This handout photograph taken and released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on November 30, 2023 shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (C-L) and Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi (C-R) visiting of Ukraine’s army command post in Kupiansk, Kharkiv region. (Photo by Handout / UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE / AFP)
Published December 1, 2023
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said defences must be quickly beefed up across the front line, after meeting commanders in some of the main pressure points in the south and east.
“In all major sectors where reinforcement is needed, [we must] speed up building of structures,” he said in his nightly address.
Russian forces are trying to encircle the eastern town of Avdiivka.
And they are targeting the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Overnight Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 18 out of 25 Russian drones and one of two cruise missiles.
With temperatures falling below freezing and Ukraine cloaked with snow, President Zelensky has said “winter as a whole is a new phase of war”.
The Ukrainian leader said “maximum attention” would be paid to eastern towns coming under fire in the Donetsk region as well as a key defensive line in the north-east between Kupyansk and Lyman.
He also included the region around the capital Kyiv where fortifications would be bolstered.
President Zelensky’s emphasis on strengthening defensive lines may lend weight to fears of an increasingly “frozen” conflict, despite some continued fierce fighting.
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SOURCE: www.bbc.com
RELATED: Ukraine Is Digging In as Russia Renews Its Offensive, Zelensky Says
The shift in strategy comes as the Kremlin sends wave after wave of infantry in “meat assaults” at the Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka and shoots off record numbers of kamikaze drones at Kyiv.
Published December 1, 2023
As Russia ramps up its attacks, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Kyiv is focusing on improving its fortifications in a strategy shift from counteroffensive to defensive.
Kyiv is changing its approach to the protection of all areas of the front and the country’s border and is analyzing and taking stock of the war’s progress so far, a source from the President’s Office told Kyiv Post Friday.
The focus of many of the renewed Russian attacks over the past few weeks has been on the city of Avdiivka, in the Donetskregion.
Despite significant troop losses – approaching those experienced by the Russian Empire over the course of the First World War – the Kremlin has been throwing wave after wave of infantry in so-called “meat assaults.”
The war-torn city is not the only point of renewed Russian assaults in the Donetsk region. The destroyed city of Marinka, to the southwest of Donetsk city, is also seeing increased Russian attacks.
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SOURCE: www.kyivpost.com
RELATED: Ukraine says it is repelling Russian attacks across six fronts as Zelensky orders more fortifications
Russia is still actively pushing forwards with ground attacks, sometimes using armoured vehicles, despite deteriorating weather conditions
Ukrainian crew members drive a German Gepard anti-aircraft-gun tank that is used to target Russian launched drones in the outskirts of Kyiv (AFP via Getty Images)
Published December 1, 2023
Missile attacks and ground clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces surged on Thursday, according to the Ukrainian military, as Russian troops launched offensives but failed to move forward on as many as six fronts.
A total of 73 combat skirmishes took place across the war’s frontline in the past 24 hours, an update from Ukraine’s General Staff of the Armed Forces on Thursday read, a day after Russia launched more than 100 attacks to recapture its lost positions in eastern Ukraine’s Robotyne.
These included 43 airstrikes and 34 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems. Russian forces also used seven Iranian Shahed drones to target Ukrainian personnel, weapons and military equipment.
Russian troops made dozens of failed attacks on Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Lyman, Kupiansk, Marinka, Zaporizhzhia and other hotspots along the 1000km (600 miles) long front line, according to the update.
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SOURCE: www.independent.co.uk
