These are the key developments from day 1,379 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 4 Dec 2025
Here’s where things stand on Thursday, December 4:
Fighting
Russian forces have taken control of the village of Chervone in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhia region, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence.
Ukraine’s military said it struck a Russian oil depot in the Tambov region and another one in the Oryol region on Tuesday. It added that the attacks sparked fires at the sites.
A source in Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence also confirmed to the Reuters news agency that it had hit the Druzhba oil pipeline, also in Russia’s central Tambov region, which supplies Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia.
Peace talks
United States President Donald Trump has said the path ahead for peace in Ukraine is unclear after what he called “reasonably good” talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump adviser Jared Kushner spent hours at the Kremlin but departed with no breakthrough on ending the war.
Trump said Witkoff and Kushner briefed him about the talks and told him their impression of Putin was “he would like to make a deal”. But Trump added that he “can’t tell” what will come out of the meeting “because it does take two to tango”. He added that Washington already has “something pretty well worked out [with Ukraine]”.
Asked if it would be correct to say that Putin had rejected Washington’s proposals, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov disagreed. “A direct exchange of views took place yesterday for the first time,” Peskov said. “Some things were accepted, some things were marked as unacceptable. This is a normal working process of finding a compromise.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed his team is preparing for meetings in the US and that dialogue with Trump’s envoys will continue. “Only by taking Ukraine’s interests into account is a dignified peace possible,” he said.
An unnamed White House official confirmed to Reuters that Witkoff and Kushner would meet with Ukrainian officials in Miami on Thursday.
United Nations
Ninety-one countries at the United Nations General Assembly, including the US, have backed a resolution demanding Russia “ensure the immediate, safe and unconditional return of all Ukrainian children who have been forcibly transferred or deported” from Ukraine since Moscow launched its war in 2022.
Russia and 11 other countries voted against the resolution – which was drafted by Ukraine, Canada and the European Union – while 57 countries abstained.
Ahead of the vote, Russia had urged countries to oppose the resolution. “Each vote for the resolution is support for lies, war and confrontation. Every vote against is a vote for peace,” Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Maria Zabolotskaya, said.
Ukrainian affairs
Ukraine’s parliament has approved the 2026 budget allocating nearly a third of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) to defence. The vote, which comes as Ukraine is dogged by a political crisis following a recent corruption scandal, was seen as a litmus test for parliament to pass key decisions during a critical stage of the war.
“This is an important signal of Ukraine’s resilience and securing a stable financial provision for the next year’s needs,” President Zelenskyy said. “The priorities are clear: ensuring our defence, social programmes and the ability to rebuild our lives after Russia’s attacks.”
Sanctions and military aid
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, has proposed an unprecedented use of frozen Russian assets or international borrowing to raise 90 billion euros ($105bn) for Ukraine. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the body is “proposing to cover two-thirds of Ukraine’s financing needs for the next two years. That’s 90 billion euros”. She added that the “remainder would be for international partners to cover”.
But Belgium, whose Brussels-based financial institution Euroclear is the main holder of the Russian assets, has voiced a range of legal concerns. While Von der Leyen said the proposal had taken into account Belgium’s concerns, Brussels does not “share that assessment”, a senior official told Reuters, adding that it “cannot accept being asked to bear the risks of such an operation alone”.
The EU also agreed to phase out Russian gas imports by late 2027 as part of an effort to end the bloc’s decades-long dependency on Russian energy. Under the agreement, the EU will permanently halt the import of Russian gas and move towards a phase-out of Russian oil. Liquefied natural gas imports will be phased out by the end of 2026 and pipeline gas by the end of September 2027.
Hungary and Slovakia are both weighing up legal options to challenge the order, as both EU members are still highly reliant on gas and oil supplies from Moscow and fearful that more costly alternatives will damage their economies.
More than two-thirds of NATO member states have so far committed $4bn worth of weapons for Ukraine through the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) – an initiative to supply Kyiv with weapons bought from the US – according to the alliance’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte.
Outside NATO, Australia and New Zealand have also agreed to contribute to the PURL initiative, Rutte said.
European defence
Germany has become the first European nation to deploy the Arrow air defence system, built to intercept intermediate-range ballistic missiles such as Russia’s Oreshnik.
The system, developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in cooperation with the US Missile Defense Agency, is used as the upper layer of Israel’s missile defences. “Who could have imagined that only 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the Jewish state, through the technologies it develops, would help defend not only Germany but all of Europe,” said Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Germany.
The Romanian military has blown up a maritime drone it said was endangering navigation in the Black Sea, identifying it as a Ukrainian-developed Sea Baby. Ukraine’s SBU security service, however, said that all of its Sea Baby maritime drones engaged in operational tasks in the Black Sea region were accounted for, with none entering Romanian waters.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has described attacks on Russia-linked tankers in the Black Sea in recent days as “very scary”. Ukraine has claimed some of these attacks. Fidan said that the attacks threaten regional safety and show that the reach of the war is expanding. The strikes within Turkiye’s exclusive economic zone violate navigational safety and are impacting commerce, he added, saying that Turkiye, Romania and Bulgaria were looking at measures to boost security.
