Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky says he will meet Trump and hopes for peace breakthrough ‘before New Year’

A Russian court sentenced a pro-war activist and critic of President Vladimir Putin of justifying terrorism to six years in prison on Thursday.

Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front movement that opposes Putin, who is also affiliated with the Communist Party, was arrested last year.

According to Russian independent news site Mediazona, the charges against him stem from an article Udaltsov posted online in support of another group of Russian activists accused of forming a terrorist organisation.

Those activists were handed sentences ranging from 16 to 22 years in prison after being convicted earlier this month.

Udaltsov has rejected the charges against him as fabricated. On Thursday, he denounced the verdict as “shameful” and said he was going on a hunger strike, Mediazona reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he may be open to swapping some Russian controlled territory in Ukraine in exchange for the whole of Donbas, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.

Putin briefed top businessmen on the details of the plan at a late evening Kremlin meeting on December 24.

“Vladimir Putin asserted that the Russian side is still ready to make the concessions that he made in Anchorage. In other words, that ‘Donbas is ours,’” Kommersant reported.

In essence, Putin wants the whole of Donbas but outside that area “a partial exchange of territories from the Russian side is not ruled out,” Kolesnikov wrote in the newspaper.

Ukrainian President Zelensky has said the US and Ukraine are closer to finalising their 20-point plan, but cannot agree on demands that Ukraine cede the parts of Donbas that it still controls.

The future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine is particularly contentious, as it is currently controlled by Russian forces and is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, among the ten largest in the world.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said on Friday that Russian overnight drone attacks damaged Slovakia-, Palau- and Liberia-flagged vessels in ports in Ukraine’s Odesa and Mykolaiv regions.

Ukrainian officials said Moscow aimed to isolate Ukraine from the Black Sea and divide civilians.

There were no casualties following Friday’s attacks, according to a statement made by the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, Oleksiy Kuleba, on the Telegram app. However the strikes did cause power cuts and damage elevators and civilian warehouses in the Odesa region.

The drones also caused damage to a locomotive and a freight car at the northwestern Kovel railway station, around 60 kilometres (37.28 miles) from Poland.

“Despite Russia’s deliberate terror, Ukraine’s logistics system continues to function,” Kuleba said.

Russia did comment on the issue.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that he had agreed to hold a meeting with US president Donald Trump in the near future, as diplomatic efforts intensify to bring an end to Ukraine’s war with Russia.

“A lot can be decided before the New Year,” Zelensky wrote on social media platform X.

Volodymyr Zelensky has appeared to wish for the death of Vladimir Putin in a Christmas message after Russia continued to bombard Ukraine with missiles and drones.

In a video posted to X on Christmas Eve, Mr Zelensky said that “despite all the suffering that Russia has brought, it is not capable of occupying or bombing what matters most. That is our Ukrainian heart, our faith in one another, and our unity”.

Appearing to refer to Russian president Vladimir Putin, Mr Zelensky added: “Today, we all share one dream.“And we make one wish – for all of us. ‘May he perish’, each of us may think to ourselves. But when we turn to God, of course, we ask for something greater, we ask for peace for Ukraine. We fight for it, we pray for it, we deserve it.”

Russia sees “slow but steady progress” in peace talks with the United States over Ukraine, foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

“In the negotiation process on a settlement of the Ukraine conflict, I mean in the negotiation process with the United States, there is slow but steady progress,” she said.

Zakharova added that western European powers were trying to torpedo the progress and suggested that the United States should counter such moves.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky says he spoke on Thursday for about an hour with US president Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner about how to end the war with Russia.

“It was a really good conversation: many details, good ideas that we discussed. There are some new ideas on how to bring real peace closer, and this concerns formats, meetings and, certainly, the timeline,” Zelensky said on the Telegram app.

Trump has been pushing for a deal to end the nearly four-year-long war, and in recent weeks peace efforts led by Witkoff and Kushner have been slowly inching forward.

Earlier this week, Zelensky presented a 20-point draft peace plan that he described as the main framework for ending the war.

The draft is a slimmed-down version of an earlier 28-point plan that the United States previously discussed with Russia and that was widely seen as favouring Moscow, including demands that Kyiv cede territory and limit its armed forces.

However, key territorial issues remain unresolved in the new 20-point draft, Zelensky said, adding that a meeting with Trump would be required to resolve the most sensitive questions.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Moscow was analysing documents on ending the war that were brought to Russia by its special envoy Kirill Dmitriev from the United States.

Zelensky said Ukraine’s top negotiator, Rustem Umerov, planned to hold another conversation with US negotiators later in the day.

“We are truly working 24/7 to bring closer the end of this brutal Russian war against Ukraine and to ensure that all documents and steps are realistic, effective and reliable,” he said.

Appearing to refer to Russian president Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky said: “Today, we all share one dream.And we make one wish – for all of us. ‘May he perish’, each of us may think to ourselves.

“But when we turn to God, of course, we ask for something greater, we ask for peace for Ukraine. We fight for it, we pray for it, we deserve it.”

A court in Russia on Thursday convicted a pro-war activist and critic of president Vladimir Putin of justifying terrorism and sentenced him to six years in prison.

Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front movement that opposes Putin and is affiliated with the Communist Party, was arrested last year.

According to Russian independent news site Mediazona, the charges against him stem from an article Udaltsov posted online in support of another group of Russian activists accused of forming a terrorist organisation. Those activists were convicted earlier this month and handed sentences ranging from 16 to 22 years in prison.

Udaltsov has rejected the charges against him as fabricated. On Thursday, he denounced the verdict as “shameful” and said he was going on a hunger strike, Mediazona reported.

According to the court ruling, the activist will be serving his sentence in a maximum security penal colony.Udaltsov was a prominent opposition figure during the 2011-12 mass protests in Russia, triggered by reports of widespread rigging of a parliamentary election. In February 2012, he took part in a meeting that then-president Dmitry Medvedev held with various opposition figures.

Russian authorities have ramped up their crackdown on dissent and free speech after the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine, relentlessly targeting rights groups, independent media, members of civil society organisations, LGBTQ+ activists and some religious groups. Hundreds of people have been jailed and thousands of others have fled the country.

In December 2023, a Moscow court sentenced Udaltsov to 40 hours of compulsory labor for violating procedures relating to organising a rally after he was detained on Red Square, where he tried to unfurl a flag with the image of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, according to Russia’s state news agency Tass.

Udaltsov was previously imprisoned in 2014 and sentenced to 4 years on charges related to his role in organising a 2012 demonstration against Putin that turned turbulent. He was released in 2017.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukrainian representatives and US negotiators have discussed ways to bring “real peace closer” during a conversation on Christmas Day.

“It was a really good conversation: many details, good ideas, that we discussed,” Zelensky said on Telegram. “There are some new ideas on how to bring the real peace closer, and it concerns formats, meetings, and, certainly, the timeline.”

Earlier, we reported that the Ukrainian leader had taken part in a conversation with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and businessman Jared Kushner.