Russia Ukraine war live: Moscow shelling kills four in Kherson as Kyiv marks first Christmas on December 25

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.

Commanders in the key battle for Avdiivka in Donetsk fear the town will be lost in a matter of days if more international aid cannot be secured – and that huge casualties will be suffered in the process. Arpan Rai reports:

There is a growing sense of alarm among Ukraine’s frontline forces at dwindling supplies of arms and ammunition and signs that the commitment of international partners is faltering, according to multiple senior Ukrainian military officials.

Ukraine’s military fears Vladimir Putin’s forces could break through its defensive lines and secure victory for Russia within days if the US does not commit to more aid, with intense fighting still taking place and hourly assaults targeting the key industrial town of Avdiivka, despite the onset of the country’s bitter winter.

“It is a very difficult situation, very difficult, but the guys from the defence forces are holding their ground,” says Vitaliy Barabash, the head of Avdiivka’s military administration, in an interview with The Independent.

An Orthodox cathedral in Kyiv is hosting its Christmas Eve service today (24 December), after a decree passed earlier this year meaning Ukraine no longer has to celebrate on the same day as the Russian church.

Orthodox Christmas is usually held on 7 January due to the calendar differences, with many of those celebrating the later date by fasting in the 40 days leading up to it.

Russia and Greece have some of the biggest populations of Orthodox Christians, with Ukraine choosing to distance itself from the Putin-aligned date.

Ukraine is prepared to officially celebrate Christmas for the first time on December 25, having previously marked the date on January 7.
The Russian Orthodox Church observes the birth of Jesus on January 7.

Some Orthodox Ukrainians observed Christmas on December 25 last year in response to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The cathedral in the Monastery of the Caves, a Unesco World Heritage Site in Kyiv, held its Christmas celebration on January 7 of this year, but the service was held in the Ukrainian language for the first time in the 31 years of Ukraine‘s independence from the Soviet Union.

President Volodymyr Zelensky signed legislation in July moving the public Christmas Day holiday to December 25.

However, one of Ukraine‘s two competing Orthodox church organisations is sticking with the January date dictated by the Julian calendar.

To mark Christmas Eve on December 24, Mr Zelensky addressed the nation in a video filmed before the floodlit St Sophia Cathedral in central Kyiv.

He reassured Ukrainians fighting against Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country that “step by step, day by day, the darkness is losing”.

“Today, this is our common goal, our common dream. And this is precisely what our common prayer is for today. For our freedom. For our victory. For our Ukraine,” Mr Zelensky said.

Ex-Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a bomb plot orchestrated by Vladimir Putin’s oldest ally, a Russian intelligence officer has claimed.

Mr Prigozhin, who was killed when his plane crashed over Russia on 23 August this year, launched a mutiny against the Russian ministry of defence in June following a long-running feud with officials over the direction of the war in Ukraine.

At the time, the Kremlin denied any involvement with his death and characterised western intelligence assessments of Putin’s culpability as an “absolute lie”.

There is a growing sense of alarm among Ukraine’s frontline forces at dwindling supplies of arms and ammunition and signs that the commitment of international partners is faltering, according to multiple senior Ukrainian military officials, Arpan Rai reports.

Ukraine’s military fears Vladimir Putin’s forces could break through its defensive lines and secure victory for Russia within days if the US does not commit to more aid, with intense fighting still taking place and hourly assaults targeting the key industrial town of Avdiivka, despite the onset of the country’s bitter winter.

“It is a very difficult situation, very difficult, but the guys from the defence forces are holding their ground,” says Vitaliy Barabash, the head of Avdiivka’s military administration, in an interview with The Independent.

Russian president Vladimir Putin will continue his war in Ukraine until he achieves “final victory” the EU security chief has warned.

“He will not give up the war, especially not before the American election, which may present him with a much more favorable scenario,” Josep Borrell told The Guardian.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a press conference last week that the result of the 2024 US presidential election could “very strongly” influence the course of Russia’s war against Ukraine.