Ukraine Update…Day 979….Biden will speed up aid…..NATO Worried….

• The Biden administration has confirmed that the US will keep surging aid to Ukraine before Donald Trump becomes president in January. “That’s not going to change. We’re going to surge and get that out there to Ukraine. We understand how important it is to make sure they have what they need,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, White House spokesperson. A Guardian editorial on US aid to Ukraine says: “The Biden administration is reportedly attempting to expedite as much as $9bn worth of military aid, agreed but not yet transferred. This is far from straightforward, not least because weaponry and ammunition are still being produced and because the next president could stop agreed shipments. But it is essential.”

• The Nato chief, Mark Rutte, said on Thursday that North Korea’s involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine posed a direct threat to the US, in a first effort to convince Donald Trump to keep backing Kyiv. “What we see more and more is that North Korea, Iran, China and of course Russia are working together, working together against Ukraine,” Rutte said. “At the same time, Russia has to pay for this, and one of the things they are doing is delivering technology to North Korea, which is now threatening in future the mainland of the US, continental Europe … I look forward to sit down with Donald Trump to discuss how we can face these threats collectively.”

• At the same European leaders’ meeting in Budapest where Rutte spoke – covered here by the Guardian’s Jon Henley – the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said it would be “unacceptable” for Europe to offer the Kremlin concessions to halt its invasion of Ukraine, after Moscow demanded the west enter direct talks on ending the war. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has demanded Ukraine cede swathes more territory in its east and south as a precondition to peace talks, while Kyiv has repeatedly ruled out giving up land in exchange for peace. Shaun Walker writes that Putin on Thursday also demanded Ukrainian neutrality, which Zelenskyy rejects.

• Zelenskyy also dismissed as “dangerous” and “irresponsible” the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s call for a “ceasefire” on the battlefield. Zelenskyy accused some European leaders, without specifying which ones, of “strongly” pushing Ukraine to compromise. “We need sufficient weapons, not support in talks. Hugs with Putin won’t help. Some of you have been hugging him for 20 years, and things are only getting worse.”

• The Institute for the Study of War thinktank said on Thursday: “Freezing the Russian war in Ukraine on anything like the current lines enormously advantages Russia and increases the risks and costs to Ukraine and the west of deterring, let alone defeating, a future Russian attempt to fulfil Putin’s aims by force.”

• Leaders at the Budapest meeting emphasised that with Trump becoming US president, Europe must take charge of its own security. Europe together has spent around $125bn on supporting Ukraine, while the US alone has coughed up more than $90bn, according to a tracker from the Kiel Institute.

• Russia carried out a massive drone attack on Kyiv, and killed four people in a strike on a hospital in Zaporizhzhia, in the hours after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, write Dan Sabbagh and Luke Harding. Zelenskyy urged allies to give Ukraine more air defence systems and to lift restrictions on hitting targets inside Russia using long-range western weapons.

• Russia said on Thursday its forces had seized control of Kreminna Balka, a village that had a prewar population of fewer than 50 people, in the industrial Donetsk region where Ukrainian defences have been repeatedly pushed back. The gain could not be independently confirmed, but Ukrainian media reported that Donetsk region authorities were preparing to announce mandatory evacuations from seven more villages in that region, which the Kremlin has claimed since 2022 is part of Russia. Two people were killed in shelling there on Thursday, the local governor reported….

More….