Heavy preventing continued in Donetsk as Russian forces pressed their relentless assaults on japanese Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made a daring go to to Bakhmut, one of many two frontline cities that along with Avdiyivka have been the main target of Moscow’s months-long offensive.
Stay Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL’s Stay Briefing provides you all the newest developments on Russia’s ongoing invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western army help, world response, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s protection of the conflict, click on right here.
As Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its three hundredth day, the Basic Workers of the Ukrainian army mentioned on December 20 that Russian troops continued to satisfy stiff resistance within the two cities, whereas failing to reestablish their positions in Lyman, one other flashpoint metropolis in Donetsk.
In the meantime, lethal Russian bombardment once more hit the lately liberated Ukrainian metropolis of Kherson, a regional official mentioned.
Nearly 10 months into the conflict, Russia’s invasion has been slowed down, with troops having been compelled to make three main retreats.
The Ukrainian army mentioned its air power carried out 22 strikes on Russian positions, whereas its air-defense techniques downed two enemy helicopters. The claims couldn’t be independently verified.
Within the central Dnipropetrovsk area, Russian shelling in a single day brought about destruction in Nikopol, the pinnacle of the regional administration, Valentyn Reznychenko, mentioned on Telegram.
“Two villages, Myryivska and Pokrovska, have been focused 3 times with heavy artillery fireplace. At the least 20 shells have been fired at peaceable villages. Folks survived,” Reznichenko mentioned.
He added {that a} dozen personal homes and industrial buildings, fuel pipelines, and energy strains have been broken.
Within the southern metropolis of Kherson, two folks have been killed and three have been wounded on account of Russian shelling, the pinnacle of the regional army administration, Yaroslav Yanushevych, mentioned on December 20.
“Russian occupiers shelled the territory of Kherson 42 instances. They have been fired from artillery, antiaircraft weapons, mortars, tanks, and a rocket assault was additionally carried out within the area,” Yanushevych mentioned.
Kherson got here again below Ukrainian management on November 11, however Russian forces that had fled the town have stored pounding it from throughout the Dnieper River.
The most recent shelling got here a day after Ukrainian authorities mentioned Russia focused energy infrastructure and different civilian aims with one more swarm of kamikaze drones in Kyiv and its surrounding districts as a part of an obvious technique to attempt to freeze Ukrainians and demoralize the inhabitants.
Oleskiy Kuleba, the governor of the broader Kyiv area surrounding the capital, mentioned on December 20 that 80 % of the area stays with out electrical energy.
“After the current drone assaults and rocket assaults, the restoration of the facility provide is below method. The complexity and period of restore work will increase with every enemy shelling. Because of large-scale injury to the power infrastructure, [state power grid operator] Ukrenerho resorts to emergency shutdowns of electrical energy,” Kuleba mentioned.
Ukrenerho has mentioned the state of affairs with the grid nationwide was “troublesome” and that the Dnipropetrovsk space and japanese and central areas have been the worst affected.
Zelenskiy on December made a shock go to to Bakhmut — as soon as well-known for its vineyards and cavernous salt mines — now the epicenter of the ditch warfare and heavy artillery exchanges within the east, assembly with members of the army and handing out awards to Ukrainian troops.
“He visited the frontline positions, awarded fighters with medals and beneficial items,” Zelenskiy’s spokesman, Serhiy Nykyforov, instructed state media.
In the meantime, Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Minsk with Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka on December 19 amid hypothesis that Moscow may attempt to push Belarusian forces into attacking Ukraine from the north.
The 2 international locations will proceed holding joint army workouts and can keep army cooperation in different areas, Putin and Lukashenka mentioned afterward.
WATCH: Ukrainian artillery crews have been utilizing up their Soviet-era ammunition provides and now want to seek out extra sources for reloading their classic howitzers.
However Ukrainian International Minister Dmytro Kuleba dismissed the assembly as a political “dance.”
“The Putin-Lukashenka assembly is one other dance they’ve carried out. Based on the out there info, no vital selections have been made at this assembly. No matter occurs, we’re prepared for any situation,” Kuleba mentioned throughout an internet briefing.
Individually, in a uncommon admission that the conflict in Ukraine was not going in keeping with plan, Putin mentioned on December 19 that the state of affairs was “extraordinarily troublesome” in 4 partially occupied areas of Ukraine that Moscow claimed to have annexed final month following unlawful referendums rejected by Ukraine and its Western allies as a sham.
“The state of affairs within the Donetsk and Luhansk folks’s republics, within the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya areas, is extraordinarily troublesome,” Putin mentioned late on December 19.
Putin additionally ordered the Federal Safety Companies (FSB) to extend surveillance of Russian civilians to stifle the “emergence of latest threats.”
