Russia attacks in east Ukraine
Russian forces are pressing forward with air and ground attacks on several settlements in eastern Ukraine, officials said yesterday, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated seizing territory during the nine-month war.
Near the city of Lysychansk, Russia deployed more troops to try to capture the village of Bilohorivka, Ukraine's governor of the region said, while a commander in another heavily fought-over settlement described an intensifying Russian air offensive.
"They are bringing in more and more reserves," around Bilohorivka to try to capture the village, Luhansk governor Serhiy Haiday told Ukrainian television. "There are constant attacks."
In the settlement of Bakhmut and other parts of the Donetsk region that neighbours Luhansk, the assault killed nine civilians, the regional governor said. Ukrainian forces countered with barrages from rocket launchers, Reuters witnessed.
Fighting was underway along the entire line of demarcation in Donetsk, with the frontline town of Avdiivka shelled by Russian tanks yesterday morning, said Tatiana Ignatchenko, a spokeswoman for the Donetsk regional administration.
Putin made clear on Wednesday that expanding Russia's borders was a key goal of the war.
He said Russia had already achieved a "significant result" with the acquisition of "new territories" in Ukraine - a reference to the annexation of four partly occupied regions in September that Kyiv and most members of the United Nations condemned as illegal.
Warning that the war could be lengthy, Putin said Russia had made the Sea of Azov its "internal sea", now bounded by Russia and Russian-controlled territory in southern Ukraine including Crimea.
He said that had been an aspiration of Peter the Great - the 17th- and 18th-century warrior tsar to whom he has compared himself in the past.
At an awards ceremony in the Kremlin yesterday, Putin vowed to continue attacking Ukrainian energy systems despite global criticism of strikes that have left millions without electricity and water at the start of winter.
In Crimea, Russian naval forces shot down a Ukrainian drone over the Black Sea, said the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, an important port and the largest city in the peninsula.
Earlier this week, twin strikes on air bases deep inside Russian territory dealt Moscow a major reputational blow and raised questions about why its defences failed, as attention turned to the use of drones in the war between neighbours.
Meanwhile, Moscow confirmed that it had exchanged US basketball star Brittney Griner, who had been jailed in Russia, for notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout, who was serving a 25-year sentence in the United States.
Bout was sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in a US jail after he was accused of arming rebels in some of the world's bloodiest conflicts, reports AFP.
Griner, 32, was arrested shortly before Russia's February offensive in Ukraine at a Moscow airport for possessing vape cartridges with cannabis oil.
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