Volodymyr Zelenskyi insisted that his forces would not yield “even an inch” in the fight for control of the Donetsk region in the east of the country. On another major front, Russian occupation officials showed that Ukrainian troops who entered the southern city with tanks .

The main thing for Wednesday, the 259th day of the war in Ukraine, TEXT OF THE LIVE MODE:

A brief summary of recent events:

• “The activity of the occupiers remains at an extremely high level – dozens of shelling every day… We will not give up a single inch of our land,” Zelensky said in his speech on Tuesday evening.
• The main conflict zones in the industrial Donetsk region are around the cities of Bakhmut, Soledar and Avdiivka, the theater of the fiercest fighting in the country since the beginning of the invasion.
• On Tuesday night, the Ukrainian military accused Russian forces of continuing to loot and destroy infrastructure in the southern city of Kherson, where a showdown has raged for weeks in the only regional capital Russia has captured.
• Russian artillery shelled more than 30 settlements in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, and in the Zaporizhzhia region, the authorities installed by Moscow are forcing residents to accept Russian passports after seizing Ukrainian documents from them, the Kyiv military said in a statement.
• The Russian-appointed mayor in the town of Snigurivka, east of the southern port city of Mykolaiv, said residents had seen Ukrainian tanks and heavy fighting.
• A senior Ukrainian official from the eastern Luhansk region says troops are continuing to advance despite massive Russian reserves arriving in the area.
• Ukraine received the first air defense systems NASAMS and Apside, the Minister of Defense reported.
• Italy is preparing a new supply of weapons to Ukraine, including air defense systems, a representative of the ruling coalition said on Tuesday.
• A Russian plane secretly delivered 140 million euros in cash and three models of American and British weapons seized at Tehran airport on August 20, Sky News reports.
• Putin said that 50,000 Russian soldiers, called up as part of his mobilization campaign, are currently fighting in Ukraine, Interfax reports.
• Ukraine has reiterated its tough stance on talks with Russia, saying they can only resume after the Kremlin gives up all Ukrainian territories and that it will continue to fight even if its allies “stab them in the back”.
• The main condition for the resumption of negotiations with Russia will be the restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine, said Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the NSDC.
• Senior adviser to the president Mykhailo Podoliak said that Ukraine has never refused negotiations with Russia and is ready to talk with its future leader, but not with Vladimir Putin.
• His comments followed an article in the Washington Post that the Biden administration had privately encouraged Ukrainian leaders to signal the start of negotiations.
• Pro-Kremlin groups in Russia hope Republicans will gain control of Congress, which they say will make it harder for Joe Biden to send military aid to Ukraine.
• At least three factories in Pyongyang, as well as elsewhere in North Korea, are said to be producing “large quantities” of winter uniforms, underwear and shoes for Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
• Russia has begun building concrete structures known as “dragon’s teeth” around the occupied southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol in preparation for a possible offensive by Ukrainian forces on the port city.
• The White House is keeping communication lines open with Moscow to avoid the possibility of a nuclear disaster, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

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• Tuesday’s events were broadcast live on HotNews.ro