In Zaporizhia, southern Ukraine, a Russian missile strike “destroyed” a private clinic, according to authorities. Two people died and sixteen others were injured. The toll is likely to rise in the coming hours. Thursday December 12, 2024, Emmanuel Macron must go to Warsaw to take stock with the Polish Prime Minister on the meeting between future American President Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, during the reopening of Notre-Dame in Paris. In Donbass, some 150,000 troops have been deployed to carry out three offensives in the region, according to a spokesperson for a military unit in the Zaporizhia Territory.
Six people potentially still under the rubble
At least two people were killed and 16 others injured Tuesday in a Russian missile strike that “destroyed” a private clinic in the town of Zaporizhia, in southern Ukraine, a toll which is likely to rise, according to the authorities. The attack took place early in the afternoon, affecting “civil infrastructure” in the city center of Zaporizhia, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram. According to him, six people could still be under the rubble.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned “a brutal attack” Russian forces which also damaged an office building and other buildings. He once again urged the West to provide more air defense systems to Ukraine, including American Patriot batteries, in order to save “thousands of lives” of the “Russian terror”. “The world has enough systems to do this […] the question depends entirely on political decisions,” and plaid Zelensky.
Russia has stepped up its strikes against southern Ukraine in recent weeks. On Friday, a Russian attack has already left ten people dead in Zaporizhia. The Ukrainian authorities had already reported in the morning three people killed and at least 17 injured over the last twenty-four hours in Russian bombings on the region of Donetsk (east) and Kherson (south).
150,000 men deployed in Donbass to break through the Ukrainian defense
The Russian army has assembled some 150,000 troops for offensives in three important areas of Donbass in eastern Ukraine, announced Nazar Volochyn, the spokesman for the operational and strategic group of troops in Khortytsia (which covers the area from Kharkiv to Vouhledar) on Ukrainian television. More than 70,000 soldiers were gathered in the Pokrovsk direction, around 35,000 to 36,000 in the Kurakhove direction and around 40,000 in the Vremivka direction, reports our colleagues from Monde.
If these forces aim to break through the Ukrainian defense, the Russians lost more than 35,000 men in November and 8,000 during the first week of December, according to the Ukrainians.
The Russians “are trying to occupy the heights and take control of the roads and logistics routes leading to Kurakhove (Donetsk oblast) in order to break through the city's defense. The Russian army is intensively bombarding the city using guided aerial bombs and artillery. added the spokesperson, affirming that the Russian reconnaissance units which enter there are, on this date, quickly eliminated.
Alerts consistent with the opinion of several Ukrainian experts and soldiers, who believe that the Russian army could prepare a new land offensive on the southern front, particularly in the Zaporizhia region where positions have remained generally unchanged for months. Such an attack would constitute a challenge for the Ukrainian army, already struggling on the eastern front and which is engaged in the Russian border region of Kursk, of which it occupies a small part.
Emmanuel Macron must go to Poland next Thursday
The French president should go to Warsaw (Poland) on Thursday, December 12, to take stock of the meeting between future American president Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky during the reopening of Notre-Dame in Paris, said the Polish prime minister. . According to Donald Tusk, the French president “want [leur] share the results of the discussions » which took place in Paris between Macron, Trump and Zelensky, during a meeting that he described as “brief but important”.
According to him, the peace negotiations in Ukraine could ” to start “ this winter, while Warsaw takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union in January. “Our presidency will be co-responsible, in particular, for what the political landscape will be, for what the situation will perhaps be during the negotiations [de paix]which – there are still question marks – will perhaps begin during the winter of this year”, he declared to the press, quoted by theAFP.
