On the eve of talks with the American delegation, headed by Steve Witkoff, expected in Moscow on Dec. 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin made his third visit in five weeks to the Special Military Operation area Nov. 30, to take reports from front-line commanders in the conflict with the Ukrainian regime. The military advances of the Russian forces were highlighted last evening, when, as reported by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin “visited a command post of the Joint Force” and heard reports from the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov “about the liberation of Krasnoarmeysk [Pokrovsk] in the D.P.R. and Volchansk in the Kharkov Region, as well as about the results of offensive operations in other areas.” Putin remarked: “I want to thank you for the results of your work regarding Krasnoarmeysk. Both you and the entire command and personnel of the battlegroup. Of course, the fighters, our guys, who are carrying out these combat missions.”
The reports Putin took from sector commanders sharply contradicted claims in Western media that Russia is bogged down or only inching forward. Commander of the Battlegroup Center Valery Solodchuk reported to Putin, “about taking the southern part of the city of Dimitrov [Myrnohrad] under the control of Russian forces, and about the situation in Krasnoarmeysk after it was liberated by our forces.” General Solodchuk observed that around 2,000 Ukrainian troops remained surrounded in Dimitrov, adjacent to Krasnoarmeysk, and that his forces, as Putin had requested, were creating conditions for the troops to surrender. However, he reported, the Ukrainian commanders were blocking the troops from doing so—even targeting with drones those soldiers who attempted to surrender. Later, in a back-and-forth with Solodchuk regarding such “neo-Nazi” commanders treating a “worker-peasant” army of untrained recruits in this fashion, Putin labeled the situation “a tragedy of the Ukrainian people.”
