LAST UPDATE | 24 Dec 2022
RUSSIAN SHELLS HAVE pounded the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, killing seven people and injuring 58 more in a city Moscow was forced to abandon last month.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, just back from a short trip to Washington, posted photos of the wreckage on his social media accounts.
He noted the destruction came as Ukrainians were beginning Christmas celebrations which for many Orthodox Christians will culminate in a traditional celebration on 7 January.
“This is not sensitive content — it’s the real life of Kherson,” he tweeted. The images showed cars on fire, bodies in the street and building windows blown out.
The deputy head of the presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said seven people were killed in the shelling on Saturday and 58 were injured, at least 16 seriously.
Saturday marks 10 months since the start of the Russian invasion.
Ukraine has faced an onslaught of Russian artillery fire, missiles, shelling and drone attacks since early October, much of it targeting energy infrastructure in a bid to cut electricity and heating services as the freezing winter advances.
The shelling has been especially intense in Kherson since Russian forces withdrew and Ukraine’s army reclaimed the city in November.
Earlier today, the Donetsk regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said two people had been killed and five wounded in shelling there over the past day.
The deaths were in Kurakhove, a town of about 20,000 which is 18 miles west of the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk.
About 60 shells hit three communities during the night in the area of Nikopol, said Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko.
Stepne, a settlement on the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia, was also hit by shelling but there were no details on casualties, according to governor Oleksander Starukh.
Zelenskyy has returned to Kyiv after his trip to the US, in which he secured another $1.8 billion in military aid.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed the war will end at the negotiating table once the “special military operation“ achieves Russia’s goals.
He said no reported Ukrainian peace plan can succeed without taking into account “the realities of today that can’t be ignored” — a reference to Moscow’s demand that Ukraine recognises Russia’s sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed in 2014, as well as other territorial gains.
Turkey has conceded that the war “will not end easily”, despite Ankara’s repeated efforts to arrange peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow.
NATO member Turkey, which has friendly relations with both of its Black Sea neighbours, has positioned itself as a neutral player and tried to broker a truce.
But the continuing war is dashing Ankara’s hopes.
“It appears that this war will not end easily,” Defence Minister Hulusi Akar told journalists during a year-end briefing in the capital Ankara.
He pointed to Western support for Ukraine and Russia’s statements that it would not give up for his reasoning.
“It would not be wrong to say that despite all our goodwill and call for a ceasefire, this war is likely to continue in 2023,” Akar said.
Turkey, which helped broker a deal with the United Nations for the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea this summer, is seeking to bring together Russian and Ukrainian leaders for negotiations to end the war.
It already hosted a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers during the early stages of the war in March and held other talks between the two warring parties in Istanbul.
“As Turkey, we call for a ceasefire, at least a humanitarian ceasefire. Then a permanent ceasefire and then peace talks,” Akar said.
Additional reporting by AFP
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