MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday rejected comments from Ukraine’s most senior military official that their nearly two-year conflict had reached a stalemate, as Kyiv said fighting around a key town had eased.
The frontline between the Ukrainian army and Russian forces occupying the east and south of the country has barely moved since last November, despite repeated Russian strikes and a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
“No, it has not reached a stalemate,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“Russia is steadily carrying out the special military operation. All the goals that were set should be fulfilled,” he added, using the Kremlin’s term for its full-scale military intervention.
Peskov was responding to an interview in British media with Ukraine’s General Valery Zaluzhny, who said the two sides had reached an impasse along the sprawling frontline.
“Just like in the First World War, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he told the Economist, adding that: “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
Ukrainian forces launched a counteroffensive against entrenched Russian positions earlier this year but have struggled to gain ground as they encounter lines of heavily fortified defenses.
Russia has meanwhile made limited progress in its own offensives, claiming pockets of gains in Ukraine’s northeast and launching a fresh push last month to encircle the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka.
Ukraine said Thursday that Russia had eased assaults on Avdiivka, after weeks of intense shelling by Moscow’s forces in and around the strategically important town.
Avdiivka, an industrial hub at the center of fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces since 2014, has been largely deserted by its civilian population.
“The number of assaults there has slightly decreased,” Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun said Thursday.
“The enemy continues to try to surround Avdiivka, but not so actively at the moment,” he added.
In a post on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his forces were mounting “defensive actions in Avdiivka,” without providing details.
The town, which once had a population of some 30,000, lies in the eastern Donetsk region that the Kremlin claimed to have annexed last year despite not fully controlling it.
Shtupun said Russian forces could be regrouping to launch another concerted wave of attacks but claimed Ukrainian forces were largely in control.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said this week that Moscow’s forces were making gains near Avdiivka and said Ukrainian efforts to reclaim territory were “desperate” and resulting in losses.
Ukraine has rejected claims of Russian advances.
On Thursday, Zelensky said Russia had tried to gain ground near the town of Vugledar between the eastern and southern fronts, but that Moscow’s forces had sustained “heavy losses.”
Moscow meanwhile accused Ukraine of launching a wave of drones near the city of Energodar, home to the Moscow-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
The plant, which was captured by Russian forces in March 2022, has been rocked by repeated drone attacks and shelling that Kyiv and Moscow have blamed on each other.
“At around 12:30 p.m. Moscow time (0930 GMT) today, nine Ukrainian copter drones were detected and intercepted by on-duty air defense equipment near the city of Energodar in Zaporizhzhia region,” the Russian defense ministry said.
It accused Ukraine of threatening to cause a “disaster” at the plant during a routine changeover of UN nuclear agency officials, who had been monitoring safety there.
Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov said earlier Thursday that Ukrainian drones had hit a hotel on the site of the nuclear plant, without providing further detail.
“Instead of keeping ‘the regime of silence’, the Ukrainian side undertook a massive drone attack on the town of Energodar located near the plant,” Ulyanov said on social media.
AFP was not able to verify their accounts.
Fears for safety at the plant have grown since the nearby Kakhovka dam was destroyed in June, threatening the water supply used to cool the plant’s nuclear reactors upstream.
The six-reactor plant has not been supplying electricity to the power grid since September 2022 but it still requires constant maintenance to prevent overheating.
Russia denies Ukraine conflict at ‘stalemate’
https://arab.news/6vuba
Russia denies Ukraine conflict at ‘stalemate’
- “No, it has not reached a stalemate,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters
- “Russia is steadily carrying out the special military operation”
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
