AT LEAST 22 Ukrainian civilians were killed in Russian bombardments overnight in what Ukraine’s air force said today was the biggest aerial barrage of the war to date.

A total of 122 missiles and dozens of drones were launched against targets in Ukraine, whose forces retreated from the town of Maryinka, near Russian-occupied Donetsk city, earlier in the week.

Russia’s Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu claimed to have “liberated” Maryinka, though aerial photography indicated most of the town’s buildings had been destroyed in the fighting.

General Shoigu added that the unit which took the town was the 150th motorised rifle Idritsa-Berlin Order of Kutuzov division — the same that seized the Reichstag during the battle of Berlin at the close of World War II.

Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi defended the decision to retreat on the grounds that preserving Ukrainian soldiers’ lives was more valuable than the territory sundered.

Comparing Russia’s approach to that of the six-month conquest of Bakhmut, he said: “The method is the same — our fighters are destroyed street by street, block by block, and after that we have what we have.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Ukraine is running out of manpower, and on Christmas Day a draft law lowered the conscription age to 25. Mr Zelensky wants to conscript an additional half a million troops to face the Russian army, which is being increased in size to a target of 1.5 million soldiers.

But Ukraine claimed better results in the air and sea war, saying it had shot down four Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers and an Su-30 fighter jet in the two days before Christmas and disabled the Novocherkassk landing ship with a missile barrage on December 26-27. Satellite photography showed the ship burnt out and half sunk in shallow water.

On Thursday, two Russian poets were sent to prison for reciting anti-war poetry at a street performance in September 2022. Artyom Kamardin got seven years and Yegor Shtovba five-and-a-half years for the recital, held next to a monument to iconic communist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in Moscow.

Mr Kamardin’s wife, who shouted “Shame!” as the verdict was read out, and some others whom she addressed outside the courtroom are understood to have been detained.