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Ukraine Says Its Forces Are Repelling Constant Russian Attacks In East

Russia launched seven missile strikes, 31 airstrikes and 73 salvo rocket launcher attacks in the previous day, according to the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces in a daily report

Ukrainian forces are repelling constant Russian attacks on Bakhmut and other towns in Donbas' eastern region, Ukrainian authorities said on Monday, after rejecting Kremlin claims that 600 soldiers were killed in a missile strike.

Russia launched seven missile strikes, 31 airstrikes and 73 salvo rocket launcher attacks in the previous day, according to the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces in a daily report.

According to the report, Ukrainian forces repelled attacks on 14 settlements, including Bakhmut. “Despite everything, Bakhmut is holding on,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video remarks on Sunday.

“And, despite Russian strikes have destroyed most of the town, our soldiers are repelling constant Russian advances,” he said.

“Even though there is even greater destruction and things are very difficult,” he added, the nearby town of Solar was holding on.

The battlefield reports could not be independently verified by Reuters.

Zelensky renewed his condemnation of Russia's failure to observe a truce declared for Orthodox Christmas by staging attacks on Ukrainian cities.

“Immediately after Christmas, Russians were shelling Kherson with incendiary ammunition,” he said, referring to the southern city abandoned by Russian forces in November. 

On Sunday, Russia claimed 600 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in a missile attack on Kramatorsk, northwest of Bakhmut, but a Reuters reporter on the scene found no obvious signs of casualties.

A Reuters team visited two college dormitories that Moscow claimed were temporarily housing Ukrainian personnel and were targeted as retaliation for a New Year's Eve attack that killed scores of Russian soldiers and sparked outrage in Russia.

However, neither dormitory in Kramatorsk's eastern city appeared to have been directly hit or seriously damaged. There were no apparent signs of soldiers living there

“It is not clear to us who, and for what reason, decided that 600 Ukrainian soldiers died inside, all at once, if the building was not actually hit (even the light remained on). Instead of the real destruction of the enemy personnel, which would have been a worthy response, an exclusive media operation of retaliation was invented,” according to the report. 

The militaries of both Russia and Ukraine militaries have often overstated enemy losses while minimising their own.

Ukraine's top military officials said last week some 760 Russian troops had been killed or wounded in two attacks on Moscow-controlled parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.


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Russia-Ukraine Conflict Zelenskyy

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