Russia’s top general says army is advancing along entire Ukraine front line
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General Valery Gerasimov says Russia has taken control of a third of a town near the strategic city of Pokrovsk.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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MOSCOW – Russia’s military chief General Valery Gerasimov said on Dec 9 that Russian forces were advancing along the entire front line in Ukraine and were targeting surrounded Ukrainian troops in the town of Myrnohrad.
In a command post meeting with officers of the Centre Grouping, which is fighting in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Gen Gerasimov said President Vladimir Putin has ordered the defeat of Ukrainian forces in Myrnohrad, a town with a pre-war population of some 46,000 people to the east of Pokrovsk.
Russia has taken control of more than 30 per cent of Myrnohrad’s buildings, Gen Gerasimov said.
Russia, which uses the Soviet-era name of Krasnoarmeysk to refer to neighbouring Pokrovsk, says it has taken the whole of the city and claims to have also encircled Ukrainian forces in Myrnohrad, which Russians call Dimitrov.
Ukraine has repeatedly denied Russian claims that Pokrovsk has fallen and says its forces still hold part of the city and are fighting back in Myrnohrad.
Russia currently controls 19.2 per cent of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, Luhansk, more than 80 per cent of Donetsk, about 75 per cent of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Ukraine says it is holding its defensive lines and forcing Russia to pay a high price for what it says are relatively modest gains.
Mr Putin said last week Russia would take full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region by force unless Ukrainian forces withdraw, something Kyiv has flatly rejected. REUTERS
