(Kyiv) Russia claimed responsibility for new “massive” attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure on Tuesday, a day after a series of large-scale bombings that sparked protests in the West.
Posted at 6:14 am.
Updated at 7:33 am.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to attend a virtual emergency G7 meeting scheduled for 12 noon GMT (8 a.m. EDT) on Tuesday to focus on the Russian offensive.
In the morning, Russia continued to open fire against its neighbors, hitting energy installations in the far west of the front. Lviv City Hall said the city had lost 30% of electricity.
According to Ukrainian officials, the city of Zaporizhia (south), not far from the front, was hit on Tuesday. Death.
The Russian Defense Ministry hailed these “massive strikes” against “military command and Ukraine’s energy system targets” as having “achieved their objective”.
In Kiev, warning sirens sounded for more than five consecutive hours in the morning, but unlike Monday, no missiles fell on the Ukrainian capital.
There was less immediate bombing than Monday, when dozens of missiles, rockets and drones rained down on Ukraine in response to the attacks, which Vladimir Putin described as a “terrorist,” which in 2014 annexed a bridge linking Russia to Crimea.
Power outages
Highly symbolic and strategic, the route is used to supply Russian troops in southern Ukraine, where Kiev forces are conducting a counteroffensive.
The strikes targeted the Ukrainian military, energy and communications infrastructure, but also hit purely civilian sites in the city center, such as a university, playground, parks or a pedestrian bridge. According to the latest reports, 19 people have been killed and 105 injured in the country.
More than 300 areas across the country are without electricity.
The electricity operator serving the capital, DTEK, announced that regular blackouts would affect different neighborhoods “from Tuesday” and Ukrainians would fear water shortages as winter approaches due to insufficient electricity supply. , heat and electricity.
For his part, Vladimir Putin will receive the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Croci, specifically to talk about the safety of the Ukrainian plant in Zaporizhia, which has been occupied by Russia since March. Right by demanding the annexation of four Ukrainian regions at the end of September.
For months, the Russians and Ukrainians have accused each other of firing in the region and causing a nuclear accident.
The head of Turkish diplomacy, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, for his part called for a ceasefire between the belligerents “as soon as possible”. A Turkish official told AFP on Tuesday that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet Vladimir Putin in Astana on Wednesday, on the sidelines of a regional summit in the Kazakhstan capital.
In the only Russian-Ukrainian advance of the day, Kyiv announced the recovery of the bodies of 62 slain soldiers, some of whom were victims of a July strike against an infamous Russian-controlled prison. Moscow and Kiev blamed each other for the blasts, which left dozens dead.
Westerners have reaffirmed their support for Kiev after a wave of bombings on Monday, with Joe Biden pledging “advanced systems” for anti-aircraft defense, as has Germany.
The EU has called strikes on civilian targets “war crimes”. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the “unacceptable escalation”.
The Ukrainian president hammered him saying his country “cannot be threatened”.
Threat from Belarus
Mr Putin on Sunday accused Ukraine of orchestrating the explosion that destroyed part of the expensively built Crimean bridge. Kiev has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
The attack on the bridge comes after recent Russian military setbacks in northeastern, eastern and southern Ukraine, in the face of a Ukrainian military strong on Western arms supplies.
In a sign of these difficulties, Vladimir Putin ordered the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists in September, prompting a mass exodus of Russians from the country.
He pledged “tough” responses Monday to new Ukrainian attacks against Russia, but without renewing his threat to use nuclear weapons made in September.
Moscow’s sole ally in the war has refrained from sending troops to Ukraine, with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko accusing Kiev of preparing an attack against his country, resulting in the announcement of the deployment of Russian-Belarusian troops without specifying their location.
On Tuesday, Minsk pledged that the joint force would be “fully defensive”. Belarus loaned its territory to the Russian military to enable the invasion of Ukraine in February.
