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Ukrainian forces are repelling constant attacks on the city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region and are holding their positions in nearby Soledar under very difficult conditions, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday.
In his late-night video, the president added that Bakhmut “is holding on despite everything.”
Ukraine: Bakhmut ‘holds on’ despite Russian attack, Zelenskiy says
Summary
Welcome, if you’re joining us now, to our continuing live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war: Day 320 of the conflict. It’s minutes past 10:00 in Kyiv. My name is Geneva Abdul. Here’s the latest:
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Ukrainian forces are repelling constant attacks on the city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region and holding their positions in nearby Soledar under very difficult conditions, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his evening video address on Sunday. “Bakhmut holds on despite everything,” said the president.
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Russia has claimed to have killed more than 600 Ukrainian soldiers in a “retaliatory attack” in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, but Ukraine’s armed forces rejected the claim. The mayor of the city, near the town of Bakhmut, said there had been no deaths from strikes over the weekend, while a witness told Reuters on Sunday that buildings had been damaged but not destroyed and that there were no obvious signs of casualties. The Russian claim seems suspect for several reasons.
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Zelenskiy denounced what he said was Russia’s failure to honor a 36-hour ceasefire it had declared for Orthodox Christmas by launching attacks on Ukrainian cities.
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Demands for a special tribunal to investigate Russia for a “crime of aggression” against Ukraine have been backed by senior UK politicians across the political divide in a move to show Vladimir Putin and his generals that they are will demand an account.
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The Russian government backed a legislative amendment that would classify maps that dispute the country’s official “territorial integrity” as punishable extremist materials, state news agency Tass reported on Sunday.
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About 50 Ukrainian soldiers who were released from Russian custody on Sunday as part of a prisoner exchange posed for a photo of their freedom.
Updated at 08.05 GMT
How Zelenskiy became Hollywood’s man of the hour
Isobel Koshiw
When Ben Stiller entered the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in June, he hugged the warlord, telling him: “You’re my hero.”
Stiller is one of a number of entertainment stars who made the long trip to Kyiv to meet Zelenskiy, himself a former actor and comedian. A trip that involves an overnight train ride from Poland, as commercial flights, let alone private jets, cannot fly into Ukrainian airspace for security reasons.
Before Stiller came the actor Sean Penn, who has visited three times since the invasion and is making a documentary about the war, in which Zelenskiy will no doubt appear.
Read more here:
Updated at 08.14 GMT
Here are the latest photos coming out of Ukraine:
A man lights a candle at St. George’s Cathedral in Lviv on the second Orthodox day of Christmas, in Lviv, Ukraine, on January 8, 2023. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images A Ukrainian soldier travels in a truck as the war between Russia and Ukraine continues on the front line from Bakhmut to Donetsk. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Participants attend the Festival of Christmas Stars in front of the Taras Shevchenko monument, on the second Orthodox day of Christmas, in Lviv, Ukraine, on January 8, 2023. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Family , friends and colleagues attend the funeral ceremony for a Ukrainian officer who was killed in a battle against Russian troops near the town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. Photo: Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto/REX/ShutterstockA Ukrainian serviceman stands in a front-line trench amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Photograph: Reuters
Updated at 07.42 GMT
Condoleezza Rice and Robert M. Gates rightly call for the US and “its allies to urgently provide Ukraine with a dramatic increase in military supplies and capability … to deter a renewed Russian offensive and to enable Ukraine to push back Russian forces ” https://t.co/lUtLuJ7H7O
— Anders Åslund (@anders_aslund) January 8, 2023
This OpEd was published in the Washington Post over the weekend. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert M Gates write:
We have both dealt with Putin on several occasions, and we are convinced that he believes that time is on his side: that he can wear down the Ukrainians, and that US and European unity and support for Ukraine will eventually erode and break down . Of course, the Russian economy and people will suffer as the war continues, but the Russians have endured much worse.
They argue that the US and its allies need to equip Ukraine enough to push back Russian forces.
Under the current circumstances, any negotiated ceasefire would leave Russian forces in a strong position to resume their invasion whenever they are ready. This is unacceptable
The only way to avoid this scenario is for the United States and its allies to urgently provide Ukraine with a dramatic increase in supplies and military capability, sufficient to deter a renewed Russian offensive and to allow Ukraine to push Russian forces back to the east and south.
Updated at 07.03 GMT
Emma Graham-Harrison
Russia and Belarus have expanded their joint military training exercises in Belarus, the country’s defense TV channel said on Sunday, as concerns grow that Moscow is pressuring its closest ally to join the war in Ukraine
Russia has launched seven missile strikes, 31 air strikes and 73 rocket launcher strikes in the last day
Reuters reporters presented this update…
Ukrainian forces are repelling ongoing Russian attacks on Bakhmut and other towns in the eastern Donbas region, Ukrainian authorities said Monday, after denying Kremlin claims that 600 soldiers were killed in a missile attack.
Russia launched seven missile strikes, 31 airstrikes and 73 salvo rocket launcher strikes last day, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a daily report.
Ukrainian forces repelled attacks on 14 settlements, including Bakhmut, he added.
“Bakhmut is holding on despite everything,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an overnight video on Sunday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during an evening video address Picture: Reuters
“And although most of the city has been destroyed by Russian attacks, our soldiers are repelling constant Russian attempts to advance.”
The nearby town of Soledar was holding on, “although there is still more destruction and things are very difficult,” he added.
Reuters could not independently verify reports from the battlefield.
Zelenskiy made a fresh allegation of what he called Russia’s failure to observe a truce it had proclaimed for Orthodox Christmas with attacks on Ukrainian cities.
“The Russians bombarded Kherson with incendiary ammunition immediately after Christmas,” he said, referring to the southern city abandoned by Russian forces in November.
“Attacks in Kramatorsk and other Donbas cities, on civilian targets and at the same time when Moscow was reporting an alleged ‘silence’ for its army.”
On Sunday, Russia said a missile attack on Kramatorsk, northwest of Bakhmut, had killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers, but a Reuters reporter at the scene found no obvious signs of casualties.
A Reuters team visited two university dormitories that Moscow said had been temporarily housing Ukrainian personnel and had been targeted in retaliation for the New Year attack that killed dozens of Russian soldiers and sparked outcry in Russia.
A woman stands at the scene of a missile attack that took place overnight, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Kramatorsk, Ukraine Picture: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters
But no dormitories in the eastern city of Kramatorsk appeared to have been directly hit or seriously damaged. There were no obvious signs that soldiers had lived there, no sign of bodies or traces of blood.
Serhiy Cherevatyi, a Ukrainian military spokesman in the eastern region, described the claim of mass casualties as an attempt by the Russian defense ministry to show that it had responded forcefully to Ukraine’s recent attacks on Russian soldiers.
“This is an information operation of the Russian defense ministry,” Cherevatyi told Ukrainian channel Suspilne News.
As Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine moves toward the one-year mark, the Russian military is under internal pressure to deliver on the battlefield.
Hawkish voices have sought an escalation of the war effort after setbacks such as the loss of captured territory and high death and injury rates.
Some prominent Russian military bloggers have criticized the Russian defense ministry’s claims.
“Let’s talk about ‘fraud,'” wrote a prominent pro-war military blogger on the Telegram messaging app, which posts under the name Military Informant and has more than half a million subscribers.
“It is not clear to us who, and for what reason, decided that 600 Ukrainian soldiers died inside, all at once, if the building was not hit (even the light remained on).
“Instead of the actual destruction of enemy personnel, which would have been a dignified response, an exclusively media-driven retaliatory operation was invented.”
Kherson Airport in January 2023. Kherson Airport was retaken in early November by the Ukrainian military, but still shows the extensive destruction suffered during the start of the war in February Photo: Edgar Gutiérrez/SOPA Images/ REX/Shutterstock
The militaries of Russia and Ukraine have often exaggerated enemy losses while downplaying their own.
Top Ukrainian military officials said last week about 760 Russian…