Extract from ABC News
Russia has sent Ukrainians racing for cover with drone attacks and a rush-hour missile barrage, killing 11 people, the day after Kyiv secured Western pledges of dozens of modern battlefield tanks to try to push back the Russian invasion.
Key points:
- Ukrainian officials say Russian drone and missile attacks killed 11 people and wounded 11 more
- Ukraine's military says it shot down all 24 drones sent overnight by Russia, and 47 of 55 missiles
The attacks came the day after Kyiv secured Western pledges of modern battlefield tanks to try to push back the Russian invasion
Moscow reacted with fury to the German and American announcements, and has in the past responded to apparent Ukrainian successes with massed air strikes that have left millions without light, heat or water.
The Ukrainian military said it had shot down all 24 drones sent overnight by Russia, including 15 around the capital, and 47 of 55 Russian missiles.
Air raid alarms sounded across Ukraine as people headed to work. In the capital, crowds took cover in underground metro stations.
Emergency officials said the drone and missile attacks killed 11 people and wounded 11 more.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said energy facilities were again targeted on Thursday by Russian forces who were "trying to cause a systemic failure in the energy system of Ukraine".
He acknowledged that some energy facilities had been hit, resulting in emergency outages, and repair teams were working to restore power supply as quickly as possible.
Maksym Marchenko, the governor of southern Ukraine's Odesa region, said energy infrastructure facilities were damaged in his and several other regions, causing “significant problems with electricity supply".
The attacks on Odesa came just as the French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna was arriving for a visit to the Black Sea port, designated a "World Heritage in Danger" site on Wednesday by the UN cultural agency UNESCO.
Ms Colonna was due to meet her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, to discuss humanitarian and military aid and potentially whether France might join its NATO allies in supplying Ukraine with battle tanks, in this case its own Leclerc model.
Both Moscow and Kyiv, which have so far relied on Soviet-era T-72 tanks, are expected to mount new ground offensives in spring.
Ukraine has been asking for hundreds of modern tanks in the hope of using them to break Russian defensive lines and recapture occupied territory in the south and east.
Ukraine must form 'fist of freedom'
"The key now is speed and volumes. Speed in training our forces, speed in supplying tanks to Ukraine. The numbers in tank support," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Wednesday.
"We have to form such a 'tank fist', such a 'fist of freedom'."
Maintaining Kyiv's drumbeat of requests, Mr Zelenskyy said he had spoken to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and asked for long-range missiles and aircraft.
Ukraine's allies have already provided billions of dollars in military aid, including sophisticated US missile systems that have helped turn the tide of the war.
The United States has been wary of deploying the difficult-to-maintain Abrams, but changed tack to persuade Germany to pledge its more easily operated German-built Leopards.
Germany will initially send 14 tanks from its inventory, which it said could be operational in three or four months, and approve shipments by allied European states with the aim of equipping two battalions — in the region of 100 tanks.
The Leopard is a system that any NATO member can service, and crews and mechanics can be trained together, Ukrainian military expert Viktor Kevlyuk told Espreso TV.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said Ukrainian crews will start their training in Germany in coming days on German-made Marders, which are infantry fighting vehicles, while training on the heavier Leopard 2 tanks would start "a little later".
"In any case, the aim with the Leopards is to have the first company in Ukraine by the end of March, beginning of April," he added.
US President Joe Biden said the 31 M1 Abrams tanks that Washington will provide alongside Germany's Leopards posed "no offensive threat" to Russia.
But Sergei Nechayev, Russia's ambassador to Germany, on Wednesday called Berlin's decision "extremely dangerous", saying that it "takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation".
The Kremlin said it saw the promised delivery of Western tanks as evidence of the growing "direct involvement" of the United States and Europe in the 11-month-old conflict, something both deny.
Fighting continues on front lines
The heaviest fighting for now is around Bakhmut, a town in eastern Ukraine with a pre-war population of 70,000 that has seen some of the bloodiest combat of the war.
Ukraine's military said Russia was attacking "with the aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region, with no regard for its own casualties".
The Russian-installed governor of Donetsk said on Wednesday that units of Russia's Wagner contract militia were moving forward inside Bakhmut, with fighting on the outskirts and in neighbourhoods recently held by Ukraine.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.
The regional administration in the southern Kherson region, where Ukrainian troops recaptured the regional capital in November, said Russian shelling killed two people and wounded five over the past day.
Reuters/AP
No comments:
Post a Comment