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The Ukrainian army is demonstrating readiness for action – on the country's northern border with Belarus.
The military leadership released these images on December 24.
It should be about targeted maneuvers and exercises in the border area to prevent a possible landing of Russian paratroopers.
In recent days there has been repeated speculation that Putin's invading troops could make a new attempt to attack the Ukrainian capital Kyiv from Belarus.
How realistic such an attempt would be is questionable.
But the Ukrainian side apparently takes the concentration of Russian troops in the neighboring country seriously enough to signal readiness for combat.
The Ukrainian defenders have been showing them elsewhere for months.
Bakhmut in Donbas, in the east of the country - Ukrainian troops are successfully holding the city against all Russian offensives.
Also at Christmas.
Original sound Oleksii, army medic
'I thought there might be some sort of holiday cheer on Saturday. But no chance. We take care of people's suffering every day and feel the consequences.
I do my job because my grandfather was in the army, as a pilot. My uncle and my great-grandfather too. It's such a family thing, so I wouldn't even call it a job. It's that simple. I am Ukrainian, son of my parents and that says it all.«
Daily fighting, shelling, destruction is omnipresent.
Those of the approximately 75,000 residents who lived in Bachmut before the war are still here either don't want to or can't leave.
OT Volodymyr, local resident
“It's pretty noisy in here, everything is shaking, swaying or shaking all the time. We have to survive somehow and that's how we will continue. That's all."
Calm or even peace is not in sight for the people in Bakhmut and in the entire Ukraine.
Not even at Christmas.