Now move on to Russia, where President Vladimir Putin is due to hold his first year-end news conference. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the event will be carried live on all main Russian television channels. At the same time, EU leaders will be gathering in Brussels to discuss further funding for Ukraine. Well, our Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, is in Moscow and told me about the significance of this event.

Traditionally, there are two major events in Russia in the TV calendar, right? There's the Putin phone-in and there's the Putin end-of-year press conference. Last year, the Kremlin canceled both after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. This year, the two shows are being combined into what we're expecting to be one marathon event later today with President Putin taking questions both from the Russian public and from journalists, including possibly Western journalists from countries that Russia labels unfriendly. There's no guarantee we'll get a question, but this is the first time we've been invited to a Kremlin event since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

So it will be fascinating, be interesting to hear what he has to say. We assume it's quite staged, is it?

Well, I mean, it's very long. We're expecting it to last for at least three hours, four hours, possibly. As I say, there's no guarantee we're going to get a question. But obviously, we're expecting the President to talk about what he calls the Special Military Operation, in other words, Russia's war in Ukraine. But he'll also be talking about social issues, economic issues. Apparently, more than two million questions have been submitted by the Russian public in the lead-up to this event. Traditionally, Russians want to ask about the state of healthcare in Russia, pensions, things like that. This is an important platform for him because when you think that in three months' time, he's seeking re-election as Russia's President, so what better platform could you hope for? A four-hour show live on all the main Russian TV channels? It'll be wall-to-wall Putin in Russia for a big chunk of today.

As we've mentioned, this coincides with EU leaders gathering in Brussels. It's their final EU Council meeting of the year. It's big. They're going to be talking about a lot of funding for Ukraine. Victor Orban of Hungary is expected to veto more military aid for Ukraine. I mean, to what extent will this be closely watched in Moscow as well, or will they try and ignore it all?

No, they will be watching. Russia is watching very closely what is happening away from the battlefield. It's watching what's happening in Europe. It's watching what is happening in America, particularly, and Russia likes what it is seeing. It was watching very closely President Zolensky's visit to Washington, and it can see the difficulties that Ukraine has been having in securing extra military aid, additional funding for the war, it can see the subtle change in language from Washington. Joe Biden said that his administration would continue to help Ukraine as long as he could, as long as it could, whereas in the past, he said that his administration would help Ukraine for as long as it took. So Russia sees this, and It think this is fueling President Putin's confidence, and that is why he's gone ahead with this marathon TV show today. I think he is feeling confident. He can sense a degree of Ukraine fatigue in the West, and that is why he's holding this event today, I think.