injured in the attack.

Sixteen Iranian-made drones launched by Russia overnight were shot down by Ukraine’s air defense forces, its military said on Friday, a day after what appeared to be one of Moscow’s largest missile barrages since the war began.

Seven of the 16 drones were shot down in the Kyiv region, according to local authorities.

Ukrainian air defense forces shot down 16 Iranian-made Shahed drones overnight through Friday, the Air Force Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said.

The attacks come a day after Russia launched one of the largest missile barrages against Ukraine since the war began.

Five drones were shot down over the capital Kyiv in the early hours of Friday, the city’s military administration said in a Telegram post.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko added in a Telegram post that two other drones were shot down outside the city, bringing the total shot over the Kyiv region to seven.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, greets Chinese President Xi Jinping during their bilateral meeting on November 13, 2019 in Brasilia, Brazil.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are scheduled to speak Friday via video conference, the Kremlin said, with analysts watching for any sign of a softening in the Chinese leader’s support for the Russian president after more than 10 months of war in Ukraine and as China faces an unprecedented Covid outbreak.

The two leaders will primarily discuss bilateral relations between their countries, and exchange views on regional issues and their strategic partnership, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

Moscow and Beijing have drawn closer in recent years, with Xi and Putin declaring the two countries had a “no limits” partnership weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

China has since refused to condemn the aggression, instead repeatedly laying blame for the conflict on NATO and the United States — and remaining one of Russia’s key remaining supporters as it grows increasingly isolated on the world stage.

But more than 10 months into the grinding war, the world looks much different — and the dynamic between both partners has shifted accordingly, experts say.

“Xi will try to emphasize the importance of peace to Putin. As Russia is getting impatient with the lack of progress on the battlefield, the timing is ripening for peace talk in China’s eyes.”

Read more here.

Oleksii Arestovych in Kyiv on October 10.

Heavy Russian attacks on the eastern Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut and Soledar “smack of desperation, reminiscent of suicide bombers,” according to a Ukrainian presidential adviser.

Oleksiy Arestovych was speaking during his nightly livestream on Feygin Live, a pro-Ukrainian channel.

Some context: Bakhmut has become perhaps the most contested and kinetic part of the 1,300 kilometer (800 mile) front line in Ukraine and the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the war. The greater Donetsk region, where Bakhmut and Soledar are located, has been held by Russian-backed separatists since 2014 and is one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims as Russian territory in violation of international law.