Overview
- Ukraine’s General Staff logged 183 engagements for December 18, including 49 airstrikes, 111 guided bombs, roughly 2,400 kamikaze drones and 3,104 shellings, with the heaviest pressure on the Pokrovsk axis.
- Kyiv said its forces struck a radar site near Gvardiyske in Crimea, a fuel depot tied to Russia’s 76th Air Assault Division in Primorsk, a UAV storage site in Makiivka and troop concentrations in Donetsk, and confirmed two S‑400 launchers were destroyed in Russia’s Belgorod region on December 14.
- EU leaders in Brussels discussed launching a reparations‑style loan for Ukraine using income and cash balances from frozen Russian assets, with figures up to about €90 billion under negotiation and final language still unresolved.
- Volodymyr Zelensky said the United States holds about $5–5.5 billion in frozen Russian funds and warned Ukraine faces a €45–50 billion gap next year, arguing that asset‑based financing is both moral and necessary to keep defense production, including drones, from shrinking.
- The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Vladimir Putin reiterated maximalist war aims and threatened to seize so‑called historic territories, while regional officials reported two civilians killed by Russian drone attacks in Kherson and power‑outage protests in Odesa.