On Monday, January 9, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, held another meeting of the Stavka.

It was about the situation in Donetsk region and Luhansk region. 

The president said this during his address to Ukrainians. 

"Held another meeting of the Headquarters today. The main focus is on the situation in Donetsk region and Luhansk region - precisely those areas that are currently the hottest. Bakhmut and Soledar, Kreminna and Svatove, the general prospects for Donbas in the coming weeks. The battle for Donbas continues. And although the occupiers have now concentrated the greatest efforts on Soledar, the result of this difficult and prolonged battle will be the liberation of our entire Donbas," the president said. 

Zelensky thanked all defenders of Ukraine who are defending Soledar and Bakhmut. 

"I thank all our soldiers who protect our Bakhmut and show maximum resilience! Thank you to all the fighters in Soledar who withstand new and even tougher assaults of the invaders! It is extremely difficult - there are almost no whole walls left... Thanks to the resilience of our soldiers there, in Soledar, we won additional time and additional forces for Ukraine. And what did Russia want to gain there? Everything is completely destroyed, there is almost no life left. And thousands of their people are lost: all the land under Soledar is covered in the corpses of the occupiers and in scars from the blows. That's how and it looks crazy," the president explained. 

Zelenskyi also thanked the Ukrainian soldiers for advancing at the front. 

"Today, the Commander-in-Chief, commanders, head of intelligence reported at the Headquarters... We are integrating into our defense system new combat equipment and equipment that we receive from our partners. We are doing everything to ensure that there is as little time as possible between the agreement on additional support and the application of this support on the battlefield time," said the president.