KYIV -- Ukrainian officials on January 27 said Russia had intensified attacks in the past 24 hours, with a commander saying the sides had battled through "50 combat clashes" in the past day near Ukraine's Tavria region.
Meanwhile, Kyiv and Moscow continued to dispute the circumstances surrounding the January 24 crash of a Russian military transport plane that the Kremlin claimed was carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Kyiv said it has no proof POWs were aboard and has not confirmed its forces shot down the plane.
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General Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, the Ukrainian commander in the Tavria zone in the Zaporizhzhya region, said Russian forces had "significantly increased" the number of offensive and assault operations over the past two days.
"For the second day in a row, the enemy has conducted 50 combat clashes daily,” he wrote on Telegram.
"Also, the enemy has carried out 100 air strikes in the operational zone of the Tavria Joint Task Force within seven days," he said, adding that 230 Russian-launched drones had been "neutralized or destroyed" over the past day in the area.
Battlefield claims on either side cannot immediately be confirmed.
Earlier, the Ukrainian military said 98 combat clashes took place between Ukrainian troops and the invading Russian army over the past 24 hours.
"There are dead and wounded among the civilian populations," the Ukrianian military's General Staff said in its daily update, but did not provide further details about the casualties.
According to the General Staff, Russian forces launched eight missile and four air strikes, and carried out 78 attacks from rocket-salvo systems on Ukrainian troop positions and populated areas. Iranian-made Shahed drones and Iskander ballistic missiles were used in the attacks, it said.
A number of "high-rise residential buildings, schools, kindergartens, a shopping center, and other civilian infrastructure were destroyed or damaged" in the latest Russian strikes, the bulletin said.
"More than 120 settlements came under artillery fire in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Mykolayiv regions," according to the daily update.
The General Staff also reported that Ukrainian defenders repelled dozens of Russian assaults in eight directions, including Avdiyivka, Bakhmut, Maryinka, and Kupyansk in the eastern Donetsk region.
Meanwhile, Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukrainian military intelligence, said it remained unclear what happened in the crash of the Russian Il-76 that the Kremlin claimed was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were killed along with nine crew members.
The Kremlin said the military transport plane was shot down by a Ukrainian missile despite the fact that Russian forces had alerted Kyiv to the flight’s path.
Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov told RFE/RL that it had not received either a written or verbal request to secure the airspace where the plane went down.
The situation with the crash of the aircraft "is not yet fully understood,” Budanov said.
"It is necessary to determine what happened – unfortunately, neither side can fully answer that yet."
Russia "of course, has taken the position of blaming Ukraine for everything, despite the fact that there are a number of facts that are inconsistent with such a position," he added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted Ukraine shot down the plane and said an investigation was being carried out, with a report to be made in the upcoming days.
In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced the creation of a second body to assist businesses in the war-torn country.
Speaking in his nightly video address late on January 26, Zelenskiy said the All-Ukraine Economic Platform would help businesses overcome the challenges posed by Russia's nearly two-year-old invasion.
On January 23, Zelenskiy announced the formation of a Council for the Support of Entrepreneurship, which he said sought to strengthen the country's economy and clarify issues related to law enforcement agencies. Decrees creating both bodies were published on January 26.
Ukraine's economy has collapsed in many sectors since Russia invaded the country in February 2022. Kyiv heavily relies on international aid from its Western partnes.
The Voice of America reported that the United States vowed to promote at the international level a peace formula put forward by Zelenskiy.
VOA quoted White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby as saying that Washington "is committed to the policy of supporting initiatives emanating from the leadership of Ukraine."
Zelenskiy last year presented his 10-point peace formula that includes the withdrawal of Russian forces and the restoration of Ukrainian territorial integrity, among other things.
With reporting by Reuters and dpa
This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.
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