Aftermath of Russian shelling on Kherson city in southern Ukraine, December 24, 2022

Saturday’s Coverage: Europe Gas Prices At Lowest Point Since Before Russian Invasion

Source: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1026 GMT:

The death toll has risen to 16 from Russia’s shelling of Kherson city on Saturday.

Another 64 people are injured, says Governor Yaroslav Yanushevych .

UPDATE 0833 GMT:

The Washington Post details the mass deportation of Ukrainian children by Russian forces, with many of them “adopted” by families in Russia.

Oleksandr has not seen his mother since Russian soldiers captured the pair in Mariupol, in southern Ukraine, in April and took her away. At 12, he escaped adoption into a Russian family only because he remembered his grandmother’s phone number and called her to come and save him.

Russia’s proxy social welfare officials in occupied Ukraine discouraged her, warning of heavy fighting.

“They said that they would send him to an orphanage or they would find a family in Russia,” said his grandmother, Lyudmila, of Ichnya, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region. “I told them, ‘I’ll risk my life. I’ll come and pick him up.’ I was pleading with them not to send him to Russia.

“They told me, ‘It’s going to be very hard, and the paperwork is awful.’ I said I didn’t care,” Lyudmila said.

Daria Herasymchuk, Ukraine’s top children’s rights official said in November that the deportations of 10,764 Ukrainian children to Russia have been reported by relatives or friends.

Russia’s “children’s rights commissioner” Maria Lvova-Belova — who calls for stripping children of their Ukrainian identities and who has adopted a Ukrainian orphan from the destroyed city of Mariupol — said on October 26 that about 2,000 “unaccompanied children” from Ukraine were “evacuated” to Russia.

She said most were in orphanages and group homes: “350 orphans from Donbas have already been placed in foster families in 16 regions of Russia, but a 1,000 more children are waiting for new parents”.

UPDATE 0816 GMT:

Three members of Ukraine’s emergency services were killed on Saturday during demining operations in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine.

“All three selflessly served…and performed the task of demining territories liberated from the enemy in the Kherson region,” said the Zhytomyr emergency service.

Russian forces mined buildings in the region when they withdrew this autumn from areas west of the Dnipro River, including Kherson city.

UPDATE 0749 GMT:

The head of Ukraine military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, says Russia has fired about 540 of 1,700 Shahed-136 attack drones delivered by Iran since the summer.

In an interview with The New York Times, Budanov said the drones have been on frontlines and on Russia’s waves of attacks on energy infrastructure and other civilian sites.

Most of the drones have been downed by Ukrainian air defenses, but some “swarms” have been able to strike targets as Vladimir Putin tries to freeze Ukraine into submission.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: In Russia’s latest mass killing of civilians in Ukraine, 74 artillery attacks slew at least 10 people and wounded 58 in Kherson city in southern Ukraine on Saturday.

Eighteen of the injured, including a 6-year-old child, are in “grave condition”.

One shell landed next to a supermarket by Kherson’s Freedom Square, where a young woman was selling phone SIM cards, people were unloading a truck, and pedestrians were strolling.

Yuriy Sobolevsky, the deputy head of the regional council, said, “There were civilians there, each of whom lived their own life, went about their own business.”

Russia forces withdrew from Kherson on November 9 in a symbolic and strategic blow to Vladimir Putin’s 10-month invasion. However, the Russians have continued to shell the city, killing scores of civilians, from positions on the east bank of the Dnipro River.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the destruction and killings as terrorism, posting photographs of the aftermath with casualties lying on the street.:

These are not military facilities. This is not a war according to the rules defined. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.

The world must see and understand what absolute evil we are fighting against.

Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said the world has more evidence that Ukraine needs to be supplied with advanced defense systems, weapons, and ammunition.

A Kherson resident, Konstantin, summarized:

The Russians first came to Kherson, looted it and killed a lot of people. Now that they have fled, they are still trying to destroy it. But there is no panic. People are just filled with rage towards Russia.

Zelenskiy’s Christmas Message: “Courage and Bravery”

In his Christmas message on Saturday night, Zelenskiy began by noting the ongoing damage of the Russian invasion:

Unfortunately, all the holidays have a bitter aftertaste for us this year. And we can feel the traditional Spirit of Christmas differently. Dinner at the family table cannot be so tasty and warm. There may be empty chairs around it. And our houses and streets can’t be so bright. And Christmas bells can ring not so loudly and inspiringly. Through air raid sirens, or even worse – gunshots and explosions.

But he offered a response to the “loss of hope, loss of love, loss of ourselves”.

In this battle, we have another powerful and effective weapon. The hammer and sword of our spirit and consciousness. The wisdom of God. Courage and bravery. Virtues that incline us to do good and overcome evil….

Our truth is a struggle for freedom. Freedom comes at a high price. But slavery has an even higher price.

The President concluded:

We will sing Christmas carols — cheerier than ever — louder than the sound of a generator. We will hear the voices and greetings of relatives — in our hearts — even if communication service and the Internet are down. And even in total darkness — we will find each other — to hug each other tightly.