December 28, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

 A district of the northeastern city of Kharkiv was hit with rockets on Wednesday, injuring one civilian, according to the regional military administration.

Russia captured swathes of Kharkiv in the early days of its invasion, before Ukrainian forces retook most of the region in an offensive in the fall.

The French minister for the armed forces, Sebastien Lecornu, has arrived in Kyiv. After arriving via train from Warsaw, he went to the city's wall of remembrance where he laid a wreath, CNN affiliate BFM reported.

Lecornu will later meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksiy Reznikov, BFM said, to discuss the defense of Ukraine. It was not yet clear if he would meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, BFM said.

This is the first time the minister has been to Ukraine since the war began in February.

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s southern Kherson region continued over the past 24 hours, injuring three civilians, according to the head of the regional military administration.

“Russian occupiers shelled the territory of Kherson region 50 times. Peaceful settlements of the region suffered from attacks from artillery, MLRS, mortars and tanks,” Yaroslav Yanushevych, head of the Kherson regional military administration, said in a Telegram post.

The city of Kherson was hit 23 times in the past 24 hours, Yanushevych said, adding that three people had sustained injuries of "varying severity."

In November, Russia’s military retreated from Kherson city, the only regional capital Moscow had captured since the invasion began, in a major setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since then, Russian forces have stationed themselves across the river from Kherson and regularly shell the city from there.

On Tuesday, a hospital maternity ward in the city of Kherson was hit by Russian shelling, according to Ukrainian officials.

For Andrei Soldatov and his friends, Feb. 24 marked the end of Russia as they knew it.

In the early hours of that day, President Vladimir Putin announced that he had ordered Russian troops into Ukraine. “And all of a sudden, everything we still believed in got completely compromised,” Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who lives in self-imposed exile in London, told CNN.

Life in Russia had for many years been getting more difficult for dissidents, independent journalists and anyone speaking up against Putin’s regime, but Soldatov said people like him still had some hope to hold on to. The war changed that, he said.

Read the dissidents' stories here.

An Australian man has died fighting to defend Ukraine from Russia's invasion, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) confirmed to CNN on Wednesday. 

Sage O'Donnell "died in action defending the freedom of the Ukrainian people," his mother said in a statement released by DFAT.

DFAT is providing consular assistance to the family, a spokesperson said.

At least 6,884 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Russia’s invasion of the country began in February, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said.

The figures, compiled up to Dec. 26, include 429 children, according to OHCHR, which added it believed the actual numbers were higher.

Nearly 11,000 people have been injured, it said.

CNN cannot independently verify the OCHR figures.

At least one man was killed and five other people were injured following Russian shelling in the southern Ukrainian town of Oleshky, on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, across from Kherson, Oleshky Mayor Yevhen Ryshchuk said via Facebook.

“As a result of the shelling of the town of Oleshky by the (Russian) occupiers the windows in the high-rise apartment building were shuttered. Unfortunately, five people were wounded and one person was killed,” Ryshchuk said.

The mayor also said that aside from a high-rise building, kiosks on the town’s market were damaged by the shelling. 

A hospital maternity ward in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was hit by Russian shelling, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the office of the president of Ukraine said Tuesday. 

Other impacted areas: Russian shelling also damaged the civilian infrastructure of the Antonivka settlement in the Kherson region and Kherson city, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said via Facebook, adding that there are casualties among civilians.

Meanwhile, the threat of air and missile strikes on critical infrastructure facilities remains on the whole territory of Ukraine, as Russia's offensive took place in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions, trying to improve the tactical situation in the direction of Lyman, Ukraine’s Armed Forces said.

The number of outages across Ukraine is decreasing as more parts of the electric grid are restored and consumption is reduced due to favorable weather conditions, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Tuesday.

In the event of no Russian shelling, the New Year holiday will pass without emergency shutdowns, Shmyhal said during a cabinet meeting in Kyiv, according to a government statement. 

More consumers are seeing power restored at least partially as the infrastructure is being restored, the prime minister said. 

Ukraine also believes Russia is preparing to continue attacks on the country’s energy system, according to Shmyhal, who emphasized that his country is "in a daily state of readiness for new massive shelling."