Russia-Ukraine war live: Russian strikes on infrastructure more frequent due to missile shortage, UK says | Ukraine | Daily News Byte

The UK Ministry of Defense says Russia may be limiting its missile attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure due to a limited supply of cruise missiles.

In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said Russia had increased its forces in Ukraine with thousands of reservists since October, easing personnel shortages, but that “the main limiting factor on Russian offensive operations likely remains a lack of munitions”.

He says that just sustaining defensive operations on Russia’s long front line requires a significant daily expenditure of shells and rockets.

Due to the limited availability of cruise missiles, Russia has likely limited its long-range missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure to once a week.

Similarly, Russia is unlikely to have increased its arsenal of artillery weapons sufficiently to enable large-scale offensive operations.

The United States has called Vladimir Putin After the Russian president finally called the conflict a “war” to accept reality and withdraw troops from Ukraine.

Agence France-Presse reported that since Putin ordered the invasion in February, Russia has officially called it a “special military operation” and imposed a law that criminalizes what authorities say is misleading terminology.

But at a news conference on Thursday, Putin used the word “war” as he said he hoped to end it as soon as possible.

A State Department spokesman said Friday:

Since February 24, the United States and the rest of the world knew that Putin’s ‘special military operation’ was an unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine. Finally, after 300 days, Putin called the war what it was.

As the next step in accepting reality, we urge them to withdraw their forces from Ukraine and end this war.

The State Department said, whatever Putin’s terminology, “Russia’s aggression against its sovereign neighbor has resulted in death, destruction and displacement”.

The people of Ukraine no doubt take little solace in Putin stating the obvious, and neither do the thousands of Russian families whose relatives have been killed in Putin’s war.

A Russian court sentenced the opposition politician earlier this month. Ilya YashinEight and a half years in prison under the new law for his “false information” about the war.

Yashin spoke of a “massacre” in Bucha, a town near the Ukrainian capital Kiev where bullet-riddled bodies of Ukrainians in civilian clothes with their hands tied behind their backs were found after Russian forces retreated.

Criticizing the invasion, an opposition MLA, Nikita Yuferevsaid on Friday that he was seeking legal action against Putin for spreading “fake news” over his “war” reference.

Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s ongoing live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. It is 9 am in Kyiv. Here is a snapshot of the latest developments for this Saturday 24 December 2022.

• Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia’s defense industry chiefs to ensure his army gets all the weapons, equipment and military hardware it needs to fight in Ukraine “in the shortest possible time frame”.. The Russian president also called for his proposals to “solve the inevitable problems” and “make sure there are fewer of them”. Putin’s comments in the city of Tula, a center for Russian arms production, came days after he promised to give his army whatever was asked for in a meeting with Russia’s top military officials.

• Russian forces have demolished a theater in occupied Mariupol It was the site of a deadly airstrike in southern Ukraine that is believed to have killed hundreds of civilians, according to an aide to the city’s exiled Ukrainian mayor. Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, said the move was “an attempt to permanently hide the evidence of the deliberate killing of Ukrainians by the Russians”. Videos posted on Ukrainian and Russian websites on Friday showed heavy equipment taking down much of the building. An Amnesty International investigation concluded that the Russian attack was a war crime.

• Iran wants to expand supply of advanced weapons to Russia, according to local media, the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency has said. David Barnea’s warning comes after the US expressed alarm this month over a “full-scale defense partnership” between Tehran and Moscow.

• Russian forces shelled the recently liberated Kherson region 61 times On Thursday, one person was killed and two wounded, the head of the military administration of the eastern Ukrainian region, Yaroslav Yanushevich, said. About half of the strikes hit the city of Kherson, hitting residential blocks, educational institutions and private houses, he said, while a kindergarten was also affected. According to the regional prosecutor’s office, two civilians were killed in a shooting in the city on Friday morning.

• Two people were injured after a car bomb exploded in the Russian-held city of Melitopol in south-eastern Ukraine, according to a pro-Moscow local official. Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia province, described the incident in Russian state media as a “terrorist attack” carried out by “terrorists of the Kiev regime”. Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, wrote on Telegram that witnesses said a car was “blown up”.

• Germany’s vice chancellor, Robert Haebeck, described the discovery of a German intelligence officer suspected of working for Russia as “alarming”., amid fears the officer had access to sensitive information from Western allies. The man, an employee of the BND foreign intelligence agency identified as Carsten L, was arrested on suspicion of treason for allegedly passing state secrets to Russia, German prosecutors said.

• Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, warned that the risk of a clash between the US and Russia was “high” and likened US-Russia relations to an “Ice Age”. In comments reported by Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency. The Kremlin accused the US of waging a proxy war against Russia.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has posted a video saying he is back at work in Kyiv. After his landmark visit to Washington this week. “I am in my office – we are working towards victory,” he said in a video posted on his Telegram channel on Friday.

• Zelensky’s visit to the White House confirmed that Ukraine and the US are “strategic partners” for the first time in history., the Ukrainian leader’s most senior adviser has said. The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, told the Guardian that the trip strengthened Zelensky’s bond with the US president, Joe Biden, and senior US Republicans.

• A top Russian-based official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region said shelling of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhia nuclear power plant has “almost stopped”.. Speaking on Russian state television, Governor Yevgeny Balitsky said Friday that Russian troops would not leave the nuclear plant – Europe’s largest – and that it would never return to Ukrainian control.

• Ukraine estimates that its grain harvest has fallen by about 40% year-on-year due to the Russian invasion, the country’s representative for industry told Agence France-Presse. “We expect to harvest 65-66 million tons of grain by the end of the year”, head of the Ukrainian Grain Union, Serhiy Ivashchenko, said on Friday, after a record harvest of 106 million tons last year. “The main reason is the war,” which immediately led to fuel shortages and hampered sowing, he said.

• Ukraine plans to open new embassies in 10 African countries, Volodymyr Zelensky announced, with the aim of increasing Kyiv’s presence in Africa and strengthening trade ties. He added that there were also plans to develop a “Ukraine-Africa Trade House” with offices in the capitals of the African continent’s “most promising countries”.