A view shows an apartment building damaged by Russian military strikes, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in this picture taken from the window of an armoured vehicle, in Pokrovsk, Donetsk… Purchase Licensing Rights
REUTERS | Published February 16, 2025
KYIV, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Russian troops have sharply stepped up their attacks in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s military said on Sunday, as a NATO official predicted Moscow would increase the pace and intensity of its assaults with talks to end the war approaching.
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The main attacks were concentrated near the imperilled logistics hub of Pokrovsk, Kyiv said, with U.S. and Russian officials expected to hold talks in the coming days in Saudi Arabia and U.S President Donald Trump pushing for peace.
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Kyiv’s military reported 261 combat engagements with Russia over a 24-hour period on Saturday, easily the largest number recorded this year and more than double the roughly 100 per day it reported in previous days.
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“Today was the hardest day of 2025 at the front,” the Ukrainian DeepState military blog wrote late on Saturday.
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Moscow’s troops advanced steadily in the east for much of the second half 2024, announcing the capture of village after village, though the intensity of the fighting dropped in January this year, according to Ukrainian military data.
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Russian forces have seized a swathe of territory to the south of Pokrovsk and are now pushing upwards to its southwest, threatening a main supply route into the outpost, the capture of which could open up more lines of attack for Russia.
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Despite being on the backfoot, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reported a “good result” in the east on Thursday and a military spokesman said Kyiv’s forces had recaptured the village of Pishchane, about 5 km to Pokrovsk’s south.
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“It isn’t so much the result of something collapsing for the Russians or some kind of magical weapon being delivered to Ukraine, no. Certain organizational actions were taken to help Ukrainians act more effectively,” Viktor Trehubov, a military spokesman, told Reuters.
‘STRONGER PUSH’
Ukraine has been using drones for deep strikes on Russia in an effort to inflict pain and strengthen its overall position. Russia has continued to conduct regular drone and missile strikes, while making advances on the ground in the east.
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“I would expect a much stronger push. I would expect that we would see … a lot of Russian efforts to advance,” a NATO official who requested anonymity told Reuters.
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Though Ukrainian officials are careful to praise Trump, his push to engage directly with the Russians without first consulting with Kyiv and to leave out the Europeans entirely is a cause for alarm in Ukraine and Europe.
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Kyiv has said it was not invited to take part in the talks in Saudi Arabia and that in any case it wants to devise a joint strategy with its U.S. and European allies before meeting Russian officials.
RELATED: Russian drones hit Ukraine power plant, leaving residents in the cold
Ukrainian firefighters work at the site of a strike in the city of Kramatorsk [File: Genya Savilov/AFP]
AL JAZEERA | Published February 16, 2025
Russian drone strikes have damaged a thermal power plant in Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine overnight, leaving 46,000 consumers without heating as temperatures plunge below freezing, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.
“This was done deliberately to leave people without heat in sub-zero temperatures and create a humanitarian catastrophe,” Shmyhal said on the Telegram messenger app.
Russia attacked Ukraine with 143 drones overnight, but the Ukrainian military said it shot down 95 of them, while 46 did not reach their targets, likely thanks to the use of electromagnetic countermeasures that disrupt drone attacks.
At least one person was injured in the overnight attacks which also damaged houses in the Kyiv region, Ukrainian officials said. The temperature in Mykolaiv is expected to fall to minus 7 degrees Celsius (19.4 Fahrenheit) on Sunday night.
Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Kyiv, said the Ukrainian army announced it has seen an “uptick in attacks by Russian forces” over the past 24 hours.
“In general … we’ve seen no really big gains made by Russian forces for months now – but no indication that the fighting is going down,” he said.
Protect the world ‘from evil’
On the sidelines of the three-day Munich Security Conference, which concludes on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Western allies to boost Ukraine’s air defence.
Zelenskyy said Russia now holds 20 percent of Ukraine and is slowly advancing in the east as Moscow’s full-scale invasion nears its third anniversary.
He cited data showing that over the past week, Russia had unleashed about 1,220 aerial bombs, over 850 drones, and more than 40 missiles into government-controlled areas of Ukraine.
There was no immediate comment from Russia.
“Europe and the world must be better protected from such evil and prepared to confront it,” Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post.
“This requires a strong, united foreign policy and pressure on Putin, who started this war and is now expanding it globally,” he said.
