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Ukraine has urged the West to get military hardware into the hands of its troops as quickly as possible, as Russia fired missiles toward Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities just hours after Germany and the US announced their plans to provide modern tanks to the country.
Russia launched 55 missiles at Ukraine on Thursday morning, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Telegram. Shmyhal said the salvo was aimed at the country’s “energy facilities” and some power substations had been hit.
Ukraine’s forces have said they launched a strike on a base and field hospital where Russian troops were being housed with Ukrainian sources saying on Twitter that more than 100 people had been left under the debris.
On Sunday, the Ukrainian military’s Strategic Communications Directorate (AFU Stratcom) reported that its forces had launched a strike on the building of the hospital of a former-machine building plant in the Russian-occupied town of Kadiivka, around 30 miles south of Lysychansk.
Drone footage posted on the State Border Service of Ukraine’s Telegram shows the Ukrainian military winning a firefight against the infamous Wagner Group.
The Wagner Group is a private army with close links to the Kremlin that has been at the forefront of the bitter battle for Soledar in eastern Ukraine. It has conscripted many of its fighters from Russia’s prison system.
The Ukrainian military and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy say claims by Russia’s Vagner group that Russian forces have taken the eastern town of Soledar are false and fighting continues.
“The terrorist state and its propagandists are trying to pretend that part of our town of Soledar…is some sort of a Russian possession,” Zelenskiy said in a video address on January 11.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his armed forces to observe a unilateral 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old war. Kyiv indicated it won’t follow suit.
Putin did not appear to make his cease-fire order conditional on Ukraine’s acceptance, and it wasn’t clear whether hostilities would actually halt on the 1,100-kilometer (684-mile) front line or elsewhere.