Russia launched 19 attack drones at Ukraine over Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, as well as six missiles, with Ukrainian air defences destroying 13 of the drones and one missile, the Ukrainian air force said.
Unconfirmed reports on Russian social media channels accompanied by photos and video claimed 65 Russian soldiers were killed by a Ukrainian missile strike at Trudivske, in Volnovakha district of Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Tuesday. Reports said they had been ordered to line up awaiting a commanding officer, leaving them vulnerable to attack, on what was said to be a training ground. Footage showed many bodies lying in a churned-up field. More were injured, reports said.
Eleven Ukrainian children who had been taken away by Russia crossed the border from Belarus back into Ukraine on Tuesday evening. At a humanitarian crossing on the Belarus border, the children hugged waiting family members. Oleksandr, 16, one of the oldest returned, said: “My new life is starting,” describing his “joy and slight nerves”. The children had been received by Qatar’s embassy in Moscow on Monday under a scheme mediated by the Qataris.
Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, has visited troops in Ukraine, according to Russian state media. Gerasimov was shown awarding medals to Russian troops involved in taking Avdiivka and he was given a report by the commander in charge of the Russian assault on Avdiivka, Col Gen Andrei Mordvichev, state media said.
Russia’s FSB security services said it had arrested a US-Russian woman suspected of treason for raising funds for the Ukrainian army. The FSB in the central Urals city of Ekaterinburg said it the 33-year-old woman was a resident of Los Angeles with dual citizenship.
Ukraine’s military on Tuesday dismissed claims by Russia of full control over the village of Krynky on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river in the southern Kherson region. Reports of the situation varied, with no reliable confirmation. Unverified video showed troops planting a Russian flag and then appearing to retreat. Ukrainian forces crossed the Dnipro last November and captured districts on the eastern bank including Krynky. On Tuesday, the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, told the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in a televised meeting that Russian forces had reclaimed Krynky.
Following the fall of Avdiivka, the US-based Institute for the Study of War said “Russian actors” had conducted a cyberoperation “aimed at generating panic in the Ukrainian information space and weakening Ukrainian morale”. Putin said Russian troops should develop their success on the battlefield in Ukraine after the fall of Avdiivka.
Joe Biden has stressed that $61bn in US aid for Ukraine will mostly be spent in the United States making munitions and equipment for the Ukrainians. “While this bill sends military equipment to Ukraine,” Biden said on Tuesday, “it spends the money right here in the United States of America in places like Arizona, where the Patriot missiles are built; and Alabama, where the Javelin missiles are built; and Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas, where artillery shells are made.”
Protests from Polish farmers on Tuesday marked an escalation from previous demonstrations, with a near-total blockade of all Ukrainian border crossings and disruption at ports and on roads nationwide.
Ukraine said on Tuesday it was fighting off dozens of Russian attacks – a few days before the two-year anniversary of the war, and as Ukraine marked 10 years since dozens of protesters were shot by pro-Putin government forces in Kyiv during Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity”. “It has been 10 years since the attempts to destroy us and our independence,” said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “But we stood firm 10 years ago and continue to do so today.”
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian army general staff said there had been “81 combat clashes” over the past 24 hours, adding that Russian forces had carried out 87 air strikes. Five civilians died in a drone strike on a village near the Russian border in Ukraine’s Sumy region, the army said.
