Ukraine recap: Zelensky's defiant new year speech foreshadows tough 2024 as government tightens conscription laws

• Ukraine advances, Ukraine overcomes the path.
• He said: “Ukrainians will cope with any energy shortage as they have no shortage of resilience and courage.
• We defeated the darkness.” He took time to thank the Ukrainian people, talking up the country’s unity in the face of existential threat.
• A refugee or a citizen?” The cold hard fact is that 2023 ended badly on the battlefield for Ukraine.
• As late as the beginning of December Russia announced it was calling up another 170,000 troops.

• In the meantime, a raft of new economic measures will increase the tax burden on ordinary Ukrainians, while at the same time radically reducing public spending.
• Read more:
  Ukraine war increasingly seen as 'fought by the poor’, as Zelensky raises taxes and proposes strict mobilisation laws

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• James Horncastle, of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, meanwhile, believes that while Ukraine has suffered setbacks over the past six months or so, it can still prevail.
• And then works out exactly what it will take in terms of western military aid to achieve that initial goal.

Do they know it’s Christmas?

• Accordingly Ukrainians celebrated Easter and other important religious festivals and saints days at different times as well.
• But in May 2023, the Ukrainian government took the decision to adopt the revised Julian – what we know as the Gregorian – calendar.
• As Hann reports, the old religious calendar survived the Soviet era, but has now been swept away by decree from Kyiv.