Russian forces shelled dozens of towns in Ukraine on Christmas Day as Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was open to negotiations, a stance Washington has dismissed as a stance because of continued Russian attacks.
Russia launched more than 10 rocket attacks on the Kupiansk district in the Kharkiv region on Sunday, shelling more than 25 towns along the Kupiansk-Lyman front line and in Zaporizhzhia hitting nearly 20 towns, the high command said. Ukrainian military.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, which Moscow calls a “special operation,” has sparked the deadliest European conflict since World War II and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Despite Putin’s latest offer to negotiate, there is no end in sight to the 10-month conflict.
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“We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved on acceptable solutions, but that depends on them, it is not us who refuse to negotiate, it is them,” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
An aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Putin needed to come back to reality and acknowledge that it was Russia that did not want talks.
“Russia single-handedly attacked Ukraine and is killing citizens,” the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, tweeted. “Russia does not want negotiations, but tries to avoid responsibility.”
Russian attacks on power plants have left millions without power, and Zelenskyy said Moscow will try to make the final days of 2022 dark and difficult.
“Russia has lost everything it could this year… I know the darkness won’t stop us from leading the occupiers to new defeats. But we have to be ready for any scenario,” he said in a video evening address on Christmas Day.
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Ukraine traditionally does not celebrate Christmas on December 25, but on January 7, just like Russia. However, this year some Orthodox Ukrainians decided to celebrate the holiday on December 25 and Ukrainian officials, starting with Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian Prime Minister, issued Christmas wishes on Sunday.
The Kremlin says it will fight until it achieves all its territorial goals, while Kyiv says it will not rest until all Russian soldiers are driven out of the country.
Asked if the geopolitical conflict with the West was approaching a dangerous level, Putin said on Sunday: “I don’t think it’s that dangerous.”
Kyiv and the West say Putin has no justification for what they present as an imperial-style war of occupation.
Belarus missiles
Russian-supplied Iskander tactical missile systems, which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and S-400 air defense systems have been deployed in Belarus and are prepared to perform their intended tasks, a senior Ministry of Defense official said on Sunday. Defense of Belarus.
“Our servicemen, crews have fully completed their training at the joint combat training centers of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus,” Leonid Kasinsky, head of the ministry’s Main Ideological Directorate, said in a posted video. in the Telegram messaging application.
“These types of weapons (Iskander and S-400 systems) are on combat duty today and are fully prepared to perform tasks for their intended purpose,” Kasinsky added.
It is unclear how many of the Iskander systems have been deployed in Belarus after Putin said in June that Moscow would supply Minsk with them and air defense systems.
The news follows Putin’s visit to Minsk on December 19 amid fears in Kyiv that he would pressure Belarus to join a new ground offensive and open a new front in its faltering invasion.
Russian forces used Belarus as a launching pad for their failed attack on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in February, and there has been increasing Russian and Belarusian military activity in recent months.
The Iskander-M, a mobile guided missile system codenamed “SS-26 Stone” by NATO, replaced the Soviet-era “Scud.” Guided missiles have a range of up to 500 km (300 miles) and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.
That range reaches deep into Belarus’s neighbors: Ukraine and NATO member Poland, which has highly strained relations with Minsk.
The S-400 system is a Russian mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM) interception system capable of engaging aircraft, UAVs, cruise missiles and has terminal ballistic missile defense capability.
Explosions were heard at Russia’s Engels airbase, hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the Ukrainian front lines, Ukrainian and Russian media reported on Monday.
There was no immediate official confirmation and Reuters he was unable to independently verify the reports.
The airbase, near the city of Saratov, some 730 km (450 miles) southeast of Moscow, was attacked on December 5 in what Russia said were Ukrainian drone strikes on two Russian airbases that day. . The attacks dealt a major blow to Moscow’s reputation and raised questions about why its defenses failed, analysts said.
Ukraine has never publicly claimed responsibility for the attacks inside Russia, but has nonetheless said that such incidents are “karma” for the invasion of Russia.
