Russia rules out negotiation unless Ukraine accepts annexations

The Kremlin has ruled out a negotiated end to its invasion of Ukraine unless Kyiv accepts Russia’s annexation of large swathes of its territory, as heavy shelling continued in the partly occupied Donetsk and Kherson regions.

Moscow rejected a call by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to “take a concrete and meaningful step towards a diplomatic settlement” by “starting the withdrawal of Russian troops from the internationally recognised territory of Ukraine this Christmas”.

“The occupier must leave. It will certainly happen. I see no reason why Russia should not do it now – at Christmas,” he said.

“It is out of the question,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in response.

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“The Ukrainian side must take into account the realities that have emerged over all this time. These realities result from the policy conducted by the Ukrainian leadership over the past 15 or even 20 years and by the current Ukrainian regime,” he added.

“These realities show that new constituent territories have appeared in the Russian Federation. They appeared as a result of referendums that took place in these territories. Without taking these new realities into account, no kind of progress is possible.”

Russia held sham votes on annexation in occupied parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk regions in September and then declared that all four provinces in their entirety were now part of sovereign Russian territory.

The flagrant breach of international law came eight years after the Kremlin used similar tactics to annex the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine.

Since claiming sovereignty over the four regions this autumn, Russian forces in Kherson region have been driven back across the Dnipro river to its eastern bank and expelled from Kherson city, the only provincial capital that Moscow’s troops seized after launching their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.

Russian forces are now shelling Kherson city and surrounding areas heavily from across the Dnipro. Regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said on Tuesday that Russia that launched 57 strikes on government-held parts of the province during the previous 24 hours, killing three people and injuring 15.

In Donetsk region, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said three civilians had been killed and 16 wounded in shelling on Monday, as the eastern region continued to witness the fiercest fighting on the frontline in areas around the towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of occupied Melitopol city in southeastern Ukraine, suggested that Ukraine’s military was responsible for an explosion that struck a strategic bridge near the city, which Russia’s military uses to supply their troops.

In Russia, Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said Ukraine fired a rocket at the town of Klintsy overnight, and that no one was hurt after an air defence system shot it down.

Russia continued to shell electricity substations and power lines in eastern and southeastern Ukraine, and engineers worked to repair Ukraine’s badly damaged national grid following several waves of missile and drone strikes against critical infrastructure.

“The energy system is still in a difficult situation. The electricity deficit remains significant,” state power firm Ukrenergo said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Deteriorating weather conditions throughout the country (strong wind, frost, accumulation of wet snow, icing of wires) negatively affects the condition of high-voltage and distribution networks and significantly complicates the work of repair crews.”

Rolling blackouts continued across Ukraine to prevent overload on the power network and allow for repairs. All residents of Odesa were reconnected to the grid after a complete blackout hit some 1.5 million people in the Black Sea region following a Russian drone strike at the weekend.