Russian forces pressed their offensive in Donetsk with main concentrate on the Bakhmut and Avdiyivka instructions, whereas in search of to recapture misplaced positions within the Lyman space, the Common Employees of the Ukrainian army mentioned on December 20, as Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of its neighbor reached the 300-day mark.
Reside Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine
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Russia’s invasion has been slowed down, with troops having been pressured to make three main retreats since February 24, when the invasion began. The fiercest combating is at the moment in Donetsk, on the Bakhmut-Avdiyivka line.
The Ukrainian army mentioned its air power carried out 22 strikes on Russian positions, whereas its air-defense programs downed two enemy helicopters. The claims couldn’t be independently verified.
Within the central Dnipropetrovsk area, Russian shelling in a single day prompted destruction within the Nikopol space, the top of the regional administration, Valentyn Reznychenko, mentioned on Telegram.
“Two villages, Myryivska and Pokrovska, have been focused thrice with heavy artillery fireplace. At the least 20 shells have been fired at peaceable villages. Individuals survived,” Reznichenko mentioned.
He added {that a} dozen personal homes and industrial buildings, gasoline pipelines, and energy traces have been broken.
Russian shelling additionally focused settlements within the Zaporizhzhya area and the not too long ago liberated metropolis of Kherson, the place a person was killed when a shell hit his automobile, in response to Kherson Metropolis Council spokesman Dmytro Pelenchuk.
Shelling additionally broken the constructing of the regional state administration and one in every of Kherson’s gymnasiums.
The newest 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.
Oleskiy Kuleba, the governor of the broader Kyiv area surrounding the capital, mentioned that infrastructure and personal homes have been broken by the assaults and that two individuals have been wounded.
“The terrorist nation continues its battle towards the civilian inhabitants,” Kuleba mentioned in a put up to Telegram. “We are going to overcome every part.”
Energy grid operator Ukrenerho 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.
Russia has been utilizing cruise missiles and Iranian-built drones to hammer Ukraine’s power infrastructure nationwide as a part of an obvious technique to attempt to freeze Ukrainians and demoralize the inhabitants.
Ukrainian officers have raced to restore broken infrastructure and referred to as for donations from the West, each for turbines and power-grid tools, but additionally for extra superior air-defense programs.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy repeated that plea in a name to Western leaders assembly in Latvia.
“I ask you to extend the opportunity of supplying air-defense programs to our nation, and to assist velocity up the related choices to be taken by our companions,” Zelenskiy mentioned throughout the video name.
WATCH: Ukrainian artillery crews have been utilizing up their Soviet-era ammunition provides and now want to search out extra sources for reloading their classic howitzers.
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 workout routines and can preserve army cooperation in different areas, Putin and Lukashenka mentioned afterward.
Individually, in a uncommon admission that the battle in Ukraine was not going in response to 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 sham.
“The state of affairs within the Donetsk and Luhansk individuals’s republics, within the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya areas, is extraordinarily troublesome,” Putin mentioned late on December 19.
Putin additionally ordered the Federal Safety Providers (FSB) to extend surveillance of Russian civilians to stifle the “emergence of latest threats.”
