Soviet 163rd Division, trapped in the Finnish village of Suomussalmi for the past 22 days, began evacuating on an ice road over Lake Kiantaj_rvi; troops of the Finnish 9th Division attacked the rearguard. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Russia, Stalin endorsed Chief of Staff Shaposhnikov's plan for a major attack on Finnish forces on the Karelian Isthmus; Semyon Timoshenko volunteered to lead the offensive as the disgraced Kirill Meretskov was demoted to the commander of the Soviet 7th Army.
