Here is the situation on Thursday, December 5:

Fighting

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said that a Ukrainian drone attack on Grozny damaged the premises of a special police unit fighting in Ukraine and also injured civilians, marking the second such attack on the North Caucasus Russian region.
Ukraine needs to conscript younger people into the military to succeed in the war against Russia, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
A Russian government minister was recorded as saying that 48,000 relatives of Russian troops have submitted DNA samples, in a sensitive discussion apparently referring to attempts to identify Russia’s dead soldiers by their remains.
Ukraine’s security service said it detained a 16-year-old girl accused of helping Moscow orchestrate an air strike on the northern Chernihiv region.

Diplomacy

Ukraine rejected as “groundless” a Russian suggestion that it was involved in the Syria conflict after Moscow’s United Nations envoy accused Kyiv of aiding rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Advisers to incoming US President-elect Donald Trump are publicly and privately floating proposals to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, including ceding large parts of the country to Moscow for the foreseeable future and taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table.
The fall of France’s government on Wednesday and the country’s failure to pass a budget could make it difficult for Paris to ramp up its support for Ukraine despite President Emmanuel Macron’s repeated promises to help Kyiv for as long as necessary.
A Ukrainian delegation has met with senior representatives of President-elect Trump, a source familiar with the meeting said, as Ukraine seeks support from the incoming US administration in its war against Russia.

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Friedrich Merz, the conservative candidate for German chancellor, sharply criticised the country’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock over her comments suggesting Germany could send troops to Ukraine to maintain peace.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived in Malta for a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), state news agency TASS reported, marking the Russian minister’s first visit to a European Union member state since the beginning of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The US warned of “serious negative impacts” if Romania turns away from the West, after the victory of a far-right outsider in the country’s first-round presidential vote, paving the way for a run-off. Calin Georgescu, a 62-year-old anti-vaxxer and admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has raised fears in the West that it could herald a shift in the foreign policy of the NATO member that borders Ukraine.

Regional security

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the military alliance had agreed on “proactive measures” to counter Russia’s campaign of hybrid attacks against its members.
Rutte also accused Russia of supporting North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes in exchange for troops and weapons to fight in Ukraine.
Hungary’s foreign minister said a meeting of his counterparts from NATO member countries in Brussels had produced “no consensus” on the prospect of inviting Ukraine to join the transatlantic military alliance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticised the harsh crackdown on demonstrators in Georgia and accused the country’s leadership of bowing to Moscow.

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Top US military officer, air force General CQ Brown, spoke by phone with Russia’s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov last week, the US military said, the first time Brown spoke with his Russian counterpart and where they “discussed a number of global and regional security issues to include the ongoing conflict in Ukraine”.
The crew of a Russian ship in the Baltic Sea shot signal ammunition at a German military helicopter on a reconnaissance mission. German Foreign Minister Baerbock said that there are often ships in the Baltic Sea that are involved in circumventing sanctions imposed due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A treaty on a comprehensive strategic partnership between North Korea and Russia has come into force, Pyongyang’s state-controlled news agency KCNA reported. The formalisation of the treaty comes as the US and South Korea have accused North Korea of sending more than 10,000 soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine.

A multibillion-dollar money laundering network run by two Russian millionaires and used by United Kingdom drug dealers to hide criminal cash has been brought down in an international sting.
The world stands at the dawn of a “third nuclear age” in which the UK is threatened by multiple dilemmas, the head of the country’s armed forces has warned. However, Admiral Tony Radakin said, there would be only a “remote chance” Russia would directly attack or invade the UK if the two countries were at war.

Humanitarian aid, human rights

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The new head of the UN humanitarian aid agency says it will be “ruthless” when prioritising how to spend money, in a nod to challenges in fundraising for programmes to help civilians in war zones like Gaza, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine.
A Ukrainian government representative urged nations globally to help repatriate Ukraine’s children, taken to Russia since the start of Moscow’s war.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy hosted the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe Alain Berset in Kyiv. After their meeting, Zelenskyy posted on X that the pair had discussed the need to establish a tribunal to try the crimes of Russian aggression against Ukraine.