Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged to continue preparing the Ukrainian defense and security forces in response to "continuous Russian aggression," saying that the next year will be decisive in terms of battles on the ground.
And the Ukrainian authorities decided to declare a state of air alert in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and the provinces of Zaporizhia, Kherson, and Mykolaiv, in anticipation of Russian missile attacks, as Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushenko said that Russia may use missiles and cruise missiles in a large-scale attack on New Year's Eve.
Zelensky's remarks came hours after statements by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in which he called on the Ukrainian forces to surrender, "otherwise you will face an ongoing war."
Lavrov said - in statements reported by the official Russian news agency - that Moscow's proposals regarding "disarmament" and "elimination of Nazism" in Ukraine are well known to Kyiv, calling on the Ukrainian authorities to move to eliminate "threats to Russia's security, otherwise it is the Russian army that will It will be settled."
In response to Lavrov's statements, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mikhail Podolyak said that Lavrov's threats, military mobilization, and secret contracts concluded by Russia with Iran will not help it face reality.
Peace negotiations
And Russia announced - on Tuesday - its refusal to conduct peace negotiations on Ukrainian terms, and Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, in a press conference, in response to a question about whether Moscow was ready to negotiate under certain conditions from Kyiv, "We never followed the conditions of others, we only focused on Our circumstances, and on common sense," according to the Russian news agency Sputnik.
This was in response to statements by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, in which he said that Kyiv wants to hold a "peace summit" by the end of next February, adding that he would prefer it to be on the United Nations platform with the Secretary-General of the Organization, Antonio Guterres.
For her part, a spokeswoman for the United Nations said that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cannot mediate over Ukraine;
Unless all parties want it.
In another context, the Minister of Energy said that negotiations on the establishment of a demilitarized zone around the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia province, in the south of the country, are still continuing under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Galushenko added, during his meeting with the ambassadors of the Group of Seven and the European Union mission in Kyiv, that his country's requests are clear and simple, namely the disarmament of the station, and the withdrawal of all military manifestations of the Russian forces from there.
The bombing of Angles Airport
On the ground, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuriy Ignat, said that several Russian warplanes evacuated from the Russian airport of Engels to other airports, hours after it was targeted yesterday.
For its part, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that about 100 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded in Ukrainian shelling on their positions in the Vasiliev region of Zaporizhia province, southern Ukraine.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian General Staff confirmed that during the past hours, Russian forces launched 44 attacks from missile systems on several provinces, and announced that its forces had responded to Russian attacks on more than one front in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Donetsk and Luhansk
In turn, the governor of the Ukrainian province of Donetsk, Pavlo Kurlenko, said that the Russian army targeted at dawn on Wednesday and at night hours a number of cities and towns throughout the province, and on the axes of Seversk, Liman and Avdiivka.
The Ukrainian General Staff also said that the Ukrainian army repelled the Russian attacks launched on cities and towns near the city of Donetsk.
On the other hand, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in attacks by Russian forces on the southern Donetsk axis in the Donbass region.
For its part, the pro-Russian Donetsk authorities reported that 4 civilians were injured in Ukrainian shelling on residential neighborhoods in the city, which is located in the Donbass region, in eastern Ukraine.
She said that the Ukrainian forces bombed the city from yesterday until this morning with more than 100 shells.
In Lugansk, the pro-Russian authorities said that the Ukrainian army is sending reinforcements to the contact lines in the Kremnaya axis, in the east of the region, to compensate for its human losses on the front.