Summary
OnAir Post: Winter 2023 News
News
Russian forces attacked cities in eastern and southern Ukraine Tuesday as they try to claim the city of Bakhmut. Russian President Vladimir Putin told state TV he is ready to negotiate some acceptable outcomes with everyone involved, and accused Kyiv of refusing to talk. Ian Lee has more.
KYIV, Dec 20 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy paid a surprise visit on Tuesday to the frontline city of Bakhmut, where he hailed the “superhuman” troops waging a battle that has come to symbolise the grinding brutality of the war in Ukraine.
Zelenskiy’s office released video footage showing the president, dressed in khaki, handing out medals to soldiers inside a ramshackle industrial complex in the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region.
Comments come as Russia pounded Kherson city and Kharkiv, while Ukraine shelled Donetsk in the east.
A Ukrainian general has said Moscow is digging in for a long war and still wants to conquer the whole of Ukraine, as Russian forces pounded two strategic cities while Kyiv’s troops shelled Russian-controlled areas of Donetsk in the east.
“The Kremlin … is seeking to turn the conflict into a prolonged armed confrontation,” a senior Ukrainian officer, Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov, told a news briefing on Thursday.
