WAR IN UKRAINE: December 4, 2022
In occupied Ukrainian cities, patriotic citizens have been posting pro-Ukrainian leaflets and ribbons. Particularly in Henichesk, Melitopol, Energodar, Luhansk and Donetsk this week alone.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 284
Suggesting growing disillusionment with Putin's war, a Levada Center poll in Russia found that "only 41 percent of respondents favored Russia continuing military operation in Ukraine, whereas 53 percent said that Russia should begin peace negotiations."
Zelensky: $60 oil barrel price cap is comfortable for Russia’s budget. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the long discussion leading to the $60 a barrel price cap on Russian oil has finished "without big decisions." Zelensky said, "it's only a matter of time before stronger tools will have to be used anyway. It is a pity that this time will be lost” - Kyiv Independent
Ukraine's chief negotiator says Russia must withdraw from Ukraine before starting talks. Lawmaker David Arakhamia, head of the governing Servant of the People faction and Ukraine's chief negotiator with Russia, said Kyiv is ready to provide Russia with security guarantees after it withdraws its troops from Ukraine, pays reparations, brings all war criminals to justice, and voluntarily surrenders nuclear weapons - Kyiv Independent
The Ukrainian Navy has accused Russia of using a banned chemical weapon against Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine.
Russia has harvested some $1 billion worth of wheat in the parts of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces, the U.S. space agency NASA has said. Harvest, the agency's food-security program, said on December 4 that satellite imagery showed some 5.8 million tons of wheat were harvested from occupied land in Ukraine. It is not known what became of the Ukrainian wheat taken by Russia, but Russian ships have been exporting grain that may have been taken from occupied Ukraine to Libya, Iran, and other countries
Russian troops have resumed the shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, cutting the electricity supply to the recently liberated city - RFE/RL
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appeared to slip up on Thursday as he described President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a "war" for the first time since the conflict began in February. Lavrov made the admission at his annual news conference in Moscow, during which he also accused the U.S. and the military alliance NATO of playing a direct role in the war. "With Ukraine, we didn't just get up, [only because] we because we didn't like [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, or because he stopped playing in the KVN [Russian and formerly Soviet humor TV show and an international competition] and stopped maintaining his theater, Kvartal 95 [publicly owned television entertainment production company, founded by Zelensky], and we went to war against Ukraine," he said - Newsweek
At the beginning of March, right after the full-scale invasion, Russian information troops targeted regional centers of Ukraine by creating dedicated Telegram channels for each township or community. Although each one posed as a source of local news, those channels were in fact used to disseminate Russian narratives and bolster support for the occupiers. The administrators also used them to imitate such support by the locals - Texty.org