Conflicts & War

Russia harasses Ukrainian rear as winter slows down war efforts

Kyiv/Moscow, Dec 3 (EFE). – The Russian army harasses Ukraine with missiles, artillery and Shahed drones while the arrival of winter hinders troop movements on both sides and slows down war actions on the battlefield.

“On the night of December 3, the enemy attacked Ukraine with 12 Shahed UAVs launched from Russia’s Primorsko-Akhtarsk and an Kh-59 guided missile launched from Russia’s Belgorod region” The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported Sunday.

Russia harasses the Ukrainian rear

According to the military agency, the drones arrived in “several waves” and entered the Mikolaiv region through the occupied city of Kherson.

It was in this region, under the responsibility of the Southern Air Command, that the anti-aircraft defense shot down most of the drones. The rest headed northwest and were shot down near Khmelnitsky.

In addition, the Ukrainian General Staff reported attacks by Russian aviation on the cities of Kharkiv (east), Chernihiv and Sumi (north), and Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporyia, Kherson and Mikolaiv (east and south), without specifying damage.

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have destroyed an underground command post of the Ukrainian anti-aircraft forces in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, as well as enemy warehouses and arsenals in the Poltava (central) and Mykolaiv (southern) regions.

Winter slows fighting

Meanwhile, the onset of winter is hampering the actions of both sides, as the American Institute for War Studies (IWS) acknowledged in its daily report.

“Poor weather conditions continue to slow the pace of Ukrainian and Russian combat operations across the entire frontline but have not completely halted them,” IWS said.

Vladimir Rogov, the Russian representative in the annexed Zaporizhzhya region, posted a video on Telegram showing the poor condition of roads in the Robotine-Verbove-Novoprokopivka triangle, saying the situation “has practically immobilized all wheeled vehicles.”

“The Ukrainian military is forced to carry out its rotations in the gray zone and then walk to the slaughterhouse,” he said.

The spokesman for the Tavria group of the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Shtupun, noted that in Avdivka (Donetsk) “the activity of the infantry of the occupiers has increased again compared to the previous days” due to transportation difficulties.

For several months, Russian troops have been trying to encircle this city, which is adjacent to Donetsk, the capital of the region of the same name, making this sector of the front one of the scenes of the bloodiest fighting.

Domestic Tensions in Ukraine

Meanwhile, the situation on the front lines is fueling internal political tensions in Ukraine, which for more than a year had been defused by a united front around Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The mayor of Kiev, Vladimir Klitschko, supported the controversial article by the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valeri Zaluzhni, in which he stated that the Ukrainian conflict had stagnated.

“He told the truth. Sometimes people do not want to hear the truth. (…) Some of our politicians criticized him for these precise words, and this is unfair. I am on his side,” he told the Swiss portal 20 Minuten.

According to the mayor of the Ukrainian capital, “Sometimes people [Zelensky] don’t want to hear the truth. But he [Zaluzhniy] is responsible. He explained what the current situation is. Sure, in the euphoria we [Zelensky] can lie to our people and our partners. But you can’t do it forever. Some of our officials have unfairly criticized Zaluzhniy. I support him.”

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Zelensky’s rival, also expressed his discontent after Kyiv prevented him from traveling to the United States and Poland, where he was due to hold a series of work meetings.

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