Wednesday, 17 December 2025
Wednesday, 17 December 2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that the United States was ready for peace talks on Ukraine and that he hoped Europe would take a similar position, even as fighting continued around the strategic northeastern town of Kupiansk.
Ukraine controls nearly 90 per cent of Kupiansk, its military chief said on Wednesday, contradicting Russian claims that Ukrainian counter-attacks there had failed.
Kupiansk is a railway hub that has been largely destroyed in nearly four years of war following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander in Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, said Ukrainian troops had pushed Russian forces back from most of the town.
“Thanks to active search and strike operations, we managed to repel the (Russians) from Kupiansk and take control of almost 90 per cent of the town’s territory,” Syrskyi wrote on Telegram on Wednesday.
Russia’s defence minister Andrey Belousov later told a televised meeting of senior defence officials that Ukrainian forces were trying unsuccessfully to seize control of Kupiansk.
The chief of Russia’s general staff had told Putin last month that Russian forces had taken control of the town, a claim denied by Kyiv.
Reuters said it could not independently verify the situation in Kupiansk. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week posted a photo of himself at the entrance to the town and, in a video shared on social media, stressed the importance of frontline successes “so that Ukraine can achieve results in diplomacy.”
Kyiv is under pressure to make territorial concessions as US President Donald Trump seeks to broker an agreement to end what is called as the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two.
The counter-attack in Kupiansk, if confirmed, would run against the broader trend seen in 2025, during which Russian forces have made gradual gains, though Kyiv has said those advances came at heavy cost to Moscow.
The United States has offered Nato-style security guarantees for Ukraine in talks aimed at ending the war, but there has been no agreement on what Zelensky has called the “painful” issue of territorial concessions.
Moscow has ruled out withdrawing from areas it has seized and wants Ukraine to leave the remaining parts of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine that Russia does not control.
Russia’s military says it controls more than 19 per cent of Ukraine. Belousov said on Wednesday that Russian forces had captured a third more territory in 2025 than in 2024 and that Russian strikes had halved Ukraine’s energy generating capacity.
Reuters said it could not verify those claims.
Earlier on Wednesday, Putin also said that some voices in the West were calling for preparations for a major war with Russia, calling such warnings “hysteria” and “lie”.
He added that if Ukraine and the West abandoned peace talks, Russia would take the lands it claims in Ukraine by military means.
Diplomatic efforts to support Ukraine financially and militarily continued elsewhere in Europe. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Wednesday that finding a legal way to use frozen Russian assets to help finance Ukraine remained “far from easy”, ahead of a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels.
Addressing parliament, Meloni said Italy backed efforts to make Moscow bear the costs of its invasion, but warned that any mechanism must rest on firm legal foundations and avoid exposing countries to open-ended liabilities.
“Italy, of course, considers sacred the principle that Russia should primarily pay for the reconstruction of the nation it attacked, but this result must be achieved with a solid legal basis,” she said.
Meloni said she wanted clarity on proposals to use Russian assets, particularly regarding “reputation, retaliation, or new, heavy burdens on national budgets”.
EU leaders are set to review proposals on Thursday to use proceeds from immobilised Russian sovereign assets, mostly held in Belgium, to support Ukraine’s budget and defence needs, a move strongly opposed by Moscow.
A key unresolved issue is Belgium’s demand that other EU members share the financial risks if Russia were to successfully sue either Belgium or the Belgian central securities depository Euroclear, where most of the assets are held.
Meloni, who has backed Ukraine since the invasion, said Russia was making “unreasonable” demands in US-brokered peace talks, singling out Moscow’s insistence on full control of the Donbas region.
“Unlike what propaganda claims, the main obstacle to a peace agreement is Russia’s inability to conquer the four Ukrainian regions that it unilaterally declared annexed in late 2022,” she said, referring to Moscow’s demand for areas it has failed to seize militarily.
She added that significant progress had been made in recent talks in Berlin on security guarantees for Ukraine.
Norway also announced fresh military support for Kyiv. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said on Wednesday that Oslo would allocate 3.2 billion Norwegian crowns, more than 267.5 million euros, for a new package of US-made weapons for Ukraine.
The package includes air defence missiles, long-range missiles, and weapons and ammunition for F-16 fighter jets.
Støre said Norway would procure part of the equipment from the United States under the existing framework for supporting Ukraine.
