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Ukraine's president praised the United States for including tank-killing armored vehicles in its latest multibillion-dollar package of military aid, saying they are “exactly what is needed” for Ukrainian troops locked in combat against Russian forces, even as both sides celebrated Orthodox Christmas on Saturday. The White House announcement Friday of $3.75 billion in weapons and other aid for Ukraine and its European backers came as Moscow said its troops are observing a short Orthodox Christmas cease-fire. Ukrainian officials denounced the unilateral 36-hour pause as a ploy and said it appeared to have been ignored by some of Moscow's forces pressing ahead with the nearly 11-month invasion. Ukrainian officials reported Russian shelling attacks in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions on Saturday. Russia's Defense Ministry insisted Saturday that its forces along the 1,100-kilometer (684-mile) front line were observing the Kremlin-ordered truce, but returned fire when attacked. The latest package of U.S. military assistance was the biggest to date for Ukraine. For the first time, it included 50 Bradley armored vehicles and 500 of the anti-tank missiles they can fire. Germany also announced it would supply around 40 Marder armored personnel carriers and France promised wheeled AMX-10 RC tank destroyers. Read more: Kremlin-ordered truce is uncertain amid mutual mistrust Together, this week's pledges were powerful signals that Ukraine can count on continued long-term Western aid against Russian President Vladimir Putin's drive to dismember the country. In his nightly televised address on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the U.S. aid package as “very powerful.” “For the first time, we will get Bradley armored vehicles — this is exactly what is needed. New guns and rounds, including high-precision ones, new rockets, new drones. It is timely and strong,” he said. He thanked U.S. President Joe Biden, U.S. lawmakers and “all the Americans who appreciate freedom, and who know that freedom is worth protecting.” Celebrated by both Ukrainians and Russians, the Orthodox Christmas holiday also underscored the enmity that Russia's invasion is precipitating between them. In a revered cathedral in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, the Christmas service Saturday was delivered in the Ukrainian language — instead of Russian — for the first time in decades, highlighting how Ukraine is seeking to jettison Moscow's remaining influences over religious, cultural and economic life in the country. Ukraine’s government on Thursday took over administration of the Kyiv-Pechersk monastery's Dormition Cathedral from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which had been loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church, and allowed the Ukrainian church to use it for the Christmas service. The monastery complex is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The cathedral was built about 1,000 years ago, then reconstructed in the 1990s after being ruined in World War II. “It’s an amazing moment," said Alex Fesiak, among hundreds of worshippers who attended. “Previously this place — on Ukrainian territory, within Kyiv — has been linked to Moscow. Now we feel this is ours, this is Ukrainian. This is part of the Ukrainian nation.” Read more: US to send $3.75B in military aid to Ukraine, its neighbors The Putin-ordered Christmas cease-fire that started Friday was first proposed by the Russian Orthodox Church's Kremlin-aligned head, Patriarch Kirill. The Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar and celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7. Putin's order said a cease-fire would allow worshippers in combat zones to attend Christmas services. But Ukrainian officials didn't commit to following it and dismissed the move as a Russian ploy to buy time for its struggling invasion forces to regroup. Ukrainian and Western officials portrayed the announcement as a Russian attempt to grab the moral high ground and possibly snatch battlefield initiative and momentum from Ukrainian forces amid their counteroffensive of recent months. The pause was due to end Saturday night — at midnight Moscow time, which is 11 p.m. in Kyiv. The Ministry of Defense in Britain, a leading supplier of military aid to Ukraine, said Saturday in its daily readout on the invasion that “fighting has continued at a routine level into the Orthodox Christmas period.” In the fiercely contested Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, regional Gov. Serhiy Haidai reported continued Russian shelling and assaults. Posting Friday on Telegram, Haidai said that in the first three hours of the cease-fire, Russian forces shelled Ukrainian positions 14 times and stormed one settlement three times. The claim couldn't be independently verified. Ukrainian authorities on Saturday also reported attacks elsewhere in the previous 24 hours although it wasn't clear whether the fighting was before or after the cease-fire's start. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Russian forces carried out a missile strike and 20 salvos with rockets, and targeted settlements in the east, northeast and south. The head of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Saturday reported two civilian deaths the previous day from Russian strikes in the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut and to its north, in Krasna Hora. In the southern Kherson region, Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevych said Saturday that Russian forces shelled 39 times on Friday, hitting houses and apartment buildings, as well as a fire station. One person was killed and seven others were wounded.

In a book full of startling revelations, Prince Harry’s assertion that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan is one of the most striking — and has drawn criticism from both enemies and allies. In his memoir, “Spare,” Harry says he killed more than two dozen Taliban militants while serving as an Apache helicopter copilot gunner in Afghanistan in 2012-2013. He writes that he feels neither satisfaction nor shame about his actions, and in the heat of battle regarded enemy combatants as pieces being removed from a chessboard, “Baddies eliminated before they could kill Goodies.” Harry has talked before about his combat experience, saying near the end of his tour in 2013 that “if there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game.” But his decision to put a number on those he killed, and the comparison to chess pieces, drew outrage from the Taliban, and concern from British veterans. “Mr. Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return,” prominent Taliban member Anas Haqqani wrote Friday on Twitter. The Taliban, who adhere to a strict interpretation of Islam, returned to power when Western troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Abdul Qahar Balkhi said Harry’s comments “are a microcosm of the trauma experienced by Afghans at the hands of occupation forces who murdered innocents without any accountability.” In Britain, some veterans and military leaders said publishing a head count violated an unspoken military code. Col. Tim Collins, who led a British battalion during the Iraq war, told Forces News that the statement was “not how you behave in the Army; it’s not how we think.” Retired Royal Navy officer Rear Adm. Chris Parry called the claim “distasteful.” Some questioned whether Harry could be sure of the toll, but Harry said he reviewed video of his missions, and “in the era of Apaches and laptops,” technology let him know exactly how many enemy combatants he had killed. Read more: Prince Harry's memoir ‘Spare’ to narrate journey from ‘trauma to healing’ Others said Harry’s words could increase the security risk for him and for British forces around the world. “I don’t think it is wise that he said that out loud,” Royal Marines veteran Ben McBean, who knows Harry from their military days, told Sky News. “He’s already got a target on his back, more so than anyone else.” Retired Army Col. Richard Kemp told the BBC the claim was “an error of judgment” that would be “potentially valuable to those people who wish the British forces and British government harm.” Harry lost his publicly funded U.K. police protection when he and his wife Meghan quit royal duties in 2020. Harry is suing the British government over its refusal to let him pay personally for police security when he comes to Britain. Tens of thousands of British troops served in Afghanistan, and more than 450 died, between the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 and the end of U.K. combat operations in 2014. Harry spent a decade in the British Army, serving twice in Afghanistan. He spent 10 weeks as a forward air controller in 2007-2008 until a media leak cut short his tour. He retrained as a helicopter pilot with the British Army Air Corps so he could have the chance to return to the front line. He was part of a two-man crew whose duties ranged from supporting ground troops in firefights to accompanying helicopters as they evacuated wounded soldiers. Harry has described his time in the army as the happiest of his life because it let him be “one of the guys” rather than a prince. After leaving the military in 2015 he founded the Invictus Games, an international sports competition for sick and injured veterans. Read more: Prince Harry says William called Meghan “difficult, rude and abrasive” before physical attack Harry's memoir is due to be published around the world on Tuesday. The Associated Press obtained an early Spanish-language copy.

An uneasy quiet settled over Kyiv on Friday despite air-raid sirens that blared there and across Ukraine shortly after a Russian cease-fire declaration for Orthodox Christmas went into effect. Ukrainian and Western officials have scorned the truce as a ploy. No explosions were heard in the capital. And reports of sporadic fighting elsewhere in Ukraine could not immediately by confirmed. Clashes there could take hours to become public. Kyiv residents ventured out into a light dusting of snow to buy gifts, cakes and groceries for Christmas Eve family celebrations, hours after the cease-fire was to have started. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his forces in Ukraine to observe a unilateral, 36-hour cease-fire. Kyiv officials dismissed the move but didn’t clarify whether Ukrainian troops would follow suit. The Russian-declared truce in the nearly 11-month war began at noon Friday and was to continue through midnight Saturday Moscow time (0900 GMT Friday to 2100 GMT Saturday; 4 a.m. EST Friday to 4 p.m. EST Saturday). Air-raid sirens sounded in Kyiv about 40 minutes after the Russian cease-fire was to come into effect. The widely used “Alerts in Ukraine” app, which includes information from emergency services, showed sirens blaring across the country. Russia's Defense Ministry alleged that Ukrainian forces continued to shell its positions, and said its forces returned fire to suppress the attacks. But it wasn’t clear from the statement whether the attacks and return of fire took place before or after the cease-fire took effect. The ministry's spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, reported multiple Ukrainian attacks in the eastern Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions. It was not possible to verify the claims. United Nations staffers on the ground in Ukraine “have not seen reports of intense of major fighting,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. But he cautioned that “they’re not everywhere.” Putin’s announcement Thursday that the Kremlin’s troops would stop fighting along the more than 1,000-kilometer (680-mile) front line and elsewhere was unexpected. It came after the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, proposed a cease-fire for the Christmas holiday. The Orthodox Church, which uses the Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7. But Ukrainian and Western officials portrayed the announcement as an attempt by Putin to grab the moral high ground, while possibly seeking to snatch the battlefield initiative and rob the Ukrainians of momentum amid their counteroffensive of recent months. “Now they want to use Christmas as a cover to stop the advance of our guys in the (eastern) Donbas (region) for a while and bring equipment, ammunition and mobilized people closer to our positions,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Thursday. He didn't, however, state outright that Kyiv would ignore Putin’s request. In a Christmas Eve message to the nation, Zelenskyy called it "a holiday of harmony and family unity. And together we are all a big Ukrainian family. “No matter where we are now — at home, at work, in a trench, on the road, in Ukraine or abroad — our family is united as never before. ... United in its belief in a single victory.” Read more: Putin orders weekend truce in Ukraine; Kyiv won’t take part U.S. President Joe Biden has also expressed wariness about the Russian cease-fire, saying it was “interesting” that Putin was ready to bomb hospitals, nurseries and churches in recent weeks on Christmas and New Year’s. “I think (Putin) is trying to find some oxygen,” Biden said. U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington had “little faith in the intentions behind this announcement,” adding that Kremlin officials ”have given us no reason to take anything that they offer at face value.” The Institute for the Study of War agreed the truce could be a ruse allowing Russia to regroup. “Such a pause would disproportionately benefit Russian troops and begin to deprive Ukraine of the initiative,” the think tank said late Thursday. "Putin cannot reasonably expect Ukraine to meet the terms of this suddenly declared cease-fire, and may have called for the cease-fire to frame Ukraine as unaccommodating and unwilling to take the necessary steps toward negotiations.” And Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, said that whether or not the cease-fire holds, “I don’t take it at face value.” “When Russia announces cease-fires, in the way Russia conducts war, there are usually ulterior motives,” she said. “Historically, what the Russian government and Russian military usually do when they announce a cease-fire is to use it as a tactical opportunity, to just take a breather or gain a little bit of space.” Meanwhile, the U.S. reiterated its support for Kyiv on Friday with a new $3.75 billion military assistance package for Ukraine and its neighbors on NATO’s eastern flank. The latest tranche of assistance will for the first time include Bradley armored vehicles for Ukraine. The armored carrier is used to transport troops to combat and is known as a “tank-killer” because of its anti-tank missile. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Bradleys will be particularly useful to Ukraine in ongoing fighting in largely rural areas of eastern Ukraine. Germany, too, plans to send armored personnel carriers by the end of March. On the streets of Kyiv, some civilians said Friday that they spoke from bitter experience in doubting Russia’s motives. “Everybody is preparing (for an attack), because everybody remembers what happened on the new year when there were around 40 Shahed" Iranian drones, said capital resident Vasyl Kuzmenko. “But everything is possible.” Read more: Sitting ducks? Russian military flaws seen in troop deaths At the Vatican, Pope Francis said he was sending wishes from his heart “to the Eastern churches, both the Catholic and the Orthodox ones, that tomorrow will celebrate the birth of the Lord.” Speaking to thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Epiphany feast day, Francis said, “In a special way, I would like my wish to reach the brothers and sisters of martyred Ukraine," and prayed for peace there.

The U.S. will send $3.75 billion in military weapons and other aid to Ukraine and its neighbors on NATO’s eastern flank, the White House announced Friday, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on. The latest tranche of assistance will include for the first time Bradley armored vehicles for Ukraine. The armored carrier is used to transport troops to combat and is known as a “tank-killer” because of the anti-tank missile it can fire. The biggest U.S. assistance package to date for Kyiv includes a $2.85 billion drawdown from the Pentagon’s stocks that will be sent directly to Ukraine and $225 million in foreign military financing to build the long-term capacity and support modernization of Ukraine’s military, according to the White House. It also includes $682 million in foreign military financing for European allies to help backfill donations of military equipment they’ve made to Ukraine. “The war is at a critical point and we must do everything we can to help the Ukrainians resist Russian aggression,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in announcing the aid. Read more: Putin orders weekend truce in Ukraine; Kyiv won’t take part The direct assistance for Ukraine includes 50 Bradleys as well as 500 anti-tank missiles and 250,000 rounds of ammunition for the carriers. The U.S. is also sending 100 M113 armored personnel carriers, 55 mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, or MRAPS, and 138 Humvees, as well as ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and air defense systems and other weapons and thousands of rounds of artillery, according to the Pentagon. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Bradleys will be particularly useful to Ukraine in ongoing heavy fighting in largely rural areas of eastern Ukraine. “It’s very much tied to the war that we’re seeing on the ground right now and what we anticipate we’ll see throughout the winter months,” Kirby said. Critics have complained that the U.S. has been too slow to provide key weapons such as the Bradleys and battle tanks like the Abrams, saying they could have helped in the fight last year. At the Pentagon, Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary for Russia and Ukraine, said this is the right time to provide the Bradley. “The Ukrainians have demonstrated a lot of growing proficiency in maintenance and sustainment,” she said. Read more: Russia says phone use allowed Ukraine to target its troops She added that the U.S.-led training set to begin later this month will enable troops to operate, maintain and repair the weapons and that providing tanks, such as the Pentagon’s more complex, gas guzzling, heavily armored M1 Abrams tank, would require more maintenance and other training. The new U.S. package was detailed by the White House and Pentagon as Germany announced it would supply around 40 Marder armored personnel carriers to Ukraine in this year’s first quarter. Germany announced its intention to send the Marder APCs following a phone call between Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Joe Biden on Thursday. “These 40 vehicles should be ready in the first quarter already so that they can be handed over to Ukraine,” Scholz’s spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, told reporters in Berlin. Germany plans to train Ukrainian forces to use the vehicles, and Hebestreit said experts expect that process to take around eight weeks. Germany has already given significant military aid, including howitzers, Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns and an IRIS-T surface-to-air missile system, with three more of those set to follow this year. Scholz has long been wary of pressure to supply the Marder and other, heavier Western-made vehicles such as tanks, insisting that Germany wouldn’t go it alone with such deliveries. Officials noted that other countries hadn’t supplied any. But this week, France, the U.S. and Germany all announced plans to send comparable armored vehicles that fall short of tanks. Germany last year championed deals in which eastern NATO allies sent familiar Soviet-era equipment to Ukraine, with Germany in turn supplying those countries with more modern Western-made equipment. Hebestreit said there had been talks with the U.S. and others since mid-December on how to support Ukraine going forward. He said the possibility of supplying Soviet-produced equipment is “slowly coming to an end,” while the situation in Ukraine is changing with massive Russian strikes on infrastructure and fighting that could increase when the weather warms up. Ukraine and a number of German lawmakers inside and outside Scholz’s governing coalition also have called for Germany to deliver Leopard 2 battle tanks. Advocates of delivering the Leopard were cheered by the move on Marder APCs and vowed to keep pressing the point. But Hebestreit said that battle tanks weren’t an issue in Thursday’s call between Scholz and Biden. He said Germany will stick to its principles of supporting Ukraine as strongly as possible, while not going it alone on weapons supplies and ensuring that NATO doesn’t become a party to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Germany also said Thursday that it will follow the U.S. in supplying a Patriot air defense missile battery to Ukraine. That was at the request of the U.S. and also is expected in the first quarter, Hebestreit said. It comes on top of Patriot systems that Germany has sent or plans to send to Slovakia and Poland.

Europe ended a bad year for inflation with some relief as price gains eased again. While the cost of living is still painfully high, the slowdown is a sign that the worst might be over for weary consumers. The consumer price index for the 19 countries that used the euro currency rose 9.2% in December from a year earlier, the slowest pace since August, the European Union statistics agency Eurostat said Friday. Croatia joined the eurozone on Jan. 1. It was the second straight decline in inflation since June 2021. In November, the rate dipped to 10.1% after peaking at a record 10.6% in the previous month. Households and businesses across Europe have been plagued by surging energy costs since Russia launched its war in Ukraine in February, which played havoc with oil and natural gas markets and have been the main driver of inflation. The latest numbers indicate that the energy crisis may be easing for now. Energy price rises slowed to 25.7%, down from 34.9% in November and 41.5% in October. Natural gas prices have slipped from all-time highs this summer as Europe has largely filled its storage for winter with supplies from other countries while warmer-than-usual weather has reduced fears of a shortage during the heating season. Food price gains, the other big factor that's been driving up European inflation, held fairly steady. Prices for food, alcohol and tobacco rose at a 13.8% annual pace in December, a smidgen higher than the month before. Read more: Europe’s inflation likely hasn’t peaked, says central bank chief Lagarde Inflation also has been worsened by bottlenecks in supplies of raw materials and parts amid rebounding global consumer demand after COVID-19 pandemic restrictions ended. “It is likely that the peak in inflation is behind us now, but far more relevant for the economy and policymakers is whether inflation will structurally trend back to 2% from here on,” said Bert Colijn, senior eurozone economist at ING Bank. So-called core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, climbed to 5.2% last month from November's 5%, as prices rose for both services and goods such as clothing, appliances, cars and computers. Colijn and other economists said that means European Central Bank officials will likely roll out more interest rate hikes to get inflation back to their 2% target. Soaring costs for energy and food have threatened a recession and fed labor unrest as wages fail to keep pace with the price rises. Across Europe, subway staff, hospital workers, train drivers, postal workers and air traffic controllers have gone on strike, threatening political turmoil. In a sign that energy costs remain a worry for political leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday urged energy suppliers to renegotiate what he called “abusive contracts” with small businesses to ensure “reasonable" price hikes. Macron spoke to bakers gathered at the presidential palace for a traditional Epiphany kings cake ceremony, underscoring how energy and food prices are intertwined. “Like you, I’ve had enough of people making excessive profits on the crisis," he said. The French government has capped natural gas and electricity price hikes to 15% this year for consumers and some very small companies that don't use much energy. But more energy-intensive businesses, like bakeries, aren't covered, leaving some of them facing closure because they can't pay their bills. While governments have offered relief on high energy bills, central banks are battling inflation by hiking interest rates. Last month, the European Central Bank raised its benchmark rate by half a point, slowing its record pace of interest rate increases slightly but promising that more hikes are on the way. It matched actions taken by counterparts in the U.S., United Kingdom and elsewhere. Read more: Record inflation puts the squeeze on Eurozone economies “The eurozone economy is at best stagnating, and persistently strong core inflation means the ECB will feel duty bound to press on with its tightening cycle for a while yet,” said Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist for Capital Economics.

The Russian military’s top brass came under increasing scrutiny Wednesday as more details emerged of how at least 89 Russian soldiers, and possibly many more, were killed in a Ukrainian artillery attack on a single building. The scene last weekend in the Russian-held eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka, where the soldiers were temporarily stationed, appears to have been a recipe for disaster. Hundreds of Russian troops were reportedly clustered in a building close to the front line, well within range of Ukraine’s Western-supplied precision artillery, possibly sitting close to an ammunition store and perhaps unwittingly helping Kyiv’s forces to zero in on them. It was one of the deadliest single attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago and the highest death toll in a single incident acknowledged so far by either side in the conflict. Ukraine’s armed forces claimed the Makiivka strike killed around 400 Russian soldiers housed in a vocational school building. About 300 more of them were wounded, officials alleged. It wasn't possible to verify either side's claims due to the fighting. The Russian military sought to blame the soldiers for their own deaths. Gen. Lt. Sergei Sevryukov said in a statement late Tuesday that their phone signals allowed Kyiv’s forces to “determine the coordinates of the location of military personnel” and launch a strike. Emily Ferris, a research fellow on Russia and Eurasia at the Royal United Services Institute in London, told The Associated Press it is “very hard to verify” whether cellphone signaling and geolocation were to blame for the accurate strike. She noted that Russian soldiers on active duty are forbidden from using their phones — exactly because there have been so many instances in recent years of their being used for targeting, including by both sides in the Ukraine war. The conflict has made ample use of modern technology. Read more: Putin orders weekend truce in Ukraine; Kyiv won’t take part She also noted that blaming the soldiers themselves was a “helpful narrative” for Moscow as it helps deflect criticism and steer attention toward the official cellphone ban. Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to move the conversation along, too, as he took part via video link in a sending-off ceremony Wednesday for a frigate equipped with the Russian navy’s new hypersonic missiles. Putin said the Zircon missiles that the Admiral Gorshkov frigate was carrying were a “unique weapon,” capable of flying at nine times the speed of sound and with a range of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles). Russia says the missiles can't be intercepted. Meanwhile, away from the battlefields, France said Wednesday it will send French-made AMX-10 RC light tanks to Ukraine — the first tanks from a Western European country — following an afternoon phone call between French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday. The French presidency didn't say how many tanks would be delivered and when. The NATO member has given Ukraine anti-tank and air defense missiles and rocket launchers. Later Wednesday, President Joe Biden confirmed that the U.S. is considering sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine. The Bradley is a medium armored combat vehicle that can carry about 10 personnel, or be configured to carry additional ammunition or communications equipment. The Pentagon has already provided Ukraine with more than 2,000 combat vehicles, including 477 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles and more than 1,200 Humvees. The weekend Makiivka strike seemed to be the latest blow to the Kremlin’s military prestige as it struggles to advance the invasion of its neighbor. But Ferris, the analyst, said “there should be a bit of caution around leaning too heavily on this (attack) as a sign of (the) Russian army’s weakness.” As details of the strike have trickled out in recent days, some observers detected military sloppiness at the root of so many deaths. U.K. intelligence officials said Wednesday that Moscow’s “unprofessional” military practices were likely partly to blame for the high casualties. “Given the extent of the damage, there is a realistic possibility that ammunition was being stored near to troop accommodation, which detonated during the strike, creating secondary explosions,” the U.K. Defense Ministry said on Twitter. Read more: Ukraine to get French combat vehicles in 'first' such move In the same post, the ministry said the building struck by Ukrainian missiles was little more than 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from the front line, within “one of the most contested areas of the conflict,” in the partially Russian-occupied Donetsk region. “The Russian military has a record of unsafe ammunition storage from well before the current war, but this incident highlights how unprofessional practices contribute to Russia’s high casualty rate,” the update added. The Russian Defense Ministry, in a rare admission of losses, initially said the strike killed 63 troops. But as emergency crews searched the ruins, the death toll mounted. The regiment’s deputy commander was among the dead. That stirred renewed criticism inside Russia of the way the broader military campaign is being handled by the Ministry of Defense. Vladlen Tatarsky, a well-known military blogger, accused Russian generals of “demonstrating their own stupidity and misunderstanding of what’s going on (among) the troops, where everyone has cellphones.” “Moreover, in places where there’s coverage, artillery fire is often adjusted by phone. There are simply no other ways,” Tatarsky wrote in a Telegram post. Others blamed the decision to station hundreds of troops in one place. “The cellphone story is not too convincing,” military blogger Semyon Pegov wrote. “The only remedy is not to house personnel en masse in large buildings. Simply not to house 500 people in one place but spread them across 10 different locations.” Unconfirmed reports in Russian-language media said the victims were mobilized reservists from the region of Samara, in southwestern Russia. The Institute for the Study of War saw in the incident further evidence that Moscow isn’t properly utilizing the reservists it began calling up last September. “Systemic failures in Russia’s force generation apparatus continue to plague personnel capabilities to the detriment of Russian operational capacity in Ukraine,” the think tank said in a report late Tuesday. Ferris, of the Royal United Services Institute, said the Makiivka strike shows the Russian army is more interested in growing its number of troops, not in training them in wartime skills. “That’s really how Russia conducts a lot of its warfare — by overwhelming the enemy with volume, with people,” she said. "The Kremlin view, unfortunately, is that soldiers’ lives are expendable.” In a grinding battle of attrition, Russian forces have pressed their offensive on Bakhmut in Donetsk despite heavy losses. The Wagner Group, a private military contractor owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire businessman with close ties to Putin, has spearheaded the Bakhmut offensive. U.S. intelligence officials have determined that convicts Wagner pulled from prisons accounted for 90% of Russian casualties in fighting for Bakhmut, according to a senior administration official who requested anonymity to discuss the finding. The White House said last month that intelligence findings showed Wagner had some 50,000 personnel fighting in Ukraine, including 40,000 recruited convicts. The U.S. assesses that Wagner is spending about $100 million a month in the fight.

The unusually warm conditions in Europe that marked the festive season broke records in several countries on the continent, on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, the UN weather agency said. The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) linked the record-breaking heat  to widely accepted peer-reviewed scientific data from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicating that the frequency of cold spells and frost days "will decrease." "Strong declines in glaciers, permafrost, snow cover extent, and snow seasonal duration at high latitudes or altitudes are observed and will continue in a warming world," the IPCC said. According to the UN agency, New Year temperatures soared above 20 degrees Celsius in many European countries, even in central Europe. National and many local temperature records for December and January were also broken in several countries, from southern Spain to eastern and northern parts of Europe, the WMO said. At Spain's Bilbao airport, a reading of 25.1 degrees Celsius on January 1 smashed the previous all-time record established 12 months earlier, by 0.7 degrees Celsius. Read more: Pope on Christmas: Jesus was poor, so don’t be power-hungry And in the eastern French city of Besançon, which is usually chilly at this time of year, temperatures hit a new all-time high of 18.6 degrees Celsius on New Year's Day, 1.8 degrees Celsius above the previous record, dating back to January 1918. In the German city of Dresden, the 1961 New Year's Eve record of 17.7 degrees Celsius was left trailing by the 19.4 degrees Celsius reading taken on December 31, 2022, just as Poland's Warsaw residents saw in the new year with temperatures peaking at 18.9 degrees Celsius, a staggering 5.1 degrees Celsius higher than the previous all-time record for January, from 1993. Further north, on Denmark's Lolland island, 2023 started with a new high of 12.6 degrees Celsius, overtaking the 12.4 degrees Celsius record set in 2005. The WMO attributed the warm spell in Europe to a high-pressure zone over the Mediterranean region which encountered an Atlantic low-pressure system. Their interaction induced a strong south-west flux that brought warm air from north-western Africa to middle latitudes, the UN agency said, adding that this hotter-than-normal air was further warmed when passing the North Atlantic, due to a higher-than-normal sea surface temperature. Read more: A Christmas season without its traditional glow in Ukraine Highlighting the influence of warmer sea waters on weather patterns, the WMO noted that in the eastern North Atlantic, sea surface temperature was 1 to 2 degrees Celsius higher than normal, and near the coasts of Iberia, even more. All this caused record-breaking heat in several European countries on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, the WMO said. The weather extremes experienced in Europe are projected to carry on increasing, the WMO said, as it referenced a recent analysis published with "high confidence" by the IPCC. "Regardless of future levels of global warming, temperatures will rise in all European areas at a rate exceeding global mean temperature changes, similar to past observations," the IPCC said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his armed forces to observe a unilateral 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old war. Kyiv indicated it wouldn’t follow suit. Putin did not appear to condition his cease-fire order on Ukraine’s acceptance, and it wasn’t clear whether hostilities would actually pause on the 1,100-kilometer (684-mile) front line or elsewhere. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the Russian move as playing for time to regroup its invasion forces and prepare additional attacks. At various points during the war that began Feb. 24, Russian authorities have ordered limited, local truces to allow civilian evacuations or other humanitarian purposes. Thursday’s order was the first time Putin has directed his troops to observe a cease-fire throughout Ukraine. “Based on the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the combat areas, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a cease-fire and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the Day of the Nativity of Christ,” Putin’s order said.  The order didn’t specify whether it would apply to both offensive and defensive operations. It wasn’t clear, for example, whether Russia would strike back if Ukraine kept fighting.  Ukrainian officials from Zelenskky on down dismissed Putin’s moves. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy stopped short of stating his forces would reject Putin’s request to suspend fighting, instead questioning the Russian leadership’s motives. “Now they want to use Christmas as a cover to stop the advance of our guys in the Donbas for a while and bring equipment, ammunition and mobilized people closer to our positions,” Zelenskyy said. “What will it give? Just another increase in the count of losses.” Zelenskyy claimed that since he unveiled a peace plan in November, almost 110,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, and he accused the Kremlin of planning the fighting pause “to continue the war with renewed vigor.” The most comprehensive recent Western estimate of Russia’s military losses was from a senior U.S. military official, who said in November that about 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded. Russian authorities haven’t provided any recent figure for their military casualties. Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted that Russian forces “must leave the occupied territories — only then will it have a ‘temporary truce.’” Ukraine’s National Security Council chief Oleksiy Danilov told Ukrainian TV: “We will not negotiate any truces with them.” He also tweeted: “What does a bunch of little Kremlin devils have to do with the Christian holiday of Christmas? Who will believe an abomination that kills children, fires at maternity homes and tortures prisoners? A cease-fire? Lies and hypocrisy. We will bite you in the singing silence of the Ukrainian night.” U.S. President Joe Biden said it was “interesting” that Putin was ready to bomb hospitals, nurseries and churches on Christmas and New Year’s. “I think he’s trying to find some oxygen,” he said, without elaborating. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington had “little faith in the intentions behind this announcement,” adding that Kremlin officials ”have given us no reason to take anything that they offer at face value.” He said the truce order seems to be a ploy “to rest, refit, regroup, and ultimately re-attack.” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric welcomed the move but said it “will not replace a just peace in line with the U.N. Charter and International law.” Putin acted after the Russian Orthodox Church head, Patriarch Kirill, proposed a truce from noon Friday through midnight Saturday Moscow time (0900 GMT Friday to 2100 GMT Saturday; 4 a.m. EST Friday to 3 p.m. EST Saturday). The Orthodox Church, which uses the Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7. Kirill has previously called the war part of Russia’s “metaphysical struggle” to prevent a Western liberal ideological encroachment. Zelenskyy had proposed starting a path toward peace with a Russian troop withdrawal before Dec. 25, but Moscow rejected it. Political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya said the cease-fire order “fits well into Putin’s logic, in which Russia is acting on the right side of history and fighting for justice.” “In this war, Putin feels like a ‘good guy,’ doing good not only for himself and the ‘brotherly nations,’ but also for the world he’s freeing from the ‘hegemony’ of the United States,” Stanovaya, founder of the independent R.Politik think tank, wrote on Telegram. She also linked Putin’s move to Ukrainian forces’ recent strike on Makiivka that killed at least 89 Russian servicemen. “He really doesn’t want to get something like that for Christmas,” she said. “On the 8th of March (Women’s Day), (Ukraine’s) independence day, Christmas (Dec. 25) and the New Year, there were no cease-fires. Why should there be one now?” said Sophiia Romanovska, a 21-year-old student who fled Mariupol for Kyiv, peppering her comments with expletives. Putin issued the truce order after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged him in a phone call to implement a “unilateral cease-fire,” according to the Turkish president’s office. The Kremlin said Putin “reaffirmed Russia’s openness to a serious dialogue” with Ukrainian authorities. Erdogan told Zelenskyy later that Turkey was ready to mediate a “lasting peace.” Erdogan has made such offers frequently, helped broker a deal allowing Ukraine to export grain, and has facilitated prisoner swaps. Russia’s professed readiness for peace talks came with the usual conditions: that “Kyiv authorities fulfill the well-known and repeatedly stated demands and recognize new territorial realities,” the Kremlin said, referring to Moscow’s insistence that Ukraine recognize Crimea and other illegally seized territory as part of Russia. Previous attempts at peace talks have failed over Moscow’s territorial demands because Ukraine insists Russia withdraw from occupied areas. Coupled with talk of diplomacy were new pledges Thursday of military support for Ukraine. Zelenskyy called the pledges “really a great victory for our state.” Germany said it would match a U.S. announcement last month to supply Ukraine with a Patriot missile battery, the most advanced surface-to-air missile system the West has provided to Kyiv. Germany also said it would supply Marder armored personnel carriers, and France said it will discuss with Ukraine delivery of armored combat vehicles that can destroy tanks. U.S. officials said they will send Ukraine nearly $3 billion in military aid in a new package that will for the first time include several dozen Bradley fighting vehicles. The aim is to get as much aid to Ukrainian forces as possible before spring begins and fighting increases. An announcement was expected Friday, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the package’s details had not been announced. The Kremlin contends the West’s supply of weapons to Ukraine is prolonging the conflict. While more weapons arrive, the battlefield situation appears to have settled into a stalemate and war of attrition. As winter sets in, troop and equipment mobility is more limited. In the latest fighting, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, said Thursday that Russian shelling killed at least five civilians and wounded eight in the previous 24 hours. An intense battle has left 60% of the eastern city of Bakhmut in ruins, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said. Ukrainian defenders appear to be holding the Russians back. Taking the city in the Donbas region, an expansive industrial area bordering Russia, would not only give Putin a major battlefield gain after months of setbacks but rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and allow Moscow’s forces to press toward key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk. In what appeared to be a move to entice more men to join the fight, the first convicts recruited for battle by the Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor, received a promised government pardon after serving six months on the front line. A video released by Russia’ state RIA Novosti news agency showed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group’s millionaire owner, shaking hands with about 20 pardoned men.  

The French Defense Ministry said Thursday it will soon hold talks with its Ukrainian counterpart to arrange for the delivery of armored combat vehicles in what France's presidency says will be the first time this type of Western-made wheeled tank destroyer will be given to the Ukrainian military. Discussions will include the delivery timetable and the training of Ukrainian soldiers on the equipment, the ministry said. Designated as “light tanks” in French, the AMX-10 RC carries a 105-milimeter cannon and two machine guns. It's primarily designed for reconnaissance missions and has enough armor to protect against light infantry weapons, according to the French defense ministry. They have wheels rather than tracks, allowing it to be more mobile than heavy tanks. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to Twitter to thank France the weapons and for "intensifying work with partners in the same direction.” Ukraine has for months sought to be supplied with heavier tanks, including the U.S. Abrams and the German Leopard 2 tanks. Read more: France’s defense minister goes to Ukraine to boost support France's decision was announced after an hour-long call between French President Emmanuel Macron and Zelenskyy Wednesday afternoon. The Elysee declined to provide details about the agreement. The AMX-10 RC has been in service with the French military since 1981 and has undergone recent upgrades. France's defense ministry said the combat vehicle is now being gradually replaced by the new equivalent named Jaguar. The decision is another in France's military support to Ukraine, following the French defense minister's visit to Kyiv last week. Paris has supplied Ukraine with a substantial chunk of its arsenal of Caesar cannons, as well as anti-tank missiles, Crotale air defense missile batteries and rocket launchers. It is also training some 2,000 Ukrainian troops on French soil. U.S. President Joe Biden said his administration is considering sending to Ukraine Bradley Fighting Vehicles, a medium armored combat vehicle that can serve as a troop carrier. Biden was asked during an exchange with reporters while traveling in Kentucky whether providing the tracked armored fighting vehicle to Ukraine was on the table. He responded “yes,” without offering further comment. The German government has for months faced calls from Kyiv and some lawmakers at home to deliver Leopard 2 heavy tanks to Ukraine, but has said that it wouldn’t go alone with such a move and that no other country has supplied similar Western equipment. The co-leader of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party, Saskia Esken, told n-tv television Thursday that Scholz and the government are in regular and close contact “with our partners, with our friends, of course particularly with the Americans” on weapons deliveries. Read more: Biden, Macron ready to talk Ukraine, trade in state visit Britain says it has given Ukraine more than 200 armored vehicles for troop transport, but no tanks as of yet.

Britain had its warmest year on record in 2022, official figures showed Thursday, the latest evidence that climate change is transforming Europe’s weather. The Met Office weather agency said the provisional annual average temperature in the U.K. was 10.03 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit), the highest since comparable records began in 1884. The previous record was 9.88 Celsius (49.8 Fahrenheit) set in 2014. Met Office scientists said human activity — primarily fossil fuel emissions — has made such warm conditions vastly more likely. Britain's 10 hottest years on record have all been since 2003. “The results showed that recording 10C in a natural climate would occur around once every 500 years, whereas in our current climate it could be as frequently as once every three to four years,” said Met Office climate attribution scientist Nikos Christidis. Britain is not alone. France’s average temperature was above 14 Celsius (57.2 Fahrenheit) in 2022, making it the hottest year since weather readings began in 1900. Switzerland's meteorological service said the alpine nation's annual average temperature of 7.4 Celsius (45,3 Fahrenheit) was “by far the highest value since measurements began in 1864.” Spain also had its hottest year since records started in 1961, according to the national weather agency Aemet, with an average daily temperature of 15.4 Celsius (59.7 Fahrenheit). It said the four hottest years on record for the southern European country have all come since 2015. Read more: Dangerous heat predicted to hit 3 times more often in future Last year saw summer drought and heat waves across much of Europe, with the temperature in Britain rising above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) for the first time on record. Norway’s Svalbard islands in the Arctic had their warmest summer in more than a century of record-keeping. The archipelago’s average temperature for June, July and August was 7.4 Celsius (45.3 Fahrenheit), the Norwegian Meteorological Institute said. Autumn brought more heavy rain in parts of Europe, including the mountainous Italian island of Ischia, where downpours in November triggered a massive landslide that pushed cars and buildings into the sea and killed at least a dozen people. Unlike the U.S. and Canada, which have been hit by bitter cold and snowstorms, much of Europe is experiencing unseasonably warm winter weather. In Germany, the year ended with the warmest New Year’s Eve on record, with temperatures reaching 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) in the south of the country. Belarus, Belgium, Czechia, Latvia, Poland and the Netherlands all set national record daily highs for Dec. 31 or Jan. 1. As 2023 begins, many low and medium-altitude ski resorts in the Alps, the Pyrenees and other European ranges are suffering from a lack of snow. Read more: Weather, climate disasters hit millions, cost billions in 2022: UN In Bosnia, spring-like weather has foiled even artificial snow — either it’s too warm to make it, or it melts soon after being spat out onto the slopes. Along the slopes in Bjelasnica near Sarajevo on Wednesday, snow accumulation amounted to little more than several white patches on an otherwise grassy landscape of brown and green.