Russia

• Pres. Putin skipped his annual year-end news conference for only the second time in his presidency. It's normally a rare chance for (pre-screened) reporters to grill Putin on live TV, so analysts think he opted out to avoid the risk of facing awkward questions about his floundering war in Ukraine.
• A U.S. official told Reuters that Russia is using ammunition from its stockpiles - which include unreliable older rounds produced over 40 years ago. That suggests its troops in Ukraine are burning through new ammunition faster than it's being made (or imported from Iran and North Korea).
• A NYT article pasted below probes connections between sanctioned Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and UFC fighters - including three former champions who visited Chechnya to attend a birthday party for one of Kadyrov's teenage sons.

China

• Chinese and Indian troops clashed on their shared border in far northeast India / southern China for the first time since almost two years ago, when gory hand-to-hand battle killed 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers.

• Gunmen targeted a hotel in Kabul frequented by Chinese nationals, killing at least three. Analysts suspect Islamic State was responsible and deliberately sought to kill Chinese: it sees China as one of the Taliban's few diplomatic allies.

• Guyana opened the bidding process for 14 new offshore oil and gas blocks, including 11 in shallow water (minimum bid: $10 million) and three in deep water (minimum bid: $20 million). It expects to award contracts by May 2023.

• Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said they'd achieved a "net energy gain" from nuclear fusion for the first time. That means fusion - as opposed to fission - could one day be a viable source of clean energy...though that goal is still very far away. I worked on a tiny part of this project as an intern in 2005, and it's thrilling to see it succeed ×