What happened in the Russia-Ukraine war this week? Catch up with the must-read news and analysis

Every week we wrap up essential coverage of the war in Ukraine, from news and features to analysis, opinion and more.

EU opens membership talks with Ukraine but Hungary blocks aidEuropean Council President Charles Michel announces that the European Council has decided to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA

The EU has decided to open membership negotiations with Ukraine, in an unexpected move that will be a critical boost to Volodymyr Zelenskiy and deal a blow to Vladimir Putin, Lisa O’Carroll reports from Brussels.

The announcement, made on Thursday after eight hours of tense negotiations in Brussels, came despite the opposition of Hungary, whose prime minister, Viktor Orbán, had for weeks said it would veto any opening of accession talks.

In the end, diplomats said, Orbán left the room when the key decision – which had to be unanimous – was made by leaders of the other 26 member states. Even for a city in which the art of deal-making is well honed, it was a highly unusual manoeuvre.

Sources said the decision of Orbán not to be in the room was agreed beforehand: “He knew that 26 member states were strongly in favour. Of course it’s legal.”

Moments after the decision was announced, Zelenskiy said: “This is a victory for Ukraine. A victory for all of Europe. A victory that motivates, inspires, and strengthens.”

However, on Thursday night European Union leaders failed to agree on a €50bn aid package for Ukraine and on the renegotiation of the EU budget, EU Council president Charles Michel said. Hungary’s president Viktor Orbán said he vetoed the package, which was aimed at helping the war-torn country weather the Russian invasion.

Prior to the summit, Piotr Buras and Engjellushe Morina argued that many EU leaders had not grasped the gravity of the situation. “The EU is Ukraine’s only chance. If this chance is lost, the EU will bear not only the responsibility but also the burden of dealing with the massive geopolitical impact of this failure,” they wrote in an op-ed.

On the frontline in AvdiivkaMassengo Djizlan, soldier from the 25th storm battalion cleaning a machine gun at his base near Avdiivka Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

Luke Harding and Alessio Mamo travelled to the frontline city of Avdiivka, which is in ruins, with just 1,200 people left.

For two months, the Russian army has been trying to seize the eastern Ukrainian city. First, it launched a massive frontal assault. Dozens of pieces of equipment were destroyed. Then it dispatched armoured columns in different directions. Now, in a third wave, small groups of infantry are being sent to penetrate Ukrainian positions.

“There are dozens of bodies. They try to advance. We kill them. They send more,” said Ivan Smaga, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s 25th storm battalion, which is defending Avdiivka. “To begin with it was groups of 10 men. Now it’s one or two or three without support. Their commander uses them like live meat.”

Zelenskiy fails to convince US Republicans to back further aid

Volodymyr Zelenskiy struggled to persuade US Republicans to support a $61bn military aid package for Ukraine on a trip to Washington DC, Dan Sabbagh reported. Shortly after arriving in the US capital, Zelenskiy said Ukraine was counting on the US, and that delays to future rounds of military aid were “dreams come true” for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

“Putin must lose,” Zelenskiy said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington DC. “You can count on Ukraine, and we hope just as much to be able to count on you.”

The Ukrainian president also addressed members of the Senate in a closed 90-minute meeting on Tuesday morning. But afterwards key Republicans insisted on White House concessions on border security as a condition for a deal.

US President Joe Biden warned that Republicans were playing directly into the hands of Putin, David Smith and Dan Sabbagh reported.

“Russian loyalists in Moscow celebrated when Republicans voted to block Ukraine’s aid last week,” the US president said at a joint press conference with Zelenskiy. “The host of a Kremlin-run show said: ‘Well done Republicans, that’s good for us.’”

The Democratic US House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, also dismissed certain Republican colleagues as the “pro-Putin caucus”, Ramon Antonio Vargas reported. During an interview with CNN, Jeffries singled out the far-right House firebrands Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan as the face of a “loud and … growing” movement that would “like to see Vladimir Putin win in Ukraine.”

Putin’s end-of-year press conference returnsVladimir Putin during his annual press conference. Photograph: Getty Images

Vladimir Putin has said “there will only be peace in Ukraine when we achieve our aims” as he appeared on television for his year-end press conference for the first time since he launched the invasion, seeking to project confidence in his war machine, Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer report.

Calling for the “denazification of Ukraine, its demilitarisation and neutral status”, the Russian president took a hardline stance that demanded Ukraine’s unconditional surrender, after Kyiv’s lacklustre counteroffensive this summer and delays in US military aid to Ukraine brought on by partisan infighting in Washington DC.

The year-end press conference, typically an annual cocktail of Kremlin pomp and state TV camp, lasted more than four hours and included questions from soldiers beamed in from the frontlines, regional journalists vying for the microphone in a studio and a question delivered by an AI-generated version of Putin. In response, Putin denied a popular rumour that he had been using a body double in public.

Russian opposition leader Navalny missingRussian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is seen on a screen via video link from a corrective colony during a court hearing in June. Photograph: Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA

Alexei Navalny, the jailed Russian opposition leader, has not been heard from and his lawyers have been unable to contact him, his supporters said at the beginning of the week.

Navalny, the anti-corruption activist who became a leading opponent of Vladimir Putin, was convicted of extremism and other charges and is set to remain in prison for three decades. He has called the charges against him politically motivated and said he believes he will not be released while Putin is alive.

“We unfortunately don’t know anything about his status yet,” Kira Yarmysh, an aide to Navalny, told Andrew Roth.

On Monday, Navalny’s supporters said he again failed to appear by videoconference for a court hearing, with prison officials blaming a power outage. Later that day, Navalny’s lawyers were told he was no longer listed as a prisoner at IK-6, the penal colony where he has been incarcerated in the Vladimir region near Moscow.

“We assume that he could have been transferred,” said Yarmysh, suggesting that he may have been taken to a “special regime” prison, which have some of the harshest conditions in the Russian penal system.

Navalny’s disappearance came shortly before Putin announced his candidacy in next year’s presidential elections, which would mark his fifth term in power as president.

How Ukrainian grain may be enriching Putin’s circleA farmer harvests wheat in a field near the Ukrainian city of Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia region in July 2022. Photograph: Andrey Borodulin/AFP/Getty Images

Russia’s farmers are achieving record grain harvests – according to official figures. But the numbers published by Vladimir Putin’s government appear to conceal the contribution to this bumper crop made by another set of farmers: those in occupied Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials and agriculture experts have claimed that favourable conditions are not enough to explain the giant harvest, Tom Burgis and Pjotr Sauer reported. They say instead that Ukrainian grain is being exported disguised as Russian produce.

The occupation authorities are “looting” Ukrainian grain, prosecutors alleged in one case against a suspected collaborator, “not for military operations or to meet the needs of the population but for selfish purposes and for motives of personal illegal profit”.

Farms are brought under occupation control through brutal means, according to prosecutors and a witness, while grain production allegedly flows away to Russian companies, including one with connections to Putin’s circle.

An English couple, a Ukrainian surrogate and a babyA nurse feeds a baby in Kyiv in March 2022. Photograph: Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images

One cold day in December 2021, a former primary schoolteacher in Suffolk opened her laptop, clicked on a Zoom link and was introduced to a beautician in Ukraine who would carry her baby.

Dorothy, then 43, and her husband, Charlie, 44, who worked for a printing company, had been trying to conceive for eight years. When the last attempt ended in miscarriage, a consultant had suggested surrogacy.

But even as the couple spoke with Anastasia, the world they inhabited was spinning out of control. Approximately 100,000 Russian troops were gathered on the border of Ukraine. When Russia invaded, on 24 February 2022, 42 British babies were being carried by Ukrainian surrogates. Anastasia was one of them.

Sally Williams reported on the story of what happened to the surrogacy industry amid that chaos – and the extraordinary steps Dorothy and Charlie took to keep Anastasia and their baby safe.