Search continues for survivors of wave of missile strikes on Friday as Putin targets energy infrastructure
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The frame of a baby pulled from the rubble following a wave of fatal airstrikes in Ukraine on Friday.
Emergency groups continue to search for survivors after Russian missiles destroyed an apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.
According to Ukrainian authorities, the missile was one of 16 that broke through air defenses in the latest Russian attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
The mayor of Kyiv announced today that his city’s metro formula is back in operation and citizens have recovered the water.
Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said that while heating has been restored in part of the city and electritown has been restored to two-thirds, emergency blackouts continue due to the huge electritown deficit.
Four other people were killed in Russia’s strikes that introduced more than 70 missiles against key energy infrastructure in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his late-night speech that Vladimir Putin had the means to order several waves of attacks to empty the country’s electrical system.
Emergency crews pulled the body of a baby from the rubble before dawn in search of survivors of a Russian missile attack that ripped through an apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.
The missile, one of 16 missiles the Ukrainian government says broke through air defenses among 76 missiles fired Friday in the latest Russian attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, as part of Moscow’s strategy to leave Ukrainian civilians and foot soldiers in the dark and bloodless this winter.
Governor Valentyn Reznichenko of the Dnipropetrovsk region, where Kryvyi Rih is located, wrote on the social media app Telegram that “rescuers recovered the body of a one-and-a-half-year-old child from the rubble of a space destroyed by a Russian rocket.
A total of four other people were killed in the attack and thirteen wounded, adding four children, the government said.
The patients were “a 64-year-old woman and a young circle of relatives with a grandson,” he wrote.
Reznichenko said attacks by Russian forces continued overnight, damaging lines of force and houses in the villages of Nikopol, Marhanets and Chervonohryhorivka, which lie across the Dnieper from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Firefighters from Ukraine’s State Emergency Service clear rubble from the construction destroyed by a Russian attack in Kryvyi Rih.
Hello, welcome to our war in Ukraine on Friday, December 16.
Russian forces plan to launch a new offensive in January, as well as a time to capture Kyiv, Ukrainian defense officials said in presenting evidence.
The attacks may come as early as January, Ukrainian General Valery Zaluzhniy and General Oleksandr Syrskiy said yesterday.
“The Russians are about 200,000 new soldiers. I have no doubt that they will visit Kyiv again,” Zaluzhniy told The Economist magazine.
The army’s push would likely have come from the eastern Donbass region, where Russia has already defeated Ukraine, the south or neighboring Belarus, as well as a ground attack on Kyiv, which Moscow failed to capture at the start of the invasion, officials said.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said the country sees increasing evidence that Russia is making plans for a new large-scale offensive.
That could not be until February, he said, and raised the likelihood that some of the 300,000 enlisted infantrymen will enter the battlefield of the war after completing their training.
“The momentary component of the mobilization, around 150,000. . . You need a minimum of 3 months to prepare. That means they’re looking to launch the next wave of the offensive likely in February, like last year. That’s their plan,” Reznikov said.
Earlier this week, Moscow rejected Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for a Christmas truce, dragging Ukraine into its month of war.
The European Union has approved a new package of sanctions, the ninth since the start of the war in Ukraine, aimed at increasing pressure on Russia.
This tranche of sanctions designates about two hundred more people and prohibits investments in the Russian mining industry, among other measures.
In addition, the EU will invest €18 billion in Ukraine next year.
“Our non-unusual determination for Ukraine in political, financial, military and humanitarian matters for as long as it is mandatory remains unwavering,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after talks between the 27 EU national leaders in Brussels.
The package was approved after days of deliberations at an assembly of ambassadors from the 27-nation bloc.
The Czech Republic, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, said the package will be presented through a written procedure on Friday. The details will then be in the block’s legal files.
Read the full story here:
The European Union has a new package of sanctions aimed at widening tension against Russia over its war in Ukraine
Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces shelled Kherson more than 16 times as invading forces continued their “brutal large-scale offensive” in the eastern Donbass region.
The bombing killed two other people in downtown Kherson, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy chief of the president’s office. The attack also destroyed the city’s force network, authorities said.
On the front line to the east, Russia basically targeted the eastern cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, Ukrainian army personnel said. Russia is also seeking its presence in the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine, the senior army official said.
The United States is trying to expand its territory for Ukraine amid the ongoing Russian invasion, as officials in Kyiv provide evidence that Moscow will visit the Ukrainian capital in early 2023, Politico reported, citing six other people familiar with the developments.
Biden’s management is contemplating sending other weapons, such as joint direct attack munition kits, that turn unguided aerial munitions into smart bombs, small-diameter ground-launched bombs that will help Ukraine particularly expand its strike range, two U. S. officials and some other user familiar with the talks. he told me.
Experts have predicted a slow showdown in Ukraine’s winter battle, with Russia extending the offensive with little gain by deploying reservists.
Russian forces fired four missiles, 23 airstrikes and SARC strikes against Ukraine in the past 24 hours, Ukraine’s General Staff said today.
In exchange, at least 22 movements were fired in areas of concentration of military personnel, weapons and apparatus through the Ukrainian air force, as well as 3 movements in Russian positions of anti-aircraft missile systems, the smartest military bureau said.
Two Orlan-10 drones were shot down by Ukrainian forces.
Ukrainian shelling killed at least 8 other people and wounded 23 others in the village of Lantrativka in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region this morning, Russian news agency TASS reported.
More main points about the attack are expected.
Russia will double the number of launches of its intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2023 to 8 from 4 in 2022, the commander of Moscow’s strategic rocket forces said today.
The 8 control flights will be scheduled from two release sites: one near Murmansk in the north and the other near Volgograd in the south, Sergei Karakayev told the Krasnaya Zvezda military newspaper.
He added that 4 launches had taken position this year and “confirmed the maximum reliability of missile systems. “
Russian forces have continued to make abundant efforts to build giant defensive positions along the front line, the British Ministry of Defense said today, recalling recent weeks.
“They gave priority to the northern sector around the city of Svatove,” the ministry said.
He added: “Russian structures adhere to classic army entrenchment plans, largely unchanged since World War II. Such structures are most likely vulnerable to fashionable oblique precision attacks.
“The structure of the main defensive lines is another representation of Russia’s return to positional warfare that has been largely abandoned by the most modern Western armies in recent decades,” the Defense Ministry said.
Firefighters from Ukraine’s State Emergency Service clear rubble from the construction destroyed by a Russian attack in Kryvyi Rih.
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