As Moscow intensifies its attacks on the strategically important Black Sea region and negotiations to end the conflict are still at a crucial stage, a Russian ballistic missile strike on port infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa port in the south has resulted in the deaths of at least eight people and the injuries of 27.
Critical logistics infrastructure was hit by the attack late on Friday, with some of the injured stranded on a bus at the strike’s epicenter as trucks started to burn in a car park.
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More than two million people have been without electricity, water, or heating for days in the war’s fourth punishing winter, according to Ukrainian officials, as part of a long Russian campaign against Odesa’s civilian infrastructure.
Moscow struck reservoirs in a move that Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba described as being purposefully aimed at civilian logistics routes on Saturday.
As both sides battle multiple fronts, the escalation drags on in the face of US-led negotiations and numerous high-level meetings in Europe without a resolution.
Although the reports could not be independently verified, Russia claimed on Saturday that it had taken control of the villages of Svitle in the eastern Donetsk region and Vysoke in the northeastern Sumy region.
Russia’s military and energy assets have been targeted by Ukraine as a response.
A military patrol ship patrolling close to the platform and Ukrainian drones struck the Filanovsky oil rig belonging to Russian energy giant Lukoil on Friday night in the Caspian Sea.
Although the rig had been hit at least twice in December, the attack marked the first officially recognized Ukrainian attack on Caspian drilling infrastructure.
A Russian Kilo-class submarine was attacked by Ukrainian forces at the Novorossiysk Naval Base in the Black Sea between December 14 and 15, according to a report from the British Defence Intelligence Agency.
Miami exchanges
The attacks take place as American and European officials discuss ending the nearly four-year conflict in Miami over the weekend, with Russian and Ukrainian teams also present.
Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian envoy to Miami, announced his arrival on Saturday.
Despite calling the conflict “not our war,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted that Washington would not impose any sanctions on Ukraine.
Rustem Umerov, a negotiator for Ukraine, and other UK, French, and German officials are in conversation with Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Russian officials are holding separate meetings with American officials, including Kremlin-key negotiator Dmitriev.
The main impediment is still the use of territorial concessions, with reports suggesting that Washington is compelled to renounce eastern Donetsk in favor of ceding areas.
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, pledged to continue conducting military operations and to anticipate new successes before the end of the year by no means of compromise at his annual choreographed news conference on Friday.
Putin’s remarks come just after he ordered troops to enter the neighboring nation, the latest in a string of frequently repeated maximalist Russian positions.
One of the most contentious issues in the negotiations to end the war so far is the question of territory gained, lost, or to be ceded.
Putin has resisted giving Ukraine all of its territory to the regions that Moscow and his forces seized and annexed in 2014.
Additionally, he wants Ukrainian troops to leave eastern Ukraine, which the Russian military has yet to do in the eastern Donetsk region, where fighting continues to be attritional, conditions that Kyiv has explicitly rejected.
Russia has a significant influence over the eastern and Black Sea coastal regions of Ukraine, and the fighting continues as the talks progress.
Putin said on Friday that Russian forces had “fully seized strategic initiative” and that they would gain more before the year was over, and that they had confidence in the state of the battlefield.
However, this week’s shaky narrative centers on Moscow’s claim that it will win in the face of undisputed facts.
After isolating Russian forces inside its northern city of Kupiansk, Ukraine gradually relinquished control of almost all of its territory, defying Russian claims that they had seized it.
Russian forces were unable to dislod Ukrainian defenders from Pokrovsk, a city in eastern Donetsk, to support Moscow’s claims of total control.
On Friday, European leaders agreed to offer a 90 billion euros ($105bn) loan to cover Ukraine’s military and economic needs for the following two years.
