The Kremlin is likely to
want to "lead decisive action in the next six months" to regain control of the situation in Ukraine
after a series of failed and successful Ukrainian counter-offensives, the Institute for the Study of War writes ( Isw) in its latest update on the conflict, as reported by the Kyiv Independent.
Russia has failed to achieve most of its main objectives in Ukraine, observe the experts of the American research center recalling that Moscow's forces failed to capture Kiev in the first days of the invasion, as well as the entirety of the regions of Lugansk and Donetsk.
At the same time,
Ukrainian troops liberated more than 50 percent of the territory occupied by Russia since February
, including Kherson, the only regional capital Russia had managed to capture.
The institute also comments that the Russian campaign to target critical Ukrainian infrastructure during the winter in an attempt to demoralize Ukrainians has also been a failure so far and in many ways has generated increased support for the Ukrainian cause.
Meanwhile , the death toll from Saturday's Russian attack on an apartment building in Dnipro
has risen to at least 35
: the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentyn Reznichenko, made it known on Telegram
, reports Ukrinform.
"Overnight, rescuers pulled several more bodies from the rubble of a multi-story building destroyed by a Russian missile. The enemy attack took the lives of 35 residents of the building. The fate of 35 other residents is unknown," wrote Reznichenko.
The search for the people
trapped under the rubble continues.
The rescue operation has been underway for almost 40 hours.
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky intervened forcefully on the Dnipro massacre, condemning the
"cowardly silence" of the Russian people
.
"Your cowardly silence, your attempt to wait out the end of what is happening, will only end in the fact that one day these same terrorists will come for you," he said in his evening speech.
Zelensky added that he has received many messages of sympathy from all over the world.
And addressing the Russians in their own language, he noted "that even now they have not been able to utter words of condemnation of this terror".
Russian bombing also continues on the rest of the country.
Three people were injured,
including two children, in a rocket attack on the city of Zaporizhzhia
in southeastern Ukraine last night, City Council secretary Anatoliy Kurtiev said on Telegram.
'Three people were transported to hospital.
Among them are two children aged nine and fifteen,' Kurtiev wrote, adding that rescue teams from the State Emergency Service, doctors and utility workers are working on the scene.
Some infrastructure was destroyed in the attack.
Seven civilians were injured in yesterday's shelling in the Donetsk region of
eastern Ukraine.
The head of the regional military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko,
announced this on Telegram .
“On January 15, the Russians wounded seven civilians in the Donetsk region: two each in Bakhmut and Avdiivka, one
each in Velyka Novosilka, Lyman and Soledar,” Kyrylenko wrote.
Three people died and 14 others were injured yesterday in the city of Kherson
and the homonymous region in southern Ukraine.
The Russian army has attacked the territory of the region 90 times with multiple rocket launchers, mortars and tanks, Yanushevich said.
In particular, the city of Kherson was bombed 21 times and residential neighborhoods were also hit.
Yesterday the deputy head of the Ukrainian president's office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, denounced that Russian forces also bombed "the premises where representatives of the Red Cross work" in Kherson.
Ukrainian forces "almost certainly" held positions at Soledar
, north of Bakhmut, despite intense fighting over the weekend, the British Defense Ministry wrote in its daily intelligence update on the situation in the country.
Fighting that also affected the
Kreminna sector, in the Lugansk region, specifies the ministry in its report published on Twitter.
“Overall, the Ukrainian army continues to gradually advance its front line to the east, on the edge of the city of Kreminna,” he stresses.
"Over the past six weeks, both Russia and Ukraine have made hard-fought but limited gains in several sectors - conclude the London experts -. Under these circumstances, a key operational challenge for both sides is to generate troop formations. .. who can leverage tactical successes to create operational breakthroughs."