Putin tightens his grip as he awaits Donald Trump's inauguration

On the programme ‘De cara al mundo’ on Onda Madrid, reporter and journalist María Senovilla, a contributor to Atalayar, analysed Vladimir Putin's response to Ukraine's use of Western missiles with lethal bombardments against energy installations.

She also considered the Kursk and Kharkov fronts, where the number of casualties is increasingly worrying.

Maria, does Putin continue to destroy energy facilities in Ukraine?  

He is still destroying electrical installations, including thermal power stations. In the middle of the heating season and in a country where it has been announced that this winter we will reach temperatures of 30 below zero. But it is bombing residential buildings, medical centres, administrative buildings... The range of civilian targets is endless.  

In a single week, Putin has launched 1,500 attacks against Ukraine. This is the scale of the escalation of the conflict at the moment and it looks set to escalate further in the coming weeks. 

Trump will be sworn in as the new US president in January and it is likely that one of the first things he will do when in the White House will be to try to stop this war by bringing Putin and Zelensky to the negotiating table. The Ukrainian president is already alluding in his speeches to this possibility of stopping the war in 2025 and is telling his people in a mildly reassuring tone that it is in everyone's best interest. 

Instead, the Russian president is stepping on the accelerator in an attempt to advance both on the combat fronts and also to cause significant damage to the economic and industrial centres of Ukrainian cities. Putin's war is getting dirtier, more destructive and everything points to an even more significant escalation in the coming weeks. 

Maria, the Russians launched an S-400 against Kharkov that hit a civil registry near your position. What was it like? 

It was tremendous. The shock wave from that bombardment was one of the biggest I have seen in these almost three years.  

This escalation in the number of attacks is producing an escalation in the calibre of weapons Putin is launching against Ukraine. This attack, the one in Kharkov, was also an attack with a message. 

Russia launched an S-400, which is a surface-to-air missile used in air defence systems to shoot down missiles or even aircraft. Now that Ukraine has long-range weapons such as ATACMS and is allowed to use them on Russian soil, the S-400 is more valuable to the Kremlin because it can stop these Ukrainian attacks. 

So why did it launch one of these now-valuable missiles against Kharkov? 

Because the day before Zelensky's army managed to destroy a Russian S-400 launch system in Russia's Kursk region. A complete system, radar and all. And he destroyed it using one of these American ATACMS. So the next day they hit back in Kharkov, but against the civilian population. This is the big difference between Russia and Ukraine right now. While the Ukrainians are attacking military installations and troop concentrations on Russian soil, Putin is targeting cities and civilians. 

This S-400 that he launched against Kharkov got me out of bed with the impact, the thud; car sirens went off in half the city. It was one of the heaviest attacks I have ever heard. It passed just over a kilometre from where I was staying and it sounded as if it had landed 200 metres away. It was tremendous. It hit, as you rightly said, a civil registry office and it affected all the residential buildings around it. 

It was a single impact and the whole block looked like a war zone with the windows shattered, with entire brick walls and stones falling against the cars in the streets. It looked like a plane had flown over and bombed everything. The result was that 25 people were injured, half of them very seriously, but it could have been much worse because the bombing took place at half past eight in the morning, which is close to the opening time of the Civil Registry and that's when people queue up to get their papers in order before going to their respective jobs.

Maria, you say there is a lot of activity on the front lines, both in Kursk, where the North Koreans, under Putin's orders, are trying to dislodge the Ukrainians, and on the eastern front, in Kharkov, where the number of casualties is very worrying.  

That's right. In Kursk right now there are 12,000 North Korean troops that Putin has put there to try to dislodge the Ukrainians, who are reportedly occupying approximately 1,000 square kilometres of Russian soil still. In August and September they managed to reach 1,360 square kilometres. They have had to pull back some, but it seems that the 1,000 they still hold is sufficiently fortified to hold out a little longer. 

What is happening in Kharkov?  

From Kharkov I'm getting some rather surprising news from the troops on the ground because it could be that Ukraine is trying to launch, also against the clock and before Trump enters the White House, a new counter-offensive on Russian soil in the direction of Belgorod, hence the significant increase in the number of casualties. 

The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces sent a message a few days ago. He said that Ukraine cannot simply defend while Putin is slaughtering them and that they have to take action; he said something along the lines of stay tuned to your screens and we will tell you where. It is possible that this is happening in the Kharkov area because of the military movements that I am hearing first-hand from soldiers and brigades that I know, and they tell me what is being done.   

If that were the case, imagine how they would face December with such a huge escalation of Russian attacks and a new Ukrainian offensive on Russian soil if that were to happen.