Denys Shmyhal, Prime Minister of Ukraine, is received in Berlin in October 2023. (Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Ukraine will leverage funding from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to complete 28 existing projects and launch 186 new initiatives, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced on Nov. 17.
“We are talking about the reconstruction and construction of schools, hospitals, kindergartens, administrative buildings, health centers, sewage treatment plants and other facilities.”
The government also anticipates receiving a $1.1 billion loan from the World Bank to be used for social benefits, education, medicine, and other priority needs.
Lance Luo (Li P. Luo) is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. Previously, he worked at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Hromadske Television in Kyiv. He also spent three years in finance and strategy consulting. Mr. Luo graduated from the University of Southern California and serves as an arbitrator at FINRA.
Ukraine's military reportedly struck oil depots in the various Russian and Russian-occupied regions late on Dec. 30, Russian Telegram media channels reported.
Russian forces launched a large-scale drone attack on Odesa overnight Dec. 30-31, striking residential buildings, leaving parts of the city without heat, electricity or water, and injuring four people, including three children, local officials said.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Dec. 29 that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him Ukraine had tried to attack Putin's residence, an allegation Kyiv has denied. "I learned about it from President Putin today. I was very angry about it," Trump said.
"Where is their condemnation of the fact that our children are being bombed and people are being killed all this time? I don't hear India, frankly, nor the United Arab Emirates," President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Dec. 30.
National security advisers from the Coalition of the Willing countries, led by the U.K. and France, have agreed to meet in Ukraine on Jan. 3, according to Zelensky. The meeting will be followed by another meeting among state leaders, planned for Jan. 6 in France.
Ukraine struck a Russian drone storage facility at Donetsk Airport in occupied Donetsk Oblast, Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi said on Dec. 30.
Ukraine's top commander said a battalion commander will face a legal review after Ukrainian troops abandoned a command post in the Huliaipole sector, leaving behind equipment and potentially sensitive materials.
Zelensky tells Fox News' Bret Baier that Ukraine has demonstrated concrete steps toward peace over the past month and raised the possibility of a referendum on the peace plan. At the same time, a referendum would not legitimize withdrawing from Ukrainian territory, given the current security realities.
Zelensky dismissed Russian claims that Ukrainian drones targeted Putin’s residence as “another lie,” warning Moscow is using the allegation as a pretext for possible strikes on Kyiv and government buildings.
Kyiv failed to implement nine indicators in the last three months of 2025, the highest number missed in any quarter since the Ukraine Facility began in 2024, according to a Dec. 29 assessment by RRR4U.
