A Su-25 plane is seen firing rockets over Ukraine in a video frame grab. The video was taken from inside another Su-25 plane and released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Jan. 22, 2024. behind Avdiivka where our troops could get and dig in, but there is none,” he said.
After securing another term in a preordained election in March, President Vladimir Putin vowed to carve out a “sanitary zone” to protect Russia’s border regions from Ukrainian shelling and incursions. In a possible sign of a looming attack on Kharkiv, a city of 1.1 million about 30 kilometers south of the border, Russia has ramped up strikes on power plants in the area, inflicting significant damage and causing blackouts.
Retired Lt. Gen. Andrei Gurulev, now on the defense committee of Russia’s lower chamber of parliament, acknowledged that capturing Kharkiv is a major challenge, and he predicted the military would try to surround it.