Fumio Kishida, prime minster of Japan, is considering a visit to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, says cabinet secretary.

Any decision to visit Kyiv would be weighed on “various circumstances”, as stated by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno.

The head of President Zelensky’s presidential office extended an invitation to prime minister Kishida via the country’s ambassador to Japan.

Kishida also held a phone call with president Zelensky on Friday, reaffirming Japan’s support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression.

In a statement to reporters, Kishida said “I strongly condemned Russia’s continued aggression, and stated that Japan would do its utmost to provide assistance, including to get through the winter, in order to protect the lives of the Ukrainian people.”

Fighting in Ukraine is continuing to take place over the Orthodox Christmas period, the MoD has reported in its daily intelligence report.

Major fighting is said to be centring on the town of Kremina, in Luhansk Oblast.

The MoD has suggested that Russian generals will ‘highly likely’ consider this fighting around Kremina as a “threat to the right flank of their Bakhmut sector, which they see as key for enabling any future advance to occupy the remainder of Donetsk Oblast.”

Intelligence has also suggested that combat has resorted to “dismounted infantry fighting, often at short range” due to “coniferous woodland providing some cover from air observation even in winter.”

“Both sides are highly likely struggling to accurately adjust artillery fire,” says the minister update.

The Ukrainian government has taken the main cathedral of the revered historic monastery from the church previously affiliated with Moscow‘s patriarchate and allowed its Ukrainian rival to use it for Orthodox Christmas services.

The move comes as the long-running tensions between the two churches exacerbated amid Russia‘s war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian minister of culture Oleksandr Tkachenko said on Thursday that the Dormition Cathedral and the Refectory Church of the nearly 1,000-year-old Pechersk Lavra — also known as Monastery of the Caves — in the Ukrainian capital have been taken over by the state after the lease of them held by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) expired on 31 December.

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President Vladimir Putin’s aim of seizing Ukrainian territory has not changed, but Russian forces continue to suffer from military weaknesses including the amount of troops they have, the Pentagon said yesterday, as Washington hopes the latest record weapons package for Kyiv will help Ukraine retake territory occupied by Russia.

“Putin has not given up his aims of dominating Ukraine and continuing to acquire Ukraine’s territory,” said Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defense focusing on Russia and Ukraine.

“But the reality of Russian weaknesses, the Russian armed forces weaknesses has collided with those aims,” Ms Cooper said, adding that Russian troops also suffer from low morale.

Worshippers in the eastern occupied Ukrainian town of Volnovakha yesterday marked the Russian Orthodox Christmas Eve in a makeshift chapel that was set up in a home after their church suffered shelling damage.

Vera Barda, 74, said the congregation had initially met in a tent after the church was hit during what Russia calls its special military operation in Ukraine.

“I offered the priest (my place) saying there was a stove and electricity, so it was warmer than in a tent ... he agreed at once and in three weeks we restored everything,” she said.

During the service, carried out in a converted cramped room decked out in icons, an Orthodox priest dressed in a ceremonial white robe burned incense while the mainly elderly congregation made the sign of the cross.

The US yesterday hit six executives and board members of an Iranian drone manufacturer with sanctions after the firm allegedly supplied Moscow with drones that Russian forces have been using to attack Ukraine.

Qods Aviation Industries, a previously sanctioned Iranian defence manufacturer, is alleged to be responsible for the design and production of unmanned aerial vehicles used to conduct strikes on civilians during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Treasury Department says the firm changed its name to Light Airplanes Design and Manufacturing Industries in mid-2020 to evade sanctions.

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A temporary ceasefire unilaterally imposed by Vladimir Putin on Russia‘s forces in Ukraine appears to have little effect on the ground – with artillery fire ringing out on the frontline (Lucy Skoulding writes).

Russia’s Defence Ministry was at pains to point out that troops were upholding the pause “along the entire line of contact,” accusing Ukraine of shelling Russian-held territory – despite the fact that Kyiv never agreed to the ceasefire, dismissing it as a ploy by Moscow to buy time to reinforce troops that have taken heavy losses.

President Putin ordered the 36-hour ceasefire from midday on Friday (9am GMT) to observe Orthodox Christmas and called on Kyiv to reciprocate. The governor of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine Serhiy Haidai, accused Russian troops of opening fire 14 times during the first three hours of the ceasefire, adding that forces had tried to storm one of the villages liberated by Ukraine in the area.

Explosions were also said to have been heard on other parts of the frontline in the east, which Ukrainian soldiers said were incoming Russian rocket fire.

With Vladimir Putin attending midnight Christmas mass, the Russian Orthodox Church has announced its backing for the war in Ukraine. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow on Thursday called for both sides to observe a 36-hour Christmas truce that Putin had announced.

In a service given to mark the Divine Liturgy, Kirill on Friday criticised Ukraine for cracking down on a branch of the Orthodox church with longstanding ties to Moscow.

Ukraine’s security service has raided property owned by the church and last month accused a senior cleric of engaging in anti-Ukrainian activity by supporting Russian policies.

“Let us pray for our brothers and sisters and let us believe that someday these diabolical temptations will recede,” said Kirill, mocking what he called “the pathetic attempts” by Kyiv to destroy the church in Ukraine.

Russian president Vladimir Putin attended an Orthodox Church Christmas service by himself last night inside a Kremlin cathedral rather than joining other worshippers in a public celebration.

Russia’s RIA news agency said it was the first time in years that Mr Putin had marked Christmas in Moscow rather than in the region around the capital.

State television showed two live clips of him inside the gilded Cathedral of the Annunciation as Orthodox priests conducted the midnight service, known as the Divine Liturgy.

Many Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on 6 and 7 January.

Mr Putin, wearing a blue jacket and a high-necked white sweater, was the sole worshipper and crossed himself several times before television coverage cut away to a public service in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

The Russian president, who celebrated Easter last year in the cathedral with thousands of others, also attended Christmas by himself last year in his official Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow. In 2021, he took part in a public Divine Liturgy in Novgorod.

US president Joe Biden expressed wariness about the Russian ceasefire, saying it was “interesting” that Vladimir Putin was ready to bomb hospitals, nurseries and churches in recent weeks on Christmas and New Year’s.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington had “little faith in the intentions behind this announcement,” adding that Kremlin officials “have given us no reason to take anything that they offer at face value.”

The Institute for the Study of War agreed the truce could be a ruse allowing Russia to regroup.

“Such a pause would disproportionately benefit Russian troops and begin to deprive Ukraine of the initiative,” the think tank said late Thursday.

“Putin cannot reasonably expect Ukraine to meet the terms of this suddenly declared cease-fire, and may have called for the cease-fire to frame Ukraine as unaccommodating and unwilling to take the necessary steps toward negotiations.”

And Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, said that whether or not the cease-fire holds, “I don’t take it at face value.”

“When Russia announces cease-fires, in the way Russia conducts war, there are usually ulterior motives,” she said. “Historically, what the Russian government and Russian military usually do when they announce a cease-fire is to use it as a tactical opportunity, to just take a breather or gain a little bit of space.”