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Oleksandra Matviichuk, from the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties – one of three recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize – says Russia uses a ‘tactic of terror against people in the occupied territories’, referring to the war in Ukraine.
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President Zelenskyy has said that Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut where the most active fighting in Ukraine is taking place.
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Ukraine’s military also reports attacks in other provinces: Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast, central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia in the southeast and Kherson in the south.
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The United States has announced a security package worth $275m for Ukraine. It will provide Kyiv with new capabilities to boost its air defences and defensive equipment.
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The Russian-installed administration of the Kherson region says it has begun changing locally circulated Ukrainian hryvnia currency into Russian roubles, with the former ending circulation on January 1.
RELATED: Moscow has turned entire city of Bakhmut to ‘burnt ruins’, says Zelenskiy
Ukraine’s president says Russian shelling has ‘actually destroyed’ the city
City of Bakhmut now just ‘burnt ruins’, says Zelenskiy
Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, while Ukraine’s military reported missile, rocket and airstrikes in multiple parts of the country.
The latest battles of Russia’s nine-and-a-half-month war in Ukraine have centred on four provinces that Russian president Vladimir Putin illegally claimed to have annexed in late September, the Associated Press reported.
The fighting indicates Moscow’s struggle to establish control of the regions and Ukraine’s determination to reclaim them. Zelenskiy said the situation “remains very difficult” in several frontline cities in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
Together, the provinces make up the Donbas, an expansive industrial region bordering Russia that Putin identified as a focus from the war’s outset, where Moscow-backed separatists have fought since 2014.
“Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. For a long time, there is no living place left on the land of these areas that have not been damaged by shells and fire,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
“The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbas city that the Russian army turned into burned ruins.”
He did not specify what he meant by “destroyed”, and some buildings remained standing and residents were seen in city streets.
RELATED: Putin says Russia could adopt preemptive strike concept
President Vladimir Putin on Friday said Russia could amend its military doctrine by introducing the possibility of a preemptive strike to disarm an enemy, in an apparent reference to a nuclear attack.
He spoke in response to a question from a reporter who asked him to clarify his statement from earlier this week on the use of nuclear weapons.
Speaking to reporters just days after warning that the risk of nuclear war was rising but Russia would not strike first, Putin said Moscow was considering whether to adopt what he called Washington’s concept of a pre-emptive strike.
“First of all, the United States has the concept of a preemptive strike. Second, it is developing a disarming strike system,” Putin told reporters in Kyrgyzstan.
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By: Miss Cherry May Timbol – Independent Reporter
