Russia fired a huge wave of missiles across Ukraine as people slept, killing at least nine civilians and knocking out power in an attack Kyiv said included six Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missiles, one of Moscow’s most valuable weapons.
The mass strikes on targets far from the front were the first such wave since mid-February and shattered the longest calm since Moscow began an air campaign against Ukraine’s civil infrastructure five months ago.
They also briefly forced Europe’s biggest nuclear powerplant off the grid.
“The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, describing strikes that hit infrastructure and residential buildings in ten regions.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had carried out a “massive retaliatory strike” as payback for a cross-border raid last week.
It claimed to have hit all its intended targets, destroying drone bases, disrupting railways and damaging facilities that make and repair arms.
Villagers in Zolochiv in Ukraine’s western Lviv region carried a body in a black plastic bag over the rubble of a brickhouse completely destroyed by a missile.
They put the body into the back of a white van with another. A dog lay curled up on a carpet in the ruins.
Oksana Ostapenko said the house belonged to her sister Halyna, whose body was still buried under the rubble with two other family members.
“They still haven’t found them. We were hoping that they’re alive. But they’re not alive,” she said.
Another civilian was reported killed by the missiles in the central Dnipro region. Three civilians were separately reported killed by artillery in Kherson.
Moscow said such hits are intended to reduce Ukraine’s ability to fight. Kyiv said the air strikes have no military purpose and aim to harm and intimidate civilians, a war crime.
In the capital Kyiv, a seven-hour alert through the night was the longest of Russia’s five-month air campaign.
“I heard a very loud explosion, very loud. We quickly jumped out of bed and saw one car on fire. Then the other cars caught on fire as well. The glass shattered on the balconies and windows,” said Liudmyla, 58, holding a toddler in her arms on a Kyiv street near wrecked cars.
“The child got scared and jumped out of bed,” she said. “How can they do this? How is this possible? They are not humans.”
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Hypersonic missiles
Moscow confirmed it had used hypersonic Kinzhal – Russian for dagger – missiles in the attack. Ukrainian officials said it was the first time they had faced so many of the weapons, which Ukraine has no way to shoot down.
The White House said that the barrage was “devastating” to see and Washington would continue to provide Ukraine with air defence capabilities.
Russia is believed to have just a few dozen Kinzhals, which fly many times faster than the speed of sound and are built to carry nuclear warheads with a range of more than 2,000km.
In his speeches, President Vladimir Putin regularly touts the Kinzhal as a weapon for which the transatlantic NATO alliance backing Kyiv has no answer.
Ukraine said the attacks had knocked out power in various places including to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, severing it from the grid and forcing it onto emergency diesel power to prevent a meltdown.
It was later reconnected to Ukraine’s energy grid, operator Ukrenergo said.
The plant, which Russia has held since capturing it early in the war, is near the front line and both sides have warned in the past of a potential for disaster. Moscow said it was safe.
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi appealed for a protection zone around the plant.
“Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out,” Mr Grossi told the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors.
Kyiv, the Black Sea port of Odesa and Kharkiv were all hit.
Targets stretched from Zhytomyr, Vynnytsia and Rivne in the west to Dnipro and Poltava in central Ukraine, officials said.
‘The situation is critical’ in Bakhmut
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, said his fighters had captured the eastern part of Bakhmut. If true, Russian forces would control nearly half the city in a costly pursuit of their first big victory in several months.
“Everything east of the Bakhmutka River is completely under the control of Wagner,” Mr Prigozhin said on the Telegram messaging app.
The river bisects Bakhmut, on the edge of Ukraine’s Donetsk province that is already largely under Russian occupation. The city centre is on the west side of the river.
Mr Prigozhin has issued premature success claims before. Reuters was not able to verify the situation on the ground.
Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said that in addition to the Zabakhmutka district on the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut, the Russians had captured Ilyinivka district on the north side.
“The situation is critical,” he said in a video commentary, adding that Russian forces had also made gains near Avdiivka to the south of Bakhmut as well as to the north around Svatovo.
Arms buying push
Russia was throwing more troops into the battle, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said before a meeting of European Union defence ministers in Stockholm.
“They have suffered big losses, but at the same time we cannot rule out that Bakhmut may eventually fall in the coming days,” Mr Stoltenberg said.
This would not necessarily be a turning point in the war but showed “we should not underestimate Russia”, he said.
EU defence ministers agreed to speed up the supply of artillery rounds and buy more shells to help Ukraine’s military, which is burning through shells faster than its allies can manufacture them.
Under the plan, EU states would get financial incentives worth €1 billion to send more of their artillery rounds to Kyiv, while another €1 billion would fund joint procurement of new shells.
Devastated cities
Russia has said it has annexed nearly 20% of Ukraine’s territory and that taking Bakhmut would be a step towards seizing the whole of the industrial Donbas region on its border.
Western analysts say Bakhmut has little strategic value, although its capture would be a boost to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military after a series of setbacks in what they call their “special military operation”.
Kyiv said the losses suffered by Russia there could determine the course of the war, with Ukraine expected to launch a counteroffensive when the weather improves and it receives more Western military aid, including tanks.
The months of warfare in the east have been among the deadliest and most destructive since Russia invaded in February last year, adding Bakhmut’s name to a list of devastated cities that includes Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.
A Ukrainian military drone showed the scale of destruction in Bakhmut, filming apartment blocks on fire and smoke billowing from residential areas.
Iryna Vereshchuk, a deputy Ukrainian premier, said fewer than 4,000 civilians – including 38 children – out of a pre-war population of some 70,000 remain in Bakhmut.
US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a Senate committee that Washington did not foresee the Russian military recovering enough this year to make major gains.
Russia casts its invasion of Ukraine as a response to threats to its security from its neighbour’s ties to the West.
Civilians killed in missile strikes across Ukraine
Source: Viral Trends Report
0 Comments