Fighting rages in east Ukraine, West eyes more sanctions on Russia
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[December 12, 2022]
By Nick Starkov and Pavel Polityuk
KYIV (Reuters) - Russian forces pounded targets in eastern and southern
Ukraine with missiles, drones and artillery, Ukraine's General Staff
said on Monday, while millions remained without power in subzero
temperatures after further strikes on key infrastructure.
In a flurry of weekend diplomacy, Ukraine's President Volodymyr
Zelenskiy spoke with the leaders of the United States, France and Turkey
ahead of planned Group of Seven (G7) and EU meetings on Monday that
could agree further sanctions on Russia.
There are no peace talks and no end in sight to the deadliest conflict
in Europe since World War Two, which Moscow describes as a "special
military operation" and Ukraine and its allies call an unprovoked act of
aggression.
Russia does not yet see a "constructive" approach from the United States
on the Ukraine conflict, RIA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister
Sergei Vershinin as saying on Monday. The two countries have held a
series of contacts in Turkey.
U.S. President Joe Biden told Zelenskiy during a call on Sunday that
Washington was prioritising efforts to boost Ukraine's air defences, the
White House said. Zelenskiy said he had thanked Biden for the
"unprecedented defence and financial" help the United States has
provided.
On the ground in Ukraine, the Black Sea port of Odesa on Monday resumed
operations that had been suspended after Russia used Iranian-made drones
on Saturday to hit two energy facilities. Power is slowly being restored
to some 1.5 million people, but the situation remains difficult,
national grid operator Ukrenergo said in a statement on Monday.
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Zelenskiy said other areas experiencing "very difficult" conditions with
power supplies included the capital Kyiv and Kyiv region and four
regions in western Ukraine and Dnipropetrovsk region in the centre of
the country.
The Kyiv region administration said 14 settlements there still had no
power and 37 more were partially without power.
There were no reports of fresh strikes or blackouts overnight into
Monday.
HEAVY FIGHTING
United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths arrived in Ukraine on Monday
to see "the impact of the humanitarian response and new challenges that
have arisen as infrastructure damage mounts amid freezing winter
temperatures", his office said.
In its daily update on the military situation, Ukraine's General Staff
said its forces had repelled Russian assaults on four settlements in the
eastern Donetsk region and on eight settlements in the adjacent Luhansk
region.
Russia kept up its attacks on Bakhmut, which is now largely in ruins,
Avdiivka, and Lyman, and launched two missile strikes against civilian
infrastructure in Kostyantynivka, all in the Donetsk region - one of
four that Moscow claims to have annexed from Ukraine after "referendums"
branded illegal by Kyiv.
Ukraine has said Russian forces are suffering huge losses on the eastern
front in brutal fighting that is also taking its toll on its own troops.
"There are days when there are many heavily wounded: four or five
amputations at once," Oleksii, a 35-year-old army doctor who declined to
give his full name, told Reuters at a military hospital in eastern
Ukraine.
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![](../images/121222PIX/news_g13.jpg)
The remains of a cathedral on a war-torn
church stand, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in the
formerly Russian occupied city of Lyman, Donetsk region of Ukraine,
December 11, 2022. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Dec/12/images/ads/current/atlantabank_lda_HFH_2022.png)
Elsewhere, Russian forces carried out more than 60 attacks from
rocket salvo systems targeting the civilian infrastructure in
Kherson, the southern city liberated by Ukrainian forces last month,
and Ukrainian troops based there, the General Staff said.
Russia also shelled settlements along the Zaporizhzhia frontline in
southern central Ukraine, it said, while Ukrainian forces hit
Russian control points, munitions warehouses and other targets.
Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.
SANCTIONS
On the diplomatic front, European Union foreign ministers were due
to discuss a ninth package of sanctions on Russia over its invasion
of Ukraine that would place almost 200 more individuals and entities
on the EU sanctions list.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he hoped agreement on the
package could come later on Monday or on Tuesday. The ministers will
also discuss an additional 2 billion euros ($2.11 billion) worth of
arms deliveries to Ukraine.
Separately, Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz will hold an online
meeting with other G7 leaders about the situation in Ukraine that
Zelenskiy is also due to join. Scholz is set to give a news
conference afterwards at 1630 GMT.
"We are constantly working with partners," Zelenskiy said on Sunday
after talking to Biden, France's Emmanuel Macron and Turkey's Tayyip
Erdogan, adding that he expects some "important results" from the
upcoming international meetings on Ukraine.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CBS's "60 Minutes"
Washington's support for Ukraine's military and economy - more than
$50 billion - would continue "for as long as it takes" and
reiterated that ending the war was the single best thing the United
States could do for the global economy.
Zelenskiy said he had held "very specific" talks with Erdogan on
assuring Ukraine's grain exports.
Turkey, which acted as a mediator in peace talks in the early months
of the war, also worked alongside the United Nations in a grain
deal, which opened up Ukrainian ports for exports in July after a
six-month de facto Russian blockade.
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Erdogan's office said the Turkish leader also had a call with
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, in which he had called
for a quick end to the conflict.
Putin said last week that Moscow's near-total loss of trust in the
West would make an eventual settlement over Ukraine much harder to
reach and warned of a protracted war.
(Additional reporting by Ronald Popeski in Winnipeg, Canada; Writing
by Gareth Jones; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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