Russia fired another burst of missiles into Ukraine on Thursday, causing at least 11 deaths and power cuts in several regions of the country, the day after kyiv’s allies announced the sending of heavy tanks to resist the Russian invasion.
Russia denounced that this planned delivery of heavy equipment meant the “direct involvement” of the West in the conflict and intensified its fighting in several areas of the Donetsk oblast region of eastern Ukraine.
According to Ukraine, Russia launched dozens of missiles and drones on Thursday, mainly against Ukrainian energy facilities.
The Ukraine’s military said it shot down 47 of a total of 55 missiles fired by Russia20 of them in the immediate vicinity of kyiv, as well as 24 Iranian-made Shahed drones.
The spokesman for the services of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine Oleksandr Khorunzhyi said in television statements that at least 11 people died from these bombings in various provinces of the country.
A first balance revealed one dead and two injured in the capital, according to its mayor, Vitali Klitschko.
The fatality in kyiv was “a 55-year-old man,” the municipal administration said.
According to the city’s military administration, this death was caused by falling fragments from a missile that had been shot down.
Three other people were killed in a Russian missile attack in the southern province of Zaporizhia, reported local Ukrainian authorities in this region, partly occupied by Russian forces, the Europa Press news agency reported. .
The attack, perpetrated at dawn withn missiles from a Russian S-300 defense system against infrastructure “of vital importance”, also caused a fire in the areawhich was subjected to a new shelling in the morning, while search and rescue work was carried out, the authorities added.
As a precaution, kyiv, its region and two others carried out “emergency” power cuts to “avoid major damage to power infrastructure if enemy missiles hit their target,” private power operator DTEK reported.
Russia tries to cause “a systemic failure” in the national networksaid the Minister of Energy, German Galushchenko.
“The situation is still under control,” said Prime Minister Denys Shmygal.
In the southern Black Sea province of Odessa, “two essential energy infrastructure sites” were damaged but no casualties from shelling, local authorities said, the AFP news agency reported.
There, the outages “could last several days,” DTEK warned.
These attacks in Odessa occurred shortly before it reached the capital city and namesake of the province the French chancellor, Catherine Colonna, to meet with her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba.
The last massive Russian attacks against energy infrastructures had been on January 14.
Following several military setbacks on the ground in the middle of last year, the Kremlin changed tack and began attacking Ukraine’s transformers and power plants in October.
Since then, power cuts have multiplied in the country and left millions of Ukrainian civilians without drinking water or heating in winter.
sending arms
This new massive attack occurs the day after the United States and Germany authorized the shipment to Ukraine of dozens of heavy combat vehiclesan unprecedented decision in the 11 months of war.
The United States will send 31 Abrams tanks and Germany 14 Leopard 2.
The Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky thanked his allies for supplying this equipmentclaimed by kyiv for months.
It is “an important step on the road to victory,” the president said Wednesday, with the war in its 12th month.
“The key now is speed and volume” in the delivery of the tanks, Zelenski added last night.
The Ukrainian government estimates that it needs several hundred tanks to defeat the Russian army in the east and south of the country.
Germany specified this Thursday that it plans to deliver the Leopard 2 tanks “at the end of March, beginning of April”as declared by Defense Minister Boris Pistoriuswho this Wednesday had already spoken of at least three months for the arrival of the tanks in Ukraine.
These deliveries and military aid “is not an offensive threat to Russia,” the minister had indicated. US President Joe Biden.
But for the Kremlin it is a “direct involvement” of the Western countries, united behind kyiv to weaken Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“In Moscow, we view this as direct involvement in the conflict, and we see (this involvement) growing,” said Dmitri Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman.
On the ground, Russian troops are “intensifying” fighting in the east, according to Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar.
Currently, the Ukrainian army is facing Russia’s “superiority in number of troops and weapons”, he added, citing the area around Bakhmut – which Moscow has been trying to conquer for several months – and the one that surrounds Vugledar, a town in the southwest of Donetsk.
It is the first time that Vugledar, of about 15,000 inhabitants before the war, is mentioned in the “heavy” fighting sector.
Ukrainian forces admitted on Wednesday that they had withdrawn from Soledar, northeast of Bakhmut, now in Russian hands.
While, in the southern province of Kherson, one person was killed and four others were injured – two of them serious – this morning in an attack by Russian forces against an administrative building.
As indicated by local authorities on Telegram, the attack would have been carried out with artillery fire in Kochubeivka, in the Berislav district.
The Russian Army warned that its Russian troops attacked the territory of Kherson more than thirty times in the last 24 hours.
