Two women were killed and several other people were wounded in a Russian missile strike on a market in the village of Shevchenkove in eastern Ukraine. Several civilians were injured in the shelling, including a 13-year-old girl.
New deliveries of western weapons to Kyiv would “deepen the suffering of the Ukrainian people” and would not change the course of the conflict, the Kremlin claimed on Monday. As Ukraine seeks further support from Western allies, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “This supply will not be able to change anything”, according to Reuters.
The Kremlin on Monday rejected a Ukrainian assertion that a senior Russian official has been floating the idea of a potential peace deal over Ukraine with European officials. When asked about the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council Oleksiy Danilov’s assertion that Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of Russia’s presidential administration, had been holding meetings with European officials in an attempt to force Kyiv to sign a peace deal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was “another fake”.
Russia says it is confident the defence ministry was correct when it said that 600 Ukrainian servicemen had been “destroyed” in an attack on the city of Kramatorsk, despite reporting that showed the attack missed its target. “The Kremlin has absolute confidence, I would like to remind you of the president’s words that the main source of information is the ministry of defence”, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to Reuters.
Ukrainian forces are repelling constant attacks on Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region and holding their positions in nearby Soledar in arduous conditions, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said. The Ukrainian president said in his Sunday night video address: “Bakhmut is holding on despite everything. And even though most of the town has been destroyed by Russian strikes, our soldiers are repelling constant Russian attempts to advance. Soledar is holding on, even though there is even greater destruction and things are very difficult.”
Zelenskiy denounced what he said was Russia’s failure to observe a 36-hour ceasefire it had declared for Orthodox Christmas by launching attacks on Ukrainian cities.
At least two people were killed during fighting in eastern Ukraine, officials said. Donetsk’s governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said one person was killed in strikes on Bakhmut and eight others in the region were wounded, Associated Press reported. Kyrylenko also said there were rocket attacks on Kramatorsk and Konstantynivka.
