The Russian military operation in Ukraine continues today, Tuesday, as the Russian army is trying to extend full control over several Ukrainian regions, while the Kyiv forces are resisting the Russian bear, With the help of material and military support from the West.
In the latest developments, the Ukrainian General Staff said that Russia launched 77 air and missile attacks on civilian infrastructure within 24 hours, noting that Russia targeted 20 cities and residential complexes in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Before that, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that Minister Sergei Shoigu visited the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, where he thanked the soldiers “who bravely perform tasks in the special military operation area, and presented awards from the state to the soldiers for their dedication and heroism,” according to what the ministry reported on “Telegram”. .
This comes as the British Ministry of Defense said that Russia suffers from the inability to identify Ukrainian military targets.
Meanwhile, the Russian-installed authorities in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region said on Tuesday they controlled Solidar, repeating previous claims about the salt-mining town where heavy fighting took place.
On the ground, sirens sounded to warn of air strikes in several regions of eastern Ukraine, according to the air raid warning map issued by the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation. Sirens sounded to warn of air strikes in the Kyiv-controlled part of the Zaporizhia region.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: The recent attack on the Dnipro shows his country’s urgent need for quick decisions From international partners to provide it with new and advanced weapons.
President Zelensky also called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to make more efforts to return Ukrainians forcibly transferred to Russia by Russian forces. During a meeting with the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation, Bujar Osmani, Zelensky pointed out that no international organization has yet been able to access the places of detention of Ukrainian prisoners in Russia.
The death toll from a Russian strike on a residential building in Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, at the end of the week, rose to 40 people yesterday, in a death toll that is expected to rise and is one of the highest since the start of the war.
The Kremlin denied responsibility for this, accusing the Ukrainian side. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke of a “tragedy” that may have been caused by Ukrainian anti-aircraft fire.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, through his spokeswoman, condemned the deadly Russian missile strike, describing it as a “war crime” and a new example of “suspected violations of the law of war.”
And Monday, 48 hours after the strike, 40 bodies were recovered, according to emergency services, while the number of wounded reached 75. However, the fate of 29 people is still unknown as rescue operations continue to try to find survivors under the rubble.
Cranes were working on Monday to facilitate rescue workers’ access to the inaccessible flats, or to lift blocks of concrete.
In an interview with CNN, the Ukrainian first lady, Olena Zelenska, confirmed that the Russians were unable to break the spirit of resistance among the Ukrainians. “Almost a year has passed, and we can hold out for a longer period,” she said, noting that “children in the country can now distinguish between the sound of a missile, a drone and anti-aircraft defense systems.”
Faced with the barrage of missiles and the Russian threat to launch a new attack, the Westerners intensified their military aid to Ukraine.
A meeting on Western arms shipments to Kyiv is scheduled for January 20 at the US base Ramstein in Germany.
Thanks to growing military and financial aid, Ukrainian forces pushed back the Russian army and inflicted some defeats on it in the spring and fall.
And Kyiv announced that it needed heavy tanks, light armor, long-range missile systems and anti-aircraft defense systems to restore all the territories occupied by Moscow in eastern and southern Ukraine.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Ukrainian soldiers arrived Sunday at a military base in Oklahoma (south-central United States) to receive the necessary training on the use of the “Patriot” air defense system, which Washington will hand over to Kiev.