Russia-Ukraine war live: Nato foreign ministers meet in Romania; US to announce ‘substantial’ aid

Kyiv plans to erect Christmas trees, minus lights, throughout the battered city in a defiant display of holiday spirit as the capital area’s millions of residents suffer through blackouts due to Russian attacks, officials said.

“No one is going to cancel the New Year and Christmas, and the atmosphere of the New Year should be there,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko told the RBC-Ukraine news agency in an interview.

“We cannot allow Putin to steal our Christmas.”

Sergey Kovalenko, chief executive officer of YASNO, which provides power to Kyiv, said on his Facebook page that to save electricity, the trees will be without illuminations and garlands.

“There will be the New Year’s-Christmas tree and it will be the most energy-responsible, but still festive for all of us,” Kovalenko said.

Klitschko said that there will be no mass gatherings or concerts - a tradition to welcome the New Year. The city’s businesses will sponsor trees throughout Kyiv, including on the Sophia Square in the Old Kyiv neighbourhood.

The United States is expected to announce “substantial” financial aid to Ukraine on Tuesday to help it deal with the damage caused by Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, senior US officials said.

The aid, which will be detailed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in the Romanian capital Bucharest, “is substantial and it is not the end”, one senior official told journalists Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity and without giving further details.

However, he noted that the Biden administration had budgeted $1.1bn for energy spending in Ukraine and Moldova.

NATO foreign ministers are meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Bucharest where the alliance’s support for Ukraine since the Russian invasion will be discussed.

Germany, which currently chairs the G7, has convened a meeting Tuesday afternoon on the sidelines of the NATO gathering to discuss the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.

Romania, as well as neighboring Moldova, has been hard hit by the war, and around two million people fleeing Ukraine have passed through the country.

Bucharest currently hosts nearly 80,000 refugees, according to figures cited by Washington.

Hi, this is the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next few hours.

The United States is expected to announce “substantial” financial aid to Ukraine on Tuesday to help it deal with the damage caused by Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, senior US officials said.

The aid, which will be detailed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of a Nato meeting in the Romanian capital Bucharest, “is substantial and it is not the end”, one senior official told journalists Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity and without giving further details.

However, he noted that the Biden administration had budgeted $1.1bn for energy spending in Ukraine and Moldova.

Here are the other key recent developments:

• Fighting around the key eastern Ukraine town of Bakhmut has descended into a bloody morass with hundreds of dead and injured reported daily. Russia moved fresh formations to the area in recent weeks, but neither Russian nor Ukrainian forces have made a significant breakthrough after months of fighting.

• Russian forces continue to shell residential infrastructure and housing in the recently liberated city of Kherson, according to Ukraine’s military. In its update on Monday, US thinktank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Russian troops were digging trenches and fortifying their positions in preparation for a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive in eastern Kherson.

• The United States will announce new aid on Tuesday to help Ukraine restore electricity as the country faced another week of cold and darkness after Russian strikes on its power grid caused rolling blackouts.

• The US is considering a Boeing proposal to supply Ukraine with cheap, small precision bombs fitted on to abundantly available rockets, allowing Kyiv to strike far behind Russian lines as the west struggles to meet demand for more arms. US and allied military inventories are shrinking, according to Ukraine’s armed forces general staff.

• DTEK, Ukraine’s biggest private electricity producer, said it would reduce electricity supply by 60% for its consumers in Kyiv. National grid operator Ukrenergo said on Monday it had been forced to resume regular emergency blackouts across the country after a setback in its race to repair energy infrastructure.

• Ukrainian forces damaged a rail bridge north of the Russian-occupied southern city of Melitopol that has been key to supplying Russian forces, Ukraine’s armed forces said.

• Russians are sporadically shelling cities with no apparent strategic aim other than to cause casualties. The Guardian visited a residential district in Dnipro, where a series of houses were destroyed by a fragmentation warhead, designed to inflict maximum casualties.

• Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office has said 329 children are considered missing in Ukraine, while 12,034 have been deported to Russia. According to the Ukrainian government’s children of war portal, 440 children have been killed as a result of Russia’s war and 851 children are reported as injured.

• Russia has “unilaterally postponed” talks with the US aimed at resuming nuclear weapons inspections in Cairo this week, a US state department spokesperson confirmed. Talks between US and Russian officials were scheduled to begin tomorrow. The Russian foreign ministry confirmed in a statement that talks would no longer take place this week.

• The Ukraine war hotline between Russia and the US has been used once, according to a Reuters source. The communications line was created at the start of the war. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the US initiated a call on the “deconfliction” line to communicate its concerns about Russian military operations near critical infrastructure in Ukraine.