China

• The U.S. will require travelers from China to show negative COVID tests starting Jan. 5 - even if they enter through a third country or only connect in the U.S. en route to another destination.
• U.S. health officials are worried about new variants emerging as China reopens after almost three years of zero-COVID restrictions; however, critics of the new measures point out that the dominant variants in China (at least according to the limited data still available) are less infectious than the XBB subvariant already surging in the northeast U.S., so they're not likely to replace XBB.

Ukraine

• Russia fired at least 120 missiles at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities today, marking one of its largest missile campaigns to date. Ukraine said its aid defenses shot down most of the missiles and criticized Russia for "senseless barbarism" between Christmas and New Year's.
• According to Ukrainian media, a new Russian private military group called Patriot is now active in Donetsk and competing with Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner Group for results. Ukrainian Pravda reports that Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu is behind Patriot, and helped to found it after Prigozhin criticized him for Russia's battlefield defeats in Ukraine. A short International Business Times article pasted below has more.
• Separately, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says Wagner Group has "culminated" - gotten to the point at which it can no longer continue its advance - in Bakhmut, facing such heavy losses that it can't make progress, despite Russian air support.

Other News

• Ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo began to dismantle some of the roadblocks they put up over the past few weeks, raising hopes that tensions will start to ease.

Another Russian Private Army Joins Ukraine War (IBT) KEY POINTS

• The new military group is reportedly affiliated with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu
• Shoigu's private military group is said to be competing against the Wagner mercenary group
• Ukraine says Russia has lost more than 103,700 military personnel since the war began

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has deployed another private army to join Moscow's troops in the war against Ukraine, according to a report.

The private military group, spotted near the Ukrainian city of Vuhledar in the temporarily occupied Donetsk Oblast, is also competing against the Wagner mercenary group founded by Russian President Vladimir Putin's ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

"In particular, in the area of Stepne on the Vuhledar front, we have noticed that in addition to Wagner PMC, Patriot PMC, affiliated with the current Russian Defence Minister Shoigu, has appeared," Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said in a national joint newscast, as quoted by the outlet. "Obviously, they are pulling up all combat capabilities to achieve at least some results."

Shoigu's deployment of the new private army comes after Prigozhin last month said he wants to punish the Russian defense minister over the defeats and failures Moscow's troops sustained on the battlefield against Ukraine.

"Contradictions are growing among the top military leadership of the Russian Federation. Prigozhin blames the failures of Shoigu and Gerasimov, and they, in turn, nod at Putin," the National Resistance Center reported, citing "available information," as per a translation via Google Translate.

Prigozhin is not the only Russian figure who blamed Shoigu for Moscow's defeats in Ukraine. Kirill Stremousov, a pro-Russia Ukrainian politician who the Kremlin installed as the puppet leader of the Kherson region, had also previously suggested that Shoigu should consider killing himself over Russia's recent military losses, Reuters reported.

Stremousov was killed in a car crash in Kherson Oblast on Nov. 9, just hours before Shoigu ordered Russian troops to withdraw from the city of Kherson. It was the only major city Russia successfully captured in the war.

The war began in February after Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in what he called a "special military operation" to "demilitarize" and "de-Nazify" the country. Since then, Russian forces have lost 103,770 military personnel, including 550 who died over the past day, according to estimates from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

In addition, Russia has also lost 3,017 tanks, 6,037 combat armored machines, 1,999 artillery systems, 1,707 UAVs and 4,660 vehicles and fuel tanks in the conflict.