December 30, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Heavy Russian attacks on the eastern Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut and Soledar "smack of desperation, reminiscent of suicide bombers," according to a Ukrainian presidential adviser.

Oleksiy Arestovych was speaking during his nightly livestream on Feygin Live, a pro-Ukrainian channel.

Some context: Bakhmut has become perhaps the most contested and kinetic part of the 1,300 kilometer (800 mile) front line in Ukraine and the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the war. The greater Donetsk region, where Bakhmut and Soledar are located, has been held by Russian-backed separatists since 2014 and is one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims as Russian territory in violation of international law.

A remote Russian republic is offering to pay the tuition fees of students whose parents are enlisted in the military, according to the region's education minister.

Aybulat Khazhin, education minister of Bashkortostan, said on Telegram that students whose parents have been drafted to serve in the Russian army will receive coverage for their college tuition, dormitory expenses and additional financial support.

Some context: In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced an immediate "partial mobilization" in a bid to reinforce his faltering invasion of Ukraine. The controversial move sparked protests and an exodus of young men from Russia who were at risk of punishment if they refused to be drafted.

Russian officials ended the draft in November and claimed that its target of recruiting 300,000 personnel had been completed.

Russia’s latest attacks on Ukraine damaged power facilities and left key regions with limited electricity supply Thursday evening, a top Ukrainian official said in an update.

Even though the country's air defenses shot down many missiles from the Russian barrage, “some of them hit several power facilities," said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

"We will not specify the locations of these objects, but because of these hits, we have limited power supply capacities in some regions," he continued.

Engineers are working to restore electricity across Ukraine, with capacity limitations remaining in Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa, he said.

Tymoshenko said he was hopeful the situation in Kyiv would improve Friday.

He praised the efforts of engineers who worked through the past week to stabilize supply in the capital, saying their hard work was realized on Christmas weekend, "when practically all households in Kyiv had electricity supply."

"I believe that now our power engineers will work a few more hours in such a mode and there will be a normal power supply to the city of Kyiv,” Tymoshenko said.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, CEO of the Ukrainian utility Ukrenergo, also reported that disruptions to energy supply persisted Thursday evening.

Repairs are ongoing, but due to significant network damage, “it is difficult for us to supply electricity in regions of Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson and Lviv,” he said.

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 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.

Explosions rattled villages and cities across Ukraine on Thursday, damaging civilian infrastructure and killing at least three people in what Kyiv has called one of Moscow’s biggest missile barrages since the war began in February.

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 Christmas holidays, which for the country’s Orthodox Christians falls on January 7.

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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, and 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.

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