In Kharkiv, Governor Oleh Synehubov reported a fatality on Telegram. “Attention residents of Kharkiv and region: stay in shelters. Occupiers strike again!” he also wrote. Advisor to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy Mykhailo Podoliak, on Saturday reported Russian shelling along the entire front. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office also said two civilians were killed and 13 others were wounded by Russian shelling in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, on Friday. According to the local occupation administration, two thermal power plants in the region were also damaged by Ukrainian bombing.
Eyewitnesses also reported constant artillery shelling on the town of Chasiv Yar. The Ukrainian General Staff reported a Russian rocket attack, and within 24 hours the Russian side also fired 20 shells from multiple rocket launchers.
Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers presumed dead
According to Russian sources, more than 600 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in a rocket attack. The Defense Ministry in Moscow said it was an attack on two buildings in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine. More than 700 Ukrainian soldiers were housed in one of the buildings and more than 600 in the other. The Ukrainian side did not comment on this information. However, the mayor of Kramatorsk had previously stated that no one was killed in an attack on several buildings in the city.
Portal: No evidence of big losses
According to eyewitnesses from the Portal news agency, there was no indication of heavy Ukrainian losses at the scene. There was damage but there were no destroyed buildings or signs of death, a Portal news agency official said.
Portal reporters were able to inspect two dormitories which, according to Russian sources, were temporarily occupied by Ukrainian soldiers overnight. None appeared to have been hit directly or seriously damaged.
There were no signs at the site that soldiers had lived there, and none that indicated dead bodies. There were also no traces of blood. One dorm’s windows were shattered and a large crater was visible in the backyard. The other Russian-named building was completely intact. But there was a crater about 50 meters away near some garages.
incendiary ammunition reports
A Kherson district was also affected. “They used incendiary ammunition for the attack,” said the military governor of the region, Yaroslav Yanushevich, on his Telegram channel. The Geneva Convention prohibits the use of incendiary ammunition against civilian objects.
Putin announced the temporary ceasefire on Thursday and backed it up with the Christmas festival that many Orthodox Christians celebrated on January 7. Ukraine, however, rejected this as a propaganda gesture and continued its reconquest attempts. There can be no peace as long as Russian troops occupy Ukrainian territory, sources in Kyiv say.
Ukraine: Air alert and explosions in Kharkiv
The ceasefire announced by Russia expired on Sunday night. The result was an airborne warning and reports of explosions in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
Russia: Only attacks returned
On Saturday night, Zelenskyy said in his video diary that “the world saw once again today how any word that comes from any level in Moscow is wrong.” The Russians “said something about an alleged ceasefire. But in reality, Bakhmut and other Ukrainian positions were again hit by Russian volleys.”
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War in Ukraine: what lies ahead in 2023?
Russia had also previously acknowledged disrespecting the self-imposed ceasefire. However, only Ukrainian strikes were responded to, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. “All Ukrainian army positions from which the shelling was fired were crushed by Russian forces who returned fire,” Konashenkov said.
Focus on Bachmut
Many international observers also doubted from the start that the Russian guns would really remain silent. The small town of Bakhmut has been the focus of fighting for weeks. During the siege, the Wagner mercenary group made a name for itself. Its founder, Yevgeny Prigoschin, justified the move into the small town with the existing tunnel systems, in which tanks can also be hidden. “The icing on the cake is the Soledar and Bakhmut mining system, which is actually a network of underground cities,” Prigozhin told Telegram on Saturday. “It can not only accommodate a large group of people at a depth of 80 to 100 meters, but tanks and armored vehicles can also move in it.”
Prigozhin spoke out after suspicions arose that there was pressure to capture Bakhmut and its salt and gypsum mines for commercial reasons. According to military experts, the great military effort involved in the siege of the city has nothing to do with its comparatively low strategic importance.
The area around the town of Kreminna in the Luhansk region remains a hotly contested area, according to the British MoD’s daily briefing on Saturday. “For the past three weeks, the fighting around Kreminna has been concentrated in the heavily forested area to the west of the city.” As the forests provide some privacy from aerial observation, even in winter, it is likely that both sides would have difficulty withstanding accurately fired artillery fire. .
“Largest minefield in the world”
According to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Schmyhal, the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine has created a minefield of 250,000 square kilometers in his country. “Currently it is the biggest minefield in the world,” Schmyhal said in an interview with South Korean Yonhap news agency published on Saturday. According to Schmyhal, the mined area corresponds to more than 40% of the entire land area of Ukraine. “This not only makes it difficult for people to travel, but also causes major disruption to agriculture, which is one of our main industries,” said the prime minister.