MOSCOW (Reuters/AFP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the military operation in Ukraine had gained positive momentum and that he hoped his soldiers would deliver more wins after Russia claimed control of the eastern Ukrainian salt-mining town of Soledar.
Russia’s Feb. 24 war on Ukraine has triggered one of the deadliest European conflicts since World War Two and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russia said on Friday that its forces had taken control of Soledar, a rare success for Moscow after months of battlefield reverses.
“The dynamic is positive,” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television when asked about the taking of Soledar. “Everything is developing within the framework of the plan of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff.”
“And I hope that our fighters will please us even more with the results of their combat,” Putin said.
Putin now casts the war in Ukraine as an existential battle with an aggressive and arrogant West, and has said that Russia will use all available means to protect itself and its people against any aggressor.
A regional governor in Ukraine on Saturday said that Ukrainian forces were still fighting to retain control of Soledar. The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said it was highly unlikely that Ukrainian forces still held positions within Soledar itself.
Also on Sunday, Ukraine said that the death toll had risen to 23 after a Russian missile slammed into a tower block in the city of Dnipro during a massive wave of strikes causing power outages and blackouts across the war-torn country.
Ukrainian officials said more than 40 people were still missing after the Dnpiro strike, which came as Ukraine celebrated the Old New Year, a popular holiday, and as Britain became the first Western country to offer Kyiv the heavy tanks it has long sought.
At least 21 people were killed and 73 others wounded in Saturday’s attack on the Dnipro tower block, Ukraine’s regional council head Mykola Lukashuk said.
A 15-year-old girl was among the dead, officials said, after dozens of people were pulled from the rubble.
“Rescue operations continue. The fate of more than 40 people remain unknown,” regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said Sunday.
Rescuers battled through the night in a bid to free a woman trapped under the rubble after hearing her voice, the state emergency service said.
Russia has warned that the UK’s plan to supply Ukraine with tanks and other heavy weaponry will only escalate the war and generate more casualties among civilians.
In a statement on Sunday, the Russian embassy in the UK warned that “bringing tanks to the conflict zone, far from drawing the hostilities to a close, will only serve to intensify combat operations, generating more casualties, including among the civilian population.”