TOP HEADLINES

· The U.S. and its NATO allies have pledged to provide Kyiv with equipment to help restore power and heating infrastructure, after NATO's chief said Moscow was targeting Ukraine's energy systems amid winter as "a weapon of war."

· Jens Stoltenberg added that NATO allies were also discussing providing Patriot air defense units to Ukraine. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned NATO against doing so, denouncing the alliance as a "criminal entity."

· Russia accused the U.S. of "toxic" anti-Russian behaviour that it said had pushed it to pull out of nuclear arms talks with Washington officials in Cairo this week. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov added that increased U.S. involvement in the war carried growing risks.

· NATO foreign ministers will on Wednesday look to reassure Moldova, Georgia and Bosnia over fears of destabilization from Moscow as the Ukraine war drags on, with squeezed energy supplies and higher prices exacerbating public discontent.

· The Group of Seven wealthy nations (G7) have agreed to set up a network to coordinate investigations into alleged war crimes in Ukraine. The EU will also try to set up a specialized court, backed by the UN, to investigate possible war crimes, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen has announced.

· Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces were trying to advance in the northeast and east and "planning something" in the south, as Moscow continues to target the eastern Donbas region, the right bank of the Dnipro River, and Kherson city further south.

· The European Commission is also proposing a plan to confiscate Russian assets that have been frozen to punish Moscow for its attack on Ukraine, exploring legal options with the EU's partners to compensate Kyiv for damage to the country.

· With Ukraine still struggling to restore full power nearly a week after a wave of Russian missile strikes battered energy facilities across the country, the U.S. pledged $53 million to support the purchase of new power grid equipment.

· Kyiv is planning to put up Christmas trees without lights, a defiant display of holiday cheer as millions of residents in the capital experience blackouts.

· Russia is firing unarmed cruise missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads into Ukraine in a bid to try to deplete Kyiv's stocks of air defenses, a senior U.S. military official said.

IN DETAIL

NATO mulls Patriot air defense systems for Kyiv in Bucharest

Foreign ministers from the U.S.-led NATO alliance, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, are meeting for a two-day summit in Bucharest, where they are set to discuss helping Western-allied Russian neighbors concerned about their own stability amid an energy crisis prompted by the Ukraine war.

Moldova, Georgia and Bosnia are all "facing pressure from Russia," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday, an issue he said the alliance was considering how to address. 

Stoltenberg also pledged to help Ukrainians cope with what the defense alliance's chief said was Moscow using winter weather as "a weapon of war".

Snowfall and freezing temperatures are expected to continue across the country as millions struggled to heat their homes.

DTEK, Ukraine's biggest private electricity producer, said that Kyiv, where nearly 1 million people were without power on Tuesday, would see more emergency power cuts on Wednesday.

"We are trying to get back to scheduled outages as soon as possible, but depending on the situation in the power system, the information may change several times a day," it said.

President Zelenskyy told Ukrainians to expect a major Russian barrage aimed at its stricken electricity infrastructure this week, which Moscow has hit roughly weekly since early October.

Washington alone has promised to give Kyiv $53 million to buy more power grid equipment amid rolling blackouts.

"In a nutshell: Patriots (missile defense systems) and transformers (for our energy needs) are what Ukraine needs the most," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters on the sidelines of the NATO meeting.

The alliance is discussing providing Patriot air defense units to Kyiv, but NATO said that maintaining and providing the systems with ammunition would be a "huge challenge."

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of Moscow's security council, warned against the move, denouncing the Atlantic alliance as a "criminal entity" for delivering arms to what he called "Ukrainian fanatics."

Moscow has acknowledged attacking infrastructure, but says it aims to degrade Ukraine's military, and that Ukrainians could end their suffering by accepting its demands.