The head of Ukrainian intelligence, Kirill Budanov, said that his country plans to launch a major attack next spring on the locations of the Russian forces, considering that the fighting next March will be "the most fierce."

This comes at a time when the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the new frigate "Admiral Gorshkov" had carried out a test launch of a supersonic "Zircon" missile from the waters of the Barents Sea, hitting a sea target at a distance of about 1,000 km in the White Sea.

The Russian Defense Minister had announced that the frigate would sail to the Atlantic, Indian and Mediterranean seas.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also said that the powerful weapons you carry protect Russia from external threats.


Major attacks

Budanov stressed that the expected attack will include all Russian sites, starting from the Crimea and ending with Donbass, and that the attacks inside Russian territory will go deeper.

Budanov claimed that hundreds of corpses of Russian soldiers are rotting in open fields near Bakhmut, in the east of the country.

He also considered that Russia no longer constitutes a military threat to the world, and that the only remaining issue - in his view - is the nuclear arsenal and what he described as an "uncontrolled system" that will make "the entire world aware of the need to disarm Russian nuclear weapons," as he put it.

Patriot system

On the other hand, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said earlier today, Wednesday, that the transfer of US Patriot systems to Ukraine has already begun, and that "they will be deployed and used as soon as possible to respond to Russian aggression."

Kuleba described Washington's decision to provide Kyiv with Patriot systems as a "revolutionary decision," adding that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the entire diplomatic team "are working intensively today on new solutions to supply our country with new types of Western weapons."

Washington announced in the past few weeks that its new package of military aid to Ukraine will include for the first time the Patriot air defense system, which is capable of shooting down cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and others.


destroy Ukraine

On the other hand, German Foreign Minister Analina Baerbock said that the European Union did its best to stop the war in Ukraine, but the Russian president was thinking of nothing but destroying his neighboring country.

She added - during a conference in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon - that Putin's position is the reason "it is important to continue sending weapons so that Ukraine can defend itself and protect the lives of its people."

Peacekeepers

Regarding the Zaporizhia nuclear plant in the south of the country, the head of the National Nuclear Energy Company in Ukraine announced that his country wants the United Nations to send peacekeeping forces to the station without even concluding an agreement with Russia to establish a safe zone there.

Ukraine has been calling for the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers at the site since last September, but this is the first time that a Ukrainian official in the field of nuclear energy has indicated publicly that peacekeepers should be deployed in the absence of an agreement to establish a safe zone at the station, which was controlled by Russia. Shortly after the start of its war on Ukraine on February 24.

The station, Europe's largest nuclear power plant, has been repeatedly bombed and power outages, raising fears of a radiological disaster.

Kyiv and Moscow exchange accusations about these attacks.


Bombing and killing

On the ground, Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol in Zaporizhia County, said that the Russian military command center in the Vasilievka region was bombed by Ukrainians today, Wednesday.

Fedorov said that preliminary news indicates dead and wounded among the Russian forces there, and that everyone is waiting for news, which he described as good, from the Ukrainian General Staff.

The Vasilievka region is the only crossing point for the displaced Ukrainians from the areas controlled by the Russian forces in the Zaporizhia countryside.

The Ukrainian General Staff also said that Russian forces are defending themselves in the southern provinces of Zaporizhia and Kherson in particular.

The authority added that about 260 Russian soldiers were killed and wounded in the regions of Melitobel, Tokmak and Berdyansk in Zaporizhia.

It said that the bombing of its forces on those areas on the second day of the new year also resulted in the destruction of 10 units of military equipment, two ammunition depots, and other deployment points for the Russian forces.

The General Staff indicated that during the past hours, the Ukrainian aviation launched 13 raids on the positions of the Russian forces and another location for their missile systems, in addition to destroying two control points and an observation point for unmanned aircraft.