Russia and Ukraine released hundreds of prisoners of war, the largest release so far

“Save us! Save us!” – Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy and a “Suspect of Crime in Ukraine”

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said that his country’s defense system shot down 70% of the missiles in his country. The northeastern city of Kharkiv was also “hit hard,” he said on his Telegram social media channel.

The Foreign Ministry of the Ukranian said that strikes in the capital of Kyiv had hit a supermarket, gas infrastructure and residential buildings.

His partner says that there was a lot of smoke. I yelled ‘Save us!’ Save us!’ — hoping someone would hear.” Rescue workers came with a crane and helped the couple escape.

Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said on X, formerly Twitter, the military was able to shoot down 10 of Russia’s advanced Kinzhal missiles with the help of Patriot systems.

NATO will help member nations purchase up to 1000 surface-to-air missiles in a deal possibly costing about $5 billion. That could allow alliance members to send more of their own defense systems to Ukraine.

Russia-Ukraine exchange hundreds of prisoners of war in biggest release so far, with the exception of Zeleznogorsk

Authorities were forced to temporarily shut down an electricity substation in the city of 100,000 people in the Kursk region to repair the damage from an aerial attack, Kursk Gov. Roman Starovoit said on Telegram.

The city of Zeleznogorsk was cut off from the power grid for a time on Wednesday after Ukrainian shelling, local officials said.

The Russian side of the frontier has come under increasingly frequent attack in recent days. In the course of the war, the border villages have been the target of Ukrainian fire many times and they are hard to detect.

Many Russian military commentators regret their country’s departure from the border area during the time of the counteroffensive by Ukranian forces, and many of them believe that more territory should be grabbed to secure the area.

In the biggest single release of captives since Russia’s invasion of February 2022, hundreds of prisoners of war were exchanged between Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday.

Some of the Ukrainians had been held since 2022. Among them were some of those who fought in milestone battles for Ukraine’s Snake Island and the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

“The situation in the border city of Belgorod, which came under two rounds of shelling on Wednesday morning, remains tense,” said regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov, writing on Telegram.

“Air defense systems worked,” he said, promising more details about possible damage after inspecting the area later in the day, part of a New Year’s holiday week in Russia.

Source: Russia and Ukraine exchange hundreds of prisoners of war in biggest release so far

Moscow attacks on Belgorod as a test of Russia’s stability and security in the first full-scale invasion of the region of Crimea

Ukraine fired two Tochka-U missiles and seven rockets at the region late Tuesday, followed by six Tochka-U missiles and six Vilkha rockets on Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Hitting Belgorod and disrupting city life is a dramatic way for Ukraine to show it can strike back against Russia, whose military outnumbers and outguns Kyiv’s forces.

On Saturday, shelling of Belgorod killed 25 people, including five children, in one of the deadliest strikes on Russian soil since Moscow’s full-scale invasion. A civilian was killed Tuesday.

The Belgorod attacks by Ukraine were lashed out at by Putin. “They want to intimidate us and create uncertainty within our country,” he said, promising to step up retaliation.