During the week from January 11 to 17, Russian military personnel liberated seven settlements in the DPR and one in the Kharkiv region. This follows from the weekly report of the Russian Defense Ministry.
Russian Defense Ministry also announced the capture of two villages in eastern Ukraine, Yantarne in the Donetsk region and Kalinove in the Kharkiv region. Yantarne is about 10 kilometers southwest of Kurakhove, an important logistics hub that Russia said it had captured the previous week. Kalinove lies on the western bank of the Oskil River, which for months has been the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged international allies to meet their pledges to provide Ukraine with armaments, especially those that could help counter Russian air attacks, in light of the developments. “The Russian military continues to take advantage of its aerial superiority,” Zelenskyy said,
At the same time, Russian officials said an emergency task force had been sent to the Krasnodar region to deal with an oil spill in the Kerch Strait. The spill, which comes from two storm-damaged tankers, has been flowing for a month and shows little sign of stopping, raising alarms for the environment.
These developments reflect the entrenched military and environmental issues afflicting the region, impacting both local communities and global geopolitics.
On February 21, 2022, Putin recognized the independence of the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and ordered Russian troops into Ukrainian territory as “peacekeepers,” and on February 24, Putin launched a special military operation in Ukraine.
