The Armed Forces denied the statements of the General Staff of the Russian Federation about the breakthrough in Liman

The statement of the chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov about the alleged breakthrough of Russian troops in Liman in Donetsk region is not true and is “a lie of the high command of the Russian army”, the Third Army Corps of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.

It was noted there that Gerasimov reported to the Russian leader Putin about the breakthrough of the Russian Federation in Donetsk region, where the defense is held by the 63rd and units of the 60th OMBr of the Third Army Corps.

“The units of the corps repulse about 40 enemy assaults a day on the approaches to the Liman and do not allow the enemy to enter the city,” said the commander of the corps, Brigadier General Andriy Biletskyi.

As the corps stated, over the past month, Russian forces made a dozen infiltration attempts by small groups on the outskirts of the city, “and the occupants of each of them were eliminated or captured.”

On December 1, the Kremlin informed Putin about Gerasimov’s mentioned report, noting that on November 30 the Russian leader visited “one of the control points of the joint army group” of the Russian Federation.

During that report, the Russian command also informed Putin about the capture of the cities of Pokrovsk and Vovchansk, in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions of Ukraine, respectively.

The authorities of Ukraine deny such reports. On the evening of December 1, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi, speaking in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron, emphasized that all these cities remain under the control of Ukraine. “Definitely, there are advances in Russia, certainly there are several offensive actions and operations in Russia. None of these operations was successful,” Zelenskyi said at a press conference with Macron. However, he admitted that the situation in Pokrovsk and other areas “remains difficult.”

The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that the Kremlin could have announced the capture of the mentioned cities prematurely – as was the case with many other settlements in Ukraine – as part of a cognitive war in order to influence the course of the US-Russian talks scheduled in Moscow on December 2.

Analysts emphasized that they still do not see confirmation that Russian troops have captured all of Pokrovsk, despite the fact that they have been operating in the city for more than 120 days.