A Russian missile hit the city of Kramatorsk in Donetsk region on Wednesday night, killing three civilians, UNIAN agency reported. According to the latest data, at least 20 people were injured. The missile struck eight residential buildings - one of them was destroyed. “People may remain under the rubble”, police said. "This is not a replay of the past, it is the daily reality of our country - a country with absolute evil on its borders," Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote.

Russia is mustering its military might in the Luhansk region of Ukraine, officials said Wednesday, in what Kyiv suspects is preparation for an offensive as the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion approaches, AP reports.

The Kremlin’s forces were expelling residents near the Russian-held parts of the front line so they can’t tell Ukrainian artillery forces about Russian troop deployments, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said.

“There is an active transfer of Russian troops to the region and they are definitely preparing for something on the eastern front in February”, Serhiy Haidai said.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported that Russian forces were also concentrating in neighboring Donetsk province, especially in a bid to capture the key city of Bakhmut. The Institute for the Study of War predicted "an imminent Russian offensive in the coming months".

 Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov said that Ukrainian lives will be saved by a sophisticated air-defense radar that France is supplying, which is powerful enough to spot incoming missiles and exploding drones in the skies over all of Ukraine’s capital city and its surrounding region.