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What did 24 December 2024 follow in the war?
Summary
A look back at the days before 24 December 2024, when strikes on both sides of the border and a British training proposal framed the security picture.
What was the security picture on 24 December 2024, as the fourth Christmas of the full-scale war approached? The days immediately before that date offer the clearest answer: strikes crossing the border in both directions, and a new debate over Western military support.
Strikes on Ukrainian cities
On 20 December 2024, Russian missile strikes hit civilian infrastructure in Kryvyi Rih and Kyiv. At least one person was killed and eight others were injured. Kryvyi Rih had already been subject to a series of artillery attacks and air raids during the war, so the strikes fitted an established pattern of attacks on the city.
Ukrainian strikes inside Russia
The same day, a Ukrainian missile strike killed six people and injured 10 others in Rylsk, in Russia's Kursk Oblast, according to acting Kursk Oblast governor Alexander Khinshtein. Russia said it would raise the strike at the United Nations Security Council. The Kursk region was the setting of the 2024 Kursk offensive.
On 21 December 2024, at least seven Ukrainian drones struck Kazan, Russia. Six of them reportedly hit residential areas, including a 32-storey apartment building.
A British proposal
On 19 December 2024, British defence secretary John Healey announced a proposal to send military advisers to train Ukrainian forces. The announcement added a training dimension to the United Kingdom's support for Ukraine, which had continued across Conservative and Labour governments.
Why it mattered
Taken together, these reports show a conflict in which both sides were hitting targets far from the front line. Russian strikes reached the capital and an industrial city in central Ukraine, while Ukrainian drones and missiles reached Kazan and the town of Rylsk. Russia's decision to take the Rylsk strike to the Security Council showed it intended to make the diplomatic case over attacks on its territory.
The British proposal pointed in a different direction: not new weapons, but preparation of Ukrainian personnel with the help of foreign advisers. Taken with the strikes of 20 and 21 December 2024, it marked the run-up to 24 December 2024 as a period of continued escalation in the air war and continued Western engagement.
