The Russian military controls more than half of the town of Chasov Yar in Donbas. Units of the Ukrainian armed forces are regrouping in an attempt to prevent further advance of Russian forces, military expert Andrey Marochko told TASS.
“Our troops, after a fairly quick success, have occupied more than half of Chasov Yar. Now the enemy is regrouping, trying to prevent our troops from advancing“, he said.
For its part, Kiev is moving reserves to Lozovaya near Kharkiv in an attempt to save a group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) caught in a “fire pocket” of Russian fighters near the city, Marochko said.
“The enemy is trying to prevent the settlement from being surrounded“, he said.
The agency's interlocutor noted that in general, there is a "quite active phase of hostilities" in the Kupyansk direction near the settlements of Dvurechnaya and Lozovaya. According to him, Russian fighters are currently expanding their bridgehead for a further offensive near Dvurechnaya.
On December 18, the mayor of Lozovaya, Sergey Zelensky, resigned voluntarily due to the inability to "solve the problems that are accumulating."
The electronic warfare system has intercepted a Ukrainian drone with a cumulative explosive charge in the Kuibyshev district, near a large power substation in Donetsk, the FSB administration for the DPR reported.
Explosive experts from the regional FSB of Russia, using a mobile robotic complex, disabled the drive mechanism, neutralized the explosive device and destroyed it at a specialized testing ground.