In their first phone conversation in 2023, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, told the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley about the changes in the operational and strategic situation in Ukraine and spoke about the military's further needs for fighting against Russian aggression.
“I highly appreciate General Milley’s leadership in providing military aid to Ukraine. Mutual trust and common vision help to increase the Ukrainian army’s ability to defend our country’s peaceful cities and villages, which is a guarantee of security in all of Europe,” Zaluzhnyi wrote on Facebook.
Describing the situation on the front line, Zaluzhnyi said heavy fighting is currently taking place in the eastern Luhansk Oblast, in the area of Svatove and Kreminna.
Kreminna lies only 25 kilometers northwest of Sievierodonetsk, a major city in Luhansk Oblast which Russian troops occupied in June. On Dec. 26, Luhansk Oblast Governor Serhiy Haidai said that Ukrainian troops had come within 20 kilometers of the city, with heavy fighting ongoing.
According to Zaluzhnyi, the most difficult situation is still in the eastern Donetsk Oblast in the areas of Bakhmut, Soledar, and Maiorsk.
“There, the enemy is practically stepping over their own corpses to move forward, but Ukrainian units hold back the enemy offensive at the cost of overwhelming force,” he said.
Bakhmut, a salt-mining city with a pre-war population of around 70,000, is one of Russia’s main targets, as seizing it could allow Russian forces to launch attacks on urban areas such as Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in Donetsk Oblast.
