Russia’s Defence Ministry has appointed Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov to lead its forces in Ukraine, demoting Sergei Surovikin, whose three months in command were marked by strikes on Ukraine’s power grid and the loss of Kherson city in November.
Russian troops did not adhere to the Orthodox Christmas ceasefire declared by Vladimir Putin, continuing shelling and attempted assaults on Ukrainian positions in Luhansk Oblast, regional military administration head Serhiy Haidai said, as Kyiv called it hypocrisy.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu used his New Year address to demonise Ukraine and declare that Russian victory is as inevitable as the coming of the new year, the Institute for the Study of War says, as Putin delivered his own speech surrounded by soldiers in Rostov.
The threat of a new Russian invasion from Belarus is low, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov told The New York Times, saying a flurry of military activity in the north is meant to persuade Kyiv to divert troops from the combat zone in the south and east.
The Pentagon is expanding its training of Ukrainian forces, planning to instruct about 500 troops a month at the Grafenwoehr training area in Germany in combined arms skills for larger units from January, more than doubling the number trained there, US officials said.
Ukraine’s push to liberate Crimea could prompt Vladimir Putin to resort to nuclear weapons, Western officials fear, while failure to resolve the peninsula’s status could lock Russia and Ukraine into a decade-long conflict, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Vladimir Putin said the threat of nuclear war was growing but insisted Russia had not gone mad and would not use nuclear weapons first, telling his human rights council that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is a deterrent and that the war in Ukraine could be a lengthy process.
Vladimir Putin is setting conditions for a protracted war of conquest in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War says, after he called the invasion a lengthy process, compared himself to Peter the Great and portrayed control of the Sea of Azov as a major achievement.
Russia and Ukraine are using weapons and ammunition at a rate not seen since World War II, straining Western stockpiles as NATO allies search for ways to keep supplying Kyiv, The New York Times reports, warning that the supply of weapons could prove decisive in the war.
Russia has concentrated more than 9,000 troops in Belarus near the Ukrainian border, and about 15,000 Belarusian servicemen are ready to join the war on Russia’s side, partly because of high pay, a senior officer of Ukraine’s General Staff said, assessing the threat as low.
Poland urgently convened its national security committee and considered invoking NATO’s Article 4 after a missile struck the village of Przewodów near the Ukrainian border, killing two people, with initial debris assessments suggesting it could be of Russian origin.
Kherson is returning to the control of the Ukrainian army as Ukrainian units enter the city, while the retreat routes of Russian forces are under Ukrainian fire control, Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence says, urging Russian soldiers left behind to surrender immediately.
