Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Friday that Russia is sending about 170,000 troops to eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, where it aims to seize the stronghold of Pokrovsk in an effort to win on the battlefield.
“The situation in Pokrovsk is difficult,” Zelenskiy said, while also denying recent Russian claims that the devastated city was under siege after more than a year of fighting.
He acknowledged that some Russian troops had entered the city, but insisted that Ukrainian garrisons were removing them.
“There are Russians in Pokrovsk,” President Zelenskiy said at a news conference in Kiev. “They’re being destroyed and slowly being destroyed because we need to maintain personnel.”
During the nearly four-year siege since Russia began its full-scale invasion, Ukraine has retreated from some areas to avoid troop losses. The Ukrainian military is desperately undermanned against Russia’s larger army.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently claimed that while the Russian military has made significant advances on the battlefield, progress is slow and costs too much in troops and weapons.
President Putin is trying to convince the United States, which is pushing for a peace deal, that Ukraine cannot counter Russia’s military dominance.
He also emphasizes that Russia’s nuclear capabilities are improving, while refusing to deviate from what he claims are Russia’s legitimate war objectives.
Ukraine claims attack on Russian oil facilities
Ukraine is fighting back by attacking targets inside Russia to disrupt military logistics and make Russian civilians feel the effects of the war.
Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has carried out more than 160 successful long-range attacks on Russian oil drilling and refining facilities, head of Ukraine’s Security Service Vasyl Mariuk told a news conference.
According to Mariuk, Ukraine carried out 20 attacks on Russian oil facilities in September and October alone.
He claimed that the strike had led to a 20% decline in petroleum products on the Russian domestic market and the temporary suspension of operations on 37% of Russia’s oil refining capacity. These claims could not be independently verified.
“Clearly, we are not resting on our laurels. This study includes many fresh perspectives and new approaches,” Mariuk said. “These include new equipment, new combat units, and new communication methods and means.”
He said Ukraine had destroyed nearly half of Russia’s advanced Pantsir air defense systems this year and thwarted Ukrainian long-range drone attacks.
He also noted that last year the Ukrainian military destroyed one of Russia’s advanced new hypersonic missiles, which can fly at 10 times the speed of sound, causing it to crash into the ground at a military base in Russia.
The Oleshnik missile, which President Putin touted late last year as a game-changing weapon and invulnerable to air defense systems, landed at the Kapustin Yar military firing range near the Caspian Sea in southwestern Russia, about 500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, Mariuk news agency reported.
Putin said a year ago, months after Mariuk announced that Ukraine had destroyed one missile, which he said had been used in an attack on the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
UN reports increased number of Ukrainian civilian casualties
Meanwhile, a Russian drone struck an apartment complex in the northeastern city of Sumy overnight, injuring 11 people, including four children, and damaging energy infrastructure in the southern Odesa region, authorities said Friday.
U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine Matthias Schmare said on Friday that the war is deadlier for civilians this year than in 2024, with a 30% increase in casualties so far.
Schmare told a news conference in Geneva that Russia’s near-daily airstrikes on energy production and distribution facilities in Ukraine are particularly concerning because the winter is expected to be much colder than last year.
Shmare said Ukrainian cities centralize their public infrastructure to run water, sewage and heating systems, and the United Nations is concerned that denying these services to people living in high-rise buildings in cities near the front lines “could escalate into a major crisis.”
“The destruction of energy production and distribution capacity as winter sets in clearly affects civilians and is a form of terrorism,” he said.
The U.N.’s humanitarian response also lacks funds to respond to urgent needs, Schmare said, as funding to Ukraine has fallen from more than $4 billion (3.4 billion euros) in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, to $1.1 billion (950 million euros) this year.