Overview
- Ukraine’s General Staff reported 173 combat engagements on Friday, with the hottest sectors around Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk in Donetsk.
- Early Saturday, the military ordered a holiday ceasefire across land, sea, and air with a promise to answer any violations immediately and in kind.
- Ukrainian forces said they struck oil infrastructure overnight near Krymsk in Russia’s Krasnodar region and an oil depot in occupied Crimea, in what commanders describe as a push to choke fuel flows to the front; Russia claimed many drones were downed and damage is still being assessed.
- Those oil strikes follow Ukraine’s claim of hitting two Caspian Sea drilling platforms on Friday, a move Kyiv frames as reducing Russia’s war economy, though Moscow has not confirmed damage.
- President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that 175 service members and seven civilians returned in a prisoner exchange, as regional officials reported new civilian casualties from Russian attacks in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.