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What 9 December 2022 showed about the war
Summary
A look back at a day of abductions at Zaporizhzhia, a Moscow sentence and continued shelling in Donetsk region.
What did the war look like on 9 December 2022? Across the front and beyond it, the reports pointed to pressure on civilians, on nuclear plant staff and on critics of the war inside Russia.
On that date, Ukraine's Energoatom said Russian soldiers had abducted two senior staff members from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The company said the two workers were beaten before being driven off in an unknown direction.
The same day, a court in Moscow sentenced the prominent opposition figure Ilya Yashin to eight and a half years in prison. The charges were related to his criticism of the war in Ukraine.
On the battlefield, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of destroying the front-line city of Bakhmut after weeks of relentless shelling by Russian forces.
The days before
The shelling of Donetsk region had continued in the preceding days. On 8 December 2022, Russian forces shelled the front line in the region, killing one civilian and damaging buildings in Toretsk. On 7 December 2022, shelling of Kurakhove in Donetsk Oblast killed ten civilians and injured five others.
Taken together, the reports from those days described civilians killed in Donetsk region, a city under sustained bombardment, staff seized at a nuclear plant and a long prison term for a Russian opposition figure.
