Ukraine denies it has rejected ceasefire proposal

Ukraine has denied claims from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban that it has rejected a Christmas ceasefire proposal from Hungary and Russia.

Orban talked with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday about the nearly three-year conflict with Ukraine. Orban posted on X that it was “sad” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had “clearly rejected” their proposal, which he said also included a prisoner exchange.

“As always, the Hungarian side did not warn [us] about its contacts with Moscow,” Ukrainian presidential aide Dmytro Lytvyn said in a statement about Orban’s claims.

Zelenskyy posted on X that “there can be no discussions about the war that Russia wages against Ukraine without Ukraine.”

Zelenskyy said he was “grateful to @realDonaldTrump and many European leaders with whom we are already working to find the right and strong solutions for real peace.”

Meanwhile, a U.S. intelligence assessment has concluded that Russia could launch another of its experimental hypersonic ballistic missiles against Ukraine in the coming days, although Washington does not consider it to be decisive in the nearly three-year war, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

Russia first fired the Oreshnik missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on November 21, in what Putin characterized as a response to Ukraine's first use of long-range U.S. and British missiles to strike deeper into Russian territory with Western permission.

"We assess that the Oreshnik is not a game-changer on the battlefield, but rather just another attempt by Russia to terrorize Ukraine, which will fail," the U.S. official told reporters. There was no immediate response from Russia.

Putin has previously said Russia may fire the Oreshnik missile again, possibly to target "decision-making centers" in Kyiv, if Ukraine keeps attacking Russia with long-range Western weapons.

Russia's defense ministry said that Ukraine had attacked a military airfield in the southern Russian city of Taganrog on Wednesday morning with six of the U.S.-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles and promised retaliation. It said all six had been intercepted, but that falling missile debris had caused some injuries.

The Russian leader has claimed that the Oreshnik is impossible to intercept and that it has destructive power comparable to that of a nuclear weapon, even when fitted with a conventional warhead.

Some Western experts have said the novel feature of the Oreshnik is that it carries multiple warheads capable of simultaneously striking different targets — something usually associated with longer-range intercontinental ballistic missiles.

A surveillance camera video of the strike three weeks ago showed huge fireballs piercing the darkness and slamming into the ground at astonishing speed.

Within hours of Ukraine’s attack on the Russian military facility, Putin took the rare step of speaking on national TV to boast about the new, hypersonic missile. He warned the West that its next use could be against Ukraine's NATO allies, which allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.

Nonetheless, the U.S. official downplayed the usefulness of the missiles, calling them "experimental" in nature and said that "Russia likely possesses only a handful" of them. The official also said the weapon has a smaller warhead than other missiles Russia has deployed in Ukraine.

The United States says it is sending more air defense systems to Ukraine even as Russia gains territory in eastern Ukraine six weeks ahead of Donald Trump's return to the U.S. presidency.

Trump has been a skeptic of continuing U.S. support for Ukraine. He has said he will end the war before he takes office but has not said how. He has pointedly refused to say he wants Ukraine to win the war, leaving Washington's long-term military support for Ukraine in question.

Trump met with Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris over the weekend.

Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Tuesday that a rescue operation was "currently under way" in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, following a Russian missile strike that killed three people and injured 18 others.

Zelenskyy added that Ukraine does not have enough air defense systems to protect it from Russian missiles. "But our partners do have these systems. We repeat, again and again, that air defense systems should save lives, not collect dust in storage bases," he said.

Separately, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday that Ukraine-Russia peace talks could begin "in the winter," a timeline that coincides with Poland taking over the rotating presidency of the European Union on January 1.

Tusk offered few details about where, when or even who would be involved in the negotiations, but he told his Cabinet he hoped the "end effect" of the EU's negotiations would result in peace for Ukraine.

Tusk, however, indicated that Poland, which has been a staunch supporter of neighboring Ukraine since Russian forces invaded the country in February 2022, will be a major participant in the talks.

"I really want Poland to be the country that will not only be present but will set the tone for these decisions that are to bring us security and secure Polish interests," the prime minister said.

Separately, France’s Macron is expected to meet with Tusk Thursday in Warsaw to discuss Ukraine.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.