This year, Ukraine will spend New Year’s Eve under curfews, imposed at local and regional level. Power cuts remain numerous in the country, due to targeted Russian bombardments, while power has already been heavily rationed across the country for weeks. The millions of Ukrainians who do not have generators are therefore preparing to celebrate the transition to the new year without electricity, sometimes without water or heating and under curfew.
The population of kyiv returned to its pre-war level. The mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Vitaliy Klitschko, told the Spiegel (in German) that 3.6 million people live in Kyiv, compared to 3.8 million last year, one million in March and between 2 and 2.5 million in July. This new count includes 300,000 refugees from other parts of the country.
The Kremlin launches new incentives to leave to fight. Russian soldiers and civil servants deployed in Ukraine will no longer be required to declare their income, the Kremlin announced on Friday. This concerns all those who left for the four Ukrainian territories partially occupied by Russia (Zaporizhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk).
kyiv affirms that a new mobilization is preparing in Russia. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov says Moscow will close the borders to men in early January and launch a new wave of mobilization. He did not provide any details justifying these assertions, in his video addressed to the Russians and diffused online.