“Putin Ordered to Defeat…” Russia’s Top Military General Say Army Advancing in Ukraine

Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, said on Tuesday (Dec. 9) that Moscow’s forces were advancing along the entire front line in Ukraine and were targeting surrounded Ukrainian troops in the town of Myrnohrad.In a command post meeting with officers of the Centre Grouping which is fighting in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Gerasimov said President Vladimir Putin had ordered the defeat of Ukrainian forces in Myrnohrad, a town with a pre-war population of some 46,000 people to the east of Pokrovsk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.Gerasimov said Russian forces had taken control of more than 30 percent of Myrnohrad’s buildings. Russia, which uses the Soviet-era name of Krasnoarmeysk to refer to neighbouring Pokrovsk, says it has taken the whole of the city and claims to have also encircled Ukrainian forces in Myrnohrad, which Russians call Dimitrov.n18oc_crux | n18oc_world