Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 308 of the invasion

 

Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 308 of the invasion

 

Putin bans supply of oil to countries participating in price cap; heavy fighting continues in southern and eastern Ukraine

 

Martin Belam and Léonie Chao-Fong

Wed 28 Dec 2022 09.02 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/28/russia-ukraine-war-at-a-glance-what-we-know-on-day-308-of-the-invasion

 

• Russian forces have stepped up mortar and artillery attacks on Kherson city in southern Ukraine, forcing hundreds of civilians to flee the recently liberated city amid relentless shelling by Moscow’s troops. Russian troops fired 33 rockets at civilian targets – including a maternity wing of a hospital – in a series of aerial and artillery bombardments in Kherson over the course of 24 hours, Ukraine’s armed forces said this morning.
• The Kremlin has dismissed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s 10-point peace plan, and insisted any proposals to end the conflict in Ukraine must take into account what it calls “today’s realities” of four Ukrainian regions Moscow has unilaterally declared part of Russia. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov suggested Ukraine would need to accept the annexations to get peace.
• Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has signed a decree that bans the supply of oil and oil products to nations participating in an imposed cap from 1 February 2023 for five months. The Group of Seven major powers, the European Union and Australia agreed this month to a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil effective from 5 December.
• French armed forces minister, Sébastien Lecornu, arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday morning. It is his first visit to Ukraine since being appointed in May 2022. The trip comes on the back of a promise by France’s president Emmanuel Macron to increase his nation’s military support for Ukraine.
• Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, has struck a cautious tone on whether his country would supply Ukraine with air defence systems. Speaking in an interview with Il Messaggero newspaper, Crosetto said the air defence systems, which Ukraine’s president has requested, would be provided to Kyiv “if possible”.
• Ukraine has bought 1,400 drones, mostly for reconnaissance, and plans to develop combat models that can attack the exploding drones Russia has used during its invasion, according to the Ukrainian government minister in charge of technology.
• The European Commission says it is donating €14m (£12.3m) to buy and transport school buses for Ukraine, as well as an additional 120 buses “to bring Ukrainian children safely to school”. About 5.7 million school-age children in Ukraine have been affected by Russia’s war, which has also led to thousands of schools and educational facilities damaged or destroyed, the Commission said.
• Ukrainian forces appear to have edged closer to recapturing the key-Russian controlled city of Kreminna in Luhansk province. The regional governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said fighters in part of the city controlled by Russian command were forced to retreat to Rubizhne, a town a few miles to the south-east, as a result of Ukrainian military pressure.
• Heavy fighting continues in the east and south of the country amid no sign of imminent peace talks. Recapturing Kreminna and nearby Svatove could open the way for Kyiv to launch an offensive on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, two cities Ukraine lost in the summer. The Guardian could not independently confirm the battlefield developments.
• Authorities in the city of Odesa have begun dismantling a monument to Catherine the Great, the Russian empress who founded the city in the late 18th century.
• The state-owned Russian news agency Tass has reported that Russian authorities claim, without presenting evidence, to have thwarted a Ukrainian-sponsored terrorist attack in Chegem in the Kabardino-Balkarian republic, which is near Russia’s border with Georgia.
• Russian troops continued to focus their efforts on capturing the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, Britain’s defence ministry said in its daily military briefing on Tuesday.
• Aid raid alerts were issued across Ukraine, including Kyiv, on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. There were no immediate reports of attacks.
• The mother of an Australian man from Victoria killed fighting in Ukraine has remembered her son as a defender of freedom who was driven by empathy. The Australian department of foreign affairs and trade confirmed on Wednesday that Sage O’Donnell from Melbourne had died.
• Russia’s military has moved many of its warplanes from Engels airbase to other locations after strikes on the crucial airbase, according to a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force. Three Russian servicemen were killed on Monday after a Ukrainian drone attack on the airbase, which lies deep inside Russian territory, according to Russia’s defence ministry.
• Putin’s comments that he was “ready to negotiate with all parties” involved in the conflict in Ukraine are part of a deliberate information campaign aimed at misleading the west into making concessions, according to analysts. The US thinktank Institute for the Study of War said the Russian president did not offer to negotiate with Ukraine on Saturday, contrary to some reporting.
• The bodies of 42 Ukrainian servicemen who died while fighting have been returned to Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian government. Work on bringing back the bodies of Ukraine’s fighters “does not stop for a day”, Oleh Kotenko, the commissioner for missing persons, said.
• Vladimir Putin met his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, twice in the past 24 hours to “finalise many issues”, Belarusian state-owned Belta news agency reported. The meetings took place in St Petersburg, over breakfast on Tuesday at the Russian Museum, as well as at an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) yesterday evening, it reported.
• A Russian sausage tycoon who reportedly criticised the war in Ukraine has died after falling from the third-floor window of a luxury hotel in India. The body of Pavel Antov, 65, was discovered just two days after his friend and another local Russian politician, Vladimir Bidenov, was found dead in the same hotel after an apparent heart atta