December 28, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Russia’s foreign ministry has slammed Ukraine’s calls to remove Russia from the UN Security Council (UNSC), according to Russian state news agency TASS.

On Monday, the Ukrainian foreign ministry in a statement said Russia should be both excluded from the UNSC, and from being a member of the UN as a whole. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Russia’s expulsion from the United Nations in the past.

Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman, dismissed Kyiv's statement Wednesday, saying, "Do nothing. This is precisely the case when dogs bark but the caravan moves on.”

Zakharova made the comments to Sputnik radio station on Wednesday in response to a question on Moscow’s reaction.

Here's some background: Ukraine's foreign ministry alleges “gross violations of the norms and principles of international law as well as for crimes committed on the territory of Ukraine, in particular, for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as the crime of genocide.”

It suggests Russia could be re-admitted upon recommendation for UN membership once it “fulfils the conditions for membership in the Organization.”

 A district of the northeastern city of Kharkiv was hit with rockets on Wednesday, injuring one civilian, according to the regional military administration.

Russia captured swathes of Kharkiv in the early days of its invasion, before Ukrainian forces retook most of the region in an offensive in the fall.

The French minister for the armed forces, Sebastien Lecornu, has arrived in Kyiv. After arriving via train from Warsaw, he went to the city's wall of remembrance where he laid a wreath, CNN affiliate BFM reported.

Lecornu will later meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksiy Reznikov, BFM said, to discuss the defense of Ukraine. It was not yet clear if he would meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, BFM said.

This is the first time the minister has been to Ukraine since the war began in February.

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s southern Kherson region continued over the past 24 hours, injuring three civilians, according to the head of the regional military administration.

“Russian occupiers shelled the territory of Kherson region 50 times. Peaceful settlements of the region suffered from attacks from artillery, MLRS, mortars and tanks,” Yaroslav Yanushevych, head of the Kherson regional military administration, said in a Telegram post.

The city of Kherson was hit 23 times in the past 24 hours, Yanushevych said, adding that three people had sustained injuries of "varying severity."

In November, Russia’s military retreated from Kherson city, the only regional capital Moscow had captured since the invasion began, in a major setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since then, Russian forces have stationed themselves across the river from Kherson and regularly shell the city from there.

On Tuesday, a hospital maternity ward in the city of Kherson was hit by Russian shelling, according to Ukrainian officials.

For Andrei Soldatov and his friends, Feb. 24 marked the end of Russia as they knew it.

In the early hours of that day, President Vladimir Putin announced that he had ordered Russian troops into Ukraine. “And all of a sudden, everything we still believed in got completely compromised,” Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who lives in self-imposed exile in London, told CNN.

Life in Russia had for many years been getting more difficult for dissidents, independent journalists and anyone speaking up against Putin’s regime, but Soldatov said people like him still had some hope to hold on to. The war changed that, he said.

Read the dissidents' stories here.

An Australian man has died fighting to defend Ukraine from Russia's invasion, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) confirmed to CNN on Wednesday. 

Sage O'Donnell "died in action defending the freedom of the Ukrainian people," his mother said in a statement released by DFAT.

DFAT is providing consular assistance to the family, a spokesperson said.

At least 6,884 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Russia’s invasion of the country began in February, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said.

The figures, compiled up to Dec. 26, include 429 children, according to OHCHR, which added it believed the actual numbers were higher.

Nearly 11,000 people have been injured, it said.

CNN cannot independently verify the OCHR figures.

At least one man was killed and five other people were injured following Russian shelling in the southern Ukrainian town of Oleshky, on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, across from Kherson, Oleshky Mayor Yevhen Ryshchuk said via Facebook.

“As a result of the shelling of the town of Oleshky by the (Russian) occupiers the windows in the high-rise apartment building were shuttered. Unfortunately, five people were wounded and one person was killed,” Ryshchuk said.

The mayor also said that aside from a high-rise building, kiosks on the town’s market were damaged by the shelling. 

A hospital maternity ward in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was hit by Russian shelling, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the office of the president of Ukraine said Tuesday. 

Other impacted areas: Russian shelling also damaged the civilian infrastructure of the Antonivka settlement in the Kherson region and Kherson city, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said via Facebook, adding that there are casualties among civilians.

Meanwhile, the threat of air and missile strikes on critical infrastructure facilities remains on the whole territory of Ukraine, as Russia's offensive took place in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions, trying to improve the tactical situation in the direction of Lyman, Ukraine’s Armed Forces said.