The referendums would make redrawn frontiers ‘irreversible’ and enable Moscow to use ‘any means’ to defend them, according to former President Dmitry Medvedev and current deputy head of Russia’s Security Council.

Workers hauled body after body out of the sandy soil in a pine forest near Izium that police said contained 445 graves in an area recently recaptured from Russian forces.

Russian forces left the war-scarred city of Izium last week as Kyiv’s soldiers pressed a stunning advance that has reclaimed large swaths of territory in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.

It was not yet clear if the Ukrainian blitz in the northeast after months of little discernible movement could signal a turning point in the nearly 7-month war.

The U.S. and its allies estimate that tens of thousands of Russian troops have been killed or wounded and huge amounts of military equipment destroyed since Putin ordered the Feb. 24 invasion.

Shelling continued around Europe’s largest nuclear plant on Tuesday, a day after it was again knocked off Ukraine’s electrical grid and put in the precarious position of relying on its own power to run its safety systems.

Meanwhile, in a holiday message to the country, President Volodymyr Zelensky exults over the nation’s success in fending off Moscow’s forces.

The United States reinforced the worry with a security alert, insisting it “has information that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days.”