Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the situation at the front in the Donetsk region was “difficult and painful” and required it to be tackled with all the “strength and concentration” of the state, Reuters reported.
“First of all, about the situation at the front. Bakhmut, Kremennaya and other regions of Donbass require maximum strength and concentration,” Zelensky said in his daily video speech.
“The situation is difficult and painful. The occupiers are deploying all the resources at their disposal and have considerable resources at their disposal to make some progress,” the Ukrainian president said.
Zelensky added that power outages continue and nearly 9 million people in Ukraine are currently without electricity.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko has warned that Russia could use missiles, including cruise missiles, for a large-scale attack on New Year’s Eve, DPA reported.
“The Russians have not given up on attacks on our energy grid,” the minister told Ukrainian television, adding: “And as long as they carry out attacks on certain dates, the new year could be one of those dates where they will try to harm our energy grid”.
Work is currently underway to quickly restore Ukraine’s power grid to allow Ukrainians to welcome the new year in peace, but that will only be possible if no further Russian air strikes follow, the minister said.
DPA: Russian military says they are successfully attacking the front line in Ukraine
The Russian military said today it had inflicted significant casualties on the Ukrainian military during artillery battles on the front line stretching from Kherson in the south to Kharkiv in the northeast, the DPA reported.
For example, some 60 Ukrainian soldiers “were killed” in battles around Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, state news agency TASS said, citing Moscow’s defense ministry. In the nearby Luhansk region, about 30 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in an artillery attack, the ministry also announced.
Kiev has so far not commented on these claims, and reports from both sides of the progress of the fighting often cannot be confirmed by independent sources, DPA noted.
Earlier, the Russian internal security service FSS reported that four Ukrainian saboteurs were killed on the Russian-Ukrainian border in the Bryansk region. They are said to have transported improvised explosive devices, foreign weapons and ammunition, as well as communications and navigation equipment to carry out terrorist attacks on Russian soil.
Ukrainian media reported that the men were performing their military duties as part of the fight against the Russian invasion.
A soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed the deaths of his comrades on Telegram, where their names and photos were also published. However, he believes the men were killed by a landmine explosion. According to FSS data, they died on Sunday.
