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Belarus Adds Jailed Opposition Activist Tsikhanouski, RFE/RL Consultant Losik To Terrorist List [1]
['Current Time']
Date: 2022-12
Ukraine and Russia have exchanged more prisoners of war, officials on both sides announced, as Kyiv's technicians raced to restore electricity following the latest wave of Russian missile strikes and Moscow said a Ukrainian drone struck an airfield across the border, prompting President Vladimir Putin to convene his Security Council.
On the battlefield, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the situation as "difficult" on December 6 as he visited the front line in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces have been pushing to capture the industrial city of Bakhmut.
Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential office, said on Telegram that 60 Ukrainian prisoners returned home in an exchange confirmed by Russia's Defense Ministry, which said an identical number of Russians were released.
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Ukrainian officials warned that critical energy infrastructure continues to be threatened by further Russian strikes and there would be emergency blackouts once again in several regions as engineers work frantically to repair damage from the huge wave of missile attacks the previous day that destroyed homes and knocked out power.
Russian shelling was reported overnight in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhya and central Dnipropetrovsk regions, officials said on Telegram, with critical infrastructure and residential buildings being damaged in the suburbs of Zaporizhzhya city.
No one was injured, according to preliminary information, said Oleksandr Starukh, head of the Zaporizhzhya regional military administration.
About half the region surrounding the Ukrainian capital will remain without electricity for the coming days after Russian missile strikes on power facilities, the Kyiv regional governor said.
Kyiv, a city of about 3 million people, appeared to have escaped serious damage. But the Kyiv region, which does not include the capital and which had a population of about 1.8 million before the war, was badly hit.
"In the coming days, about half of the region will be without electricity," Governor Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram late on December 5.
Volodymyr Kudritskiy, the chief of power grid operator Ukrenerho, said Moscow had deliberately launched the attacks as the temperature fell below zero.
"A day or two is necessary to restore normal generation in the system," Kudritskiy told Ukrainian television.
Other regions sustained damage as well, with all water pumping stations and reserve lines in the Odesa region losing power and water supply being cut.
In the eastern city of Kramatorsk, which remains under Ukraine's control, 370 apartment blocks were without heat because of electricity outages, the city's mayor said.
Ukrainian forces fought off a fresh round of Russian attacks in the east, Ukraine's General Staff said on December 6, as Russian troops continued their relentless offensive in the Bakhmut and Avdiyivka areas of Donetsk region, and tank and artillery bombardment hit some 20 settlements in the area, including Soledar, Verkhnokamyanske, Andriyivka, and Yakovlyivka.
Zelenskiy, who visited troops on the front line in the Donbas region, praised soldiers in a selfie video filmed near Bakhmut. In other videos, he presented medals and shook hands with troops in a hangar.
In Russia's Kursk region across the border from Ukraine, an airfield was targeted by a "drone attack," according to Governor Roman Starovoyt, who did not specify where the drone originated.
"As a result of a drone attack in the area of the Kursk airfield, an oil storage tank caught fire," Starovoyt said on social media, adding that there were no casualties.
The December 6 incident comes a day after Moscow accused Ukraine of carrying out deadly drone strikes on two other airfields.
At least one large explosion occurred at a Russian military air base in the Saratov region, about 600 kilometers east of Ukraine, while another blast was reported by Russian state media at an airfield outside Ryazan, southeast of Moscow.
The December 6 incident, coming a day after Moscow accused Ukraine of carrying out deadly drone strikes on two other airfields, prompted the
Kremlin to announce that Putin convened a meeting of his Security Council to discuss how to ensure the state's "domestic security." No other details were provided.
Speaking to reporters separately, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the authorities were taking "necessary" measures to protect the country from Ukrainian attacks.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian embassies in Denmark and Romania received more "bloody packages," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in an online interview on December 6 with the Ukrinform news agency.
Last week, Ukrainian embassies and consulates in several European nations received "bloody packages" that contained cut-out animal eyes as Russia continues its ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine launched in late February.
With reporting by Reuters and AFP
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[1] Url:
https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-tsikhanouski-losik-terrorist-list/31919361.html
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