KYIV, Ukraine (AP) December,22 — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sounded another defiant note on his return to his nation’s capital Friday following his wartime visit to the United States, saying his forces are “working toward victory” even as Russia warned that there would be no end to the war until it achieved its military aims.
He earlier thanked the Netherlands for pledging up to 2.5 billion euros ($2.65 billion) for 2023, to help pay for military equipment and rebuild critical infrastructure.
Zelenksyy’s return comes amid relentless Russian artillery, rocket and mortar fire as well as airstrikes on the eastern and southern fronts and elsewhere in Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the war would end at the negotiating table once the “special military operation“ achieves “the goals that the Russian Federation has set,” adding that “a significant headway has been made on demilitarization of Ukraine.”
At least six civilians were killed and 18 others were wounded in Russian attacks on eight regions in Ukraine’s south and east in the past 24 hours, according to Ukrainian officials.
In a regular Telegram update, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said Russian missiles destroyed a boarding school in the the eastern city of Kramatorsk, home of the Ukrainian army’s local headquarters. The Ukrainian military said Russian forces had fired multiple rocket launchers “more than 70 times” over Ukrainian territory overnight as heavy fighting escalated around the town of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff said the front lines between Bakhmut and Raiman in the neighboring Luhansk region and between Luhansk and Kharkov regions bore the brunt of the Russian attack, but did not specify to what extent.
In the Kherson area, in the last 24 hours he has been hit by more than 61 Russian rocket, artillery and mortar attacks. Kherson Regional Governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said in a telegram that Russian forces had attacked from dug positions on the right bank of the Dnieper, attacking educational institutions, apartment buildings and private homes. Tymoshenko said another person was killed on Friday due to renewed Russian shelling in the city of Kherson.
In the eastern regions of Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk, Ukrainian forces said Russia had launched six missile attacks and an equal number of airstrikes against civilian targets, while Ukrainian forces attacked 19 settlements to the north and east. Repelled a Russian ground attack on or near the ground.
A district hospital in the northeastern city of Volhansk in the Kharkov region was also hit by Russian shelling overnight, injuring five people. Syniehubov posted on his Telegram that all four men and his one woman are in “moderate condition.”
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military said several explosions set off a fire late Thursday at a factory building housing Russian troops in the occupied town of Tokmak in the southern Zaporizhia region. The Ukrainian military’s strategic communications centre did not immediately report casualties or the person behind the explosion.
According to Russian and Ukrainian news reports, the report came a day after the Russian-appointed mayor of Lyubimivka village in the neighbouring Kherson region was killed in a car bomb. Ukrainian guerrillas have been operating behind Russian front lines in occupied southern and eastern Ukraine for months, targeting Kremlin-appointed officials, institutions, and critical infrastructures such as roads and bridges.
Separately, Russian President Vladimir Putin told arms industry officials on Friday that the country’s soldiers would be provided with “all the necessary weapons, equipment, ammunition and materiel” and that weapons designers and engineers from the war would be asked to upgrade the weapon system “in view of the combat experience” of Ukraine.
