December 29, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

The Ukrainian military says Russian forces have diverted resources to the battle for the key city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region but have made no advances.

Brig. Gen. Oleksii Hromov, deputy chief of the General Staff’s main operational directorate, told a briefing Thursday that the situation in the east remained difficult for Ukrainian forces, as the Russians conducted offensive actions on several fronts, including Bakhmut, Avdiivka and toward Kupyansk, which was liberated in September.

"The main efforts of the enemy concentrated on the Bakhmut direction," Hromov said. "Around Bakhmut, the defenders of Ukraine are resisting up to 20 attacks of the enemy daily, which is persistently attacking the positions of our troops under the cover of artillery fire."

Lyman is another settlement in Donetsk liberated by Ukrainian forces at the end of September.

"More than 40% of the enemy's artillery attacks along the contact line from Kupyansk to Mariinka are in the Bakhmut direction," Hromov said.

Other advancements: Hromov said that Ukrainian forces had made gradual progress towards the city of Kreminna in the eastern Luhansk region. The city fell to the Russians in the spring.

Ukrainian units had advanced up to 2.5 kilometers (more than 1 mile) in the direction of Kreminna this week, Hromov said. The area has been heavily mined by the Russians, according to Ukrainian officials.

Hromov also claimed that Russia was beginning to prepare defensive lines around the city of Luhansk "in case the Ukrainian Defense Forces break through the defensive borders of the Russian occupation troops on the Svatove-Kreminna line and, accordingly, move the hostilities closer" to the area.

Hromov said that following Russia's partial mobilization, trained units continued to be moved to occupied territories of Ukraine. He said that in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, units of the Russian territorial reserve had been deployed.

"We are tracking the movement of enemy units. Currently, there is no significant threat of offensive grouping in the Zaporizhzhia sector."

The Belarusian Ministry of Defense said Thursday that fragments from a Ukrainian S-300 anti-aircraft guided missile landed on its territory in an area close to the border with Ukraine.  

“Today, at around 10 o’clock, an air target was hit by the forces of the air defense," the ministry said in a statement. "Its fragments were found in an agricultural field near the village of Gorbakha, Ivanovo district, Brest region." 

CNN has not been able to independently verify the ministry's report and has reached out to the Ukrainian military for comment.

What Ukraine is saying: Kyiv said Thursday that it would investigate the Belarusian missile report, adding that it had not ruled out a Russian false flag operation aimed at placing blame on Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said in a statement that it was "aware of the Kremlin's desperate and persistent efforts to drag Belarus into its aggressive war against Ukraine."

Ukraine said it would conduct an investigation and was also prepared to invite "reputable experts" from states not affiliated with Russia to participate.

Russia’s currency hit an eight-month low Thursday, adding to sharp declines in December as global oil prices fell and western sanctions targeted Russia’s energy sector.

The ruble hovered below 72 to the dollar, down 18% from the start of the month — its weakest level since late April.

After almost halving in value in the first weeks of the war, the ruble has held up remarkably well for most of the year, trading within a narrow range. The ruble has been helped by measures from Russia’s central bank, which more than doubled interest rates at the start of the war, introduced capital controls, and forced exporters to convert 80% of their earnings into rubles, artificially creating demand for the currency. It later rolled back some of those policies as the exchange rate stabilized.

But with the price of oil, Russia’s biggest export, down by about a third from its June peak, and an EU embargo on seaborne oil, plus Western price cap mechanisms now in place, Russia’s oil export revenues are likely to fall. This means there will be less foreign currency to prop up the ruble.

The International Energy Agency said this month that Russian oil export revenues fell by $700 million in November because of falling prices.

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The Russian strikes that killed three people on Thursday were aimed at Ukraine's electrical infrastructure, knocking out power in several regions and sending engineering crews racing to restore services as the New Year’s holiday approaches this weekend.

Authorities have been cautioning for days that Russia was preparing to launch an all-out assault on the power grid to close out 2022, plummeting the country into darkness as Ukrainians attempt to ring in the New Year and celebrate the Orthodox Christmas holiday on Jan. 7.

Ukraine’s Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said that Lviv, Kyiv and Odesa were particularly hard-hit, and the cities are experiencing emergency power outages – which is when the electricity is protectively turned off to diminish damage from the grid shorting out.

Forty percent of Kyiv residents were without power as of mid-morning local time, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, while in western Ukraine, Lviv Mayor Andrii Sadovyi said 90% of the city was without power.

Residents in Kyiv told CNN that they are planning to celebrate the new year despite possible power outages or blackouts.

"We have already become perfectly oriented on how to survive in such conditions. Anyway, we will celebrate the New Year and hope for the best,” Kyiv resident Halyna Hladka said.

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At least three people were killed and seven were injured in nationwide missile attacks, according to the latest figures provided by the Ukrainian State Emergency Service.

The service's press officer, Oleksandr Khorunzhyy, told CNN that two people were killed in the northeastern Kharkiv region, while one person was killed in the eastern Donetsk region.

In the Kyiv region, four people were injured in the attacks, while two were injured in the Kharkiv region and one was injured in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region. 

“As of 16:00 [4 p.m. local time], 41 objects including 21 residential buildings were damaged,” he said. 

Earlier, a local official said one of the the two people killed in Kharkiv was a man who died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Placing Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev on Russia’s "wanted" list is an unacceptable "attack on freedom of speech," acting Bulgarian Prime Minister Galab Donev said Thursday.

On Monday, Russia placed Grozev, who is the lead Russia investigator at the journalism group Bellingcat, on its "wanted" list, according to Russia's Interior Ministry. Information published on the ministry’s website said he was “wanted under an article of the Criminal Code,” without specifying the exact article. 

Russian ambassador Eleonora Mitrofanova has been summoned to the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs "for an explanation on the case," Donev said, adding that it will "express official protest" against the search warrant and insist on receiving more information.

After meeting Bulgarian officials Thursday, Mitrofanova told journalists she had no information why Grozev was wanted. She said he is wanted only in Russia and not other countries, according to Bulgarian state broadcaster BNT.  

The "Russian ambassador says she doesn't know why I am on Russia's 'Wanted' list, but that 'we won't chase him around the world, and this just means that one more time we are telling him he's not wanted here,'" Grozev tweeted Thursday. "So.. they 'want' me, to tell me they not 'want' me?" 

After Mitrofanova's comments to reporters, the Russian Embassy in Bulgaria's capital of Sofia released a statement.

It said that Moscow had "clarified the situation with H. Grozev, emphasizing that a violation of Russian legislation leads to corresponding legal consequences, independent of the type of activity of the accused/suspect person or his citizenship," according to BNT.

The embassy also said "it is not about intimidation of the journalist or any threat to his life," according to the Bulgarian state media outlet.

As Russia carried out a large attack on Ukraine, Kyiv residents who were woken up by air raid sirens and sounds of explosion remained defiant. 

Thirty-four-year-old Anastasiia Hryn woke up to the sound of air raid sirens in the Ukrainian capital. She went down to the basement shelter in her building along with her son when she heard the first explosion. 

After the sirens gave the all clear, life went back to normal, Hyrn said. Parents took their children to school and kindergarten, people went to their offices. “In the elevator I met my neighbors with their child who were in hurry to get to the cinema for the new Avatar movie on time,” she said. 

Anna Kovalchuk is determined not to have Russians ruin upcoming New Year's celebrations. “I'm more worried that most likely the will be no electricity on New Year's Eve and the holiday will have to be spent in the dark. But I began to prepare myself for such a scenario in advance, stocked up on garlands, power banks, so the blackout would upset us, but not stop us,” she said. 

Roman Grischuk, a member of parliament, woke up to messages from his wife asking if he was okay. “I read that there were several hits in Kyiv. I quickly got water in case the water ran out and went to a safe place,” he told CNN. After ten months of war, it is hard to describe the feeling, he added. “The first thought is no one should die. But even that unfortunately the Russian attacks have turned into a routine,” he said. 

Halyna Hladka’s stocked up on water as soon as the sirens sounded and quickly made breakfast for her family so they would have something to eat. After nearly two hours, they heard the sounds of explosions.

The Ukrainian military said that the majority of cruise missiles fired at Ukraine on Thursday were intercepted, with its defense forces shooting down 54 of 69, according to preliminary data.

Zaluzhnyi said the Russians had launched air and sea-based cruise missiles, as well as anti-aircraft guided missiles such as the S-300 at energy infrastructure facilities. The Ukrainian military also shot down 11 Iranian Shahed drones, which are designed to detonate on impact.

There were conflicting reports on the scale of the missile attacks on Thursday. An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, said in an earlier post that Russia had launched more than 120 missiles in the barrage, without offering further details. He said the intent of the attack was to "destroy critical infrastructure and kill civilians en masse."

Explosions rattled villages and cities across Ukraine on Thursday in what Kyiv has called one of Moscow's largest missile barrages since the war began. The strikes have left several regions across Ukraine without power, with Lviv, Kyiv and Odesa hardest hit, officials said.

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