Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy to address US Congress in first trip outside of Ukraine since start of war | Ukraine

A destroyed room in a school in Avdiivka on Tuesday in Donetsk, Ukraine.

David Smith

In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, a senior administration official, who did not wish to be named, said Biden and Zelenskiy had discussed a potential visit when they spoke by phone on 11 December and the White House formally extended an invitation last Wednesday. Zelenskiy’s office accepted the invitation last Friday and the visit was confirmed on Sunday.

Biden will first welcome Zelenskiy at the White House for bilateral meetings with the US president’s national security team and cabinet. After a press conference, Zelenskiy will go to Capitol Hill and address a joint session of Congress. He will return home after just a few hours on the ground.

The senior administration official also denied that Biden will pressure Zelenskiy to seek a diplomatic end to the war. “The president is not coming with a message that is about pushing or prodding or poking Zelenskiy in any way. This is going to be a message of solidarity and support, coordination and alignment and making sure that we are very much putting Ukraine in the best possible position to defend its interests and secure its objectives.”

The statement also says that during the visit, Biden will announce “a significant new package of security assistance to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression.”

It continues:

The visit will underscore the United States’ steadfast commitment to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes, including through the provision of economic, humanitarian, and military assistance.

The package will be worth nearly $2bn, including a Patriot missile battery. The US will, in a third country, train Ukrainian forces in how to operate the Patriot system.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has just confirmed that he is on his way to the US, in his first foreign trip since the war broke out 300 days ago.

Zelenskiy write on Twitter, “On my way to the US to strengthen resilience and defense capabilities of Ukraine. In particular, @POTUS and I will discuss cooperation between Ukraine and US and I will also have a speech at the Congress and a number of bilateral meetings.”

We now have official confirmation that Zelenskiy will visit Washington today, in his first foreign visit since the war broke out.

US president Joe Biden has released a statement saying that Zelenskiy will go to the White House before addressing a joint session of Congress “demonstrating the strong, bipartisan support for Ukraine”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to set his military aims for 2023 in a meeting on Wednesday, AFP reports, citing the Kremlin.

The meeting with defence officials will include a keynote message from defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Last week Shoigu visited troops involved in what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine after the defence ministry announced the formation of a “frontline creative brigade”, including vocalists and musicians, to raise morale.

The ministry said Shoigu “flew around the areas of troop deployment and checked the advanced positions of Russian units in the zone of the special military operation”, adding that he spoke with frontline troops. It is not clear where.

Zelenskiy expected to visit Washington

Lois Beckett

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will travel to Washington on Wednesday where he is expected to visit the White House and the US Capitol, according several US media reports.

Zelenskiy is expected to meet congressional leadership and national security committee chiefs from the Republican and Democratic parties, and might address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, news outlets reported..

The trip, which would be Zelenskiy’s first known foreign visit since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, could still be called off at the last minute due to security concerns. But if it goes ahead, the visit is set to include an address to Congress on Capitol Hill and a meeting with President Joe Biden. It comes as lawmakers are due to vote on a year-end spending package that includes about $45bn in emergency assistance to Ukraine and the US prepares to send Patriot surface-to-air missiles to the country to help stave off Russia’s invasion.

The latest tranche of US funding would be the biggest American infusion of assistance yet to Ukraine, above even President Joe Biden’s $37bn emergency request, and ensure that funding flows to the war effort for months to come.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will travel to Washington on Wednesday where he is expected to visit the White House and the US Capitol, according to several US media reports.

We’ll bring you the latest news on Zelenskiy’s visit as it happens – as well as updates from within Ukraine.

In the meantime, here are the key recent developments in the conflict:

• President Zelenskiy visited the frontline city of Bakhmut on Tuesday. He met military representatives and handed out awards to soldiers, his office has said.

• A blast ripped through the Urengoi-Pomary-Uzhhorod gas exporting pipeline that leads from Russia through Ukraine. Reuters reported that three people died in the incident.

• Ukraine was warned to prepare for new Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure. Prime minister Denys Shmyhal said Moscow wanted Ukraine to spend Christmas and new year in darkness.

• Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said the situation in four areas of eastern Ukraine – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – that Moscow illegally annexed in September, was “extremely difficult”. Russia’s illegal annexation of the four territories, which together make up 15% of Ukraine, marked the largest forcible takeover of territory in Europe since the second world war and was condemned by Kyiv and its western allies as illegal. Russia has suffered acute setbacks in the areas, halting its ambitions.

• The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, on Tuesday condemned Iran’s support for Russia in its war in Ukraine and the ongoing repression of opposition in the country, but said the EU would continue to work with Iran on restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. “Necessary meeting with Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in Jordan amid deteriorating Iran-EU relations,” Borrell tweeted ahead of a regional conference being hosted by Jordan.

• Ukraine is accelerating efforts to erase the vestiges of Soviet and Russian influence from its public spaces by pulling down monuments and renaming hundreds of streets to honour its own artists, poets, soldiers, independence leaders and others – including heroes of this year’s war. Since the war began, Ukraine’s leaders have shifted a campaign that once focused on dismantling its communist past into one of “de-Russification”.

• China says Chinese-Russian naval drills beginning on Wednesday aim to “further deepen” cooperation between the two countries whose unofficial anti-western alliance has gained strength since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The drills will be held off the coast of Zhejiang province south of Shanghai until next Tuesday, according to a brief notice posted Monday by China’s eastern theatre command under the ruling Communist party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army.