‘Massive’ missile barrage rains terror down on Ukraine as Putin rules out ceasefire
‘One of the biggest’ rocket attacks since Russia’s invasion wreaked havoc in major cities as Ukraine began counting the dead.
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A fresh barrage of deadly Russian strikes battered Ukraine, cutting water and electricity in major cities and piling pressure on the grid in sub-zero temperatures.
The Ukrainian army said it intercepted 60 out of 76 incoming projectiles, including 37 out of 40 missiles on Kyiv.Ukraine’s air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said it was “one of the biggest rocket attacks” since Russia invaded the country in February.Russian forces attempted to distract air defences by flying warplanes near the country as about 60 Russian missiles flew towards targets, according to Vitaly Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine.
“The enemy is massively attacking,” said Oleksii Kuleba, head of Kyiv’s regional military administration.
Kyiv residents in winter coats crammed into underground metro stations as air raid sirens rang out and Russian forces fired off dozens of missiles in one of the biggest broadsides targeting the Ukrainian capital since February.
AFP journalists reported loud explosions and Kyiv’s mayor said water supplies were disrupted in a wave of nationwide attacks that also killed two in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown in the south.
Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv, near the border with Russia, was left without electricity, its mayor said.
“I woke up, I saw a rocket in the sky,” Kyiv resident 25-year-old Lada Korovai said. “I saw it and understood that I have to go to the tube.” “We live in this situation. It’s a war, it’s real war,” she told AFP. The onslaught is the latest of several waves of strikes targeting key infrastructure that began in October after a series of embarrassing battlefield defeats for Russia.
The central cities of Poltava and Kremenchuk were also without power and regional officials in Kryvyi Rig, where Zelensky was born, said rockets hit a residential building.
“Two people died,” governor Valentyn Reznichenko said. Eight were injured, he added.
Oleksandr Starukh, head of the frontline Zaporizhzhia region, which houses Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, said more than a dozen Russian missiles had targeted territory under Ukrainian control.
Kyiv meanwhile “withstood one of the biggest missile attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. About 40 missiles were recorded in the capital’s airspace,” regional authorities said in a statement on social media.
“Thirty-seven of them were destroyed by air defence forces!” they added. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said there were disruptions to water supplies and that the metro had stopped running so people could shelter underground.
“Due to damage to the power system and emergency power outages, subway trains will not run until the end of the day today,” city officials later announced online.
The Kyiv metro, a vital resource for the capital which had a pre-war population of three million, has been used as a city-wide bomb shelter since the Russian invasion.
About half of Ukraine’s energy grid has been damaged in sustained attacks and the national provider warned Friday of emergency blackouts because of the “massive” wave of Russian attacks.
PUTIN VOWS NO CEASFIRE
Vladimir Putin has dismissed hopes of a war ceasefire for Christmas and has instead launched a fresh assault on Kherson.
Kremlin official Dmitry Peskov said “no such options” are planned. “This topic is not on the agenda,” he said.
It comes as the crucial city of Kherson is again pounded by missiles that have cut electricity for people in cold wintery conditions.
Yaroslav Yanushevich, the head of the regional military administration for the region, said there was working electricity due to Russian shelling that killed two people this morning.
“At the first opportunity, the power industry will begin to restore power grids,” he said on Friday.
PUTIN TO VISIT ALLY
Mr Putin will visit Belarus on Monday for talks with his counterpart and ally Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus leader’s office said.
The Belarus presidency said on Friday the pair will hold discussions at the Independence Palace, Mr Lukashenko’s office, in Minsk during Mr Putin’s “working visit”.
The visit comes 10 months into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, which was launched from several directions, including Belarusian territory.
Minsk said the pair will hold one-on-one talks as well as wider negotiations with their ministers on “Belarusian-Russian integration”.
Moscow and Minsk have committed to a wide range of programmes for deeper economic and defence cooperation.
The statement said the “presidents will also give priority to security issues and exchange views on the situation in the region and the world” but did not mention Ukraine.
Mr Lukashenko, in power since 1994, has repeatedly said he did not intend to send Belarusian troops into Ukraine.
Mr Putin last visited Belarus in the summer of 2019.
POLAND POLICE CHIEF INJURED
Polish police chief Jarosław Szymczyk was injured after a gift he received from a senior Ukrainian official exploded.
Szymczyk was taken to hospital with minor injuries, an interior ministry statement said.
“Yesterday at 7.50am there was an explosion in a room next to the office of the police chief,” the statement said.
“One of the presents the police chief received during his working visit to Ukraine on December 11 and 12 exploded.”
“The Polish side has asked the Ukrainian side to provide an explanation,” the ministry said.
KYIV ATTACKED
Ukraine claims it shot down multiple Iranian-made drones launched at the capital by Russian troops in their latest attack on Kyiv.
Explosions rang out over a central neighbourhood in Kyiv in the early hours with emergency service workers seen inspecting metal fragments at a snow-covered impact site.
“The terrorists started this morning with 13 Shaheds,” Mr Zelenskyy said, referring to the Iran-made weapons.
“All 13 were shot down” he added, urging residents to heed air raid sirens.
Kyiv has endured nearly 10 months of air raid sirens and frequent aerial attacks since Russia invaded Ukraine in February and tried to capture the capital.
But the attacks have increased since October when Russia began systematically targeting critical infrastructure in Ukraine in attacks that have disrupted electricity, water and heat to millions in Ukraine.
Kyiv’s Western allies have been supplying Ukraine with more advanced air defence systems in response.
Ukrenergo, the national energy provider, said no energy infrastructure facilities were damaged in Wednesday’s drone attack, crediting Ukrainian air defences for their “brilliant” work.
Since a series of key battlefield setbacks this summer and autumn, Russia has been pummelling critical infrastructure across Ukraine with missiles and drones.
Moscow most recently targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure last week piling pressure on the country’s power grid, whose operators have for weeks been forced to implement rolling blackouts.
Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said this week that between 40 and 50 per cent of the country’s grid was out of action because of Russia’s strikes.
The latest round of attacks on Wednesday came one day after Mr Zelenskyy issued urgent appeals to around 70 countries and international organisations at a Paris conference to help Ukraine withstand Russian attacks this winter.
In a video message from Kyiv, Mr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Ukraine needed assistance worth around 800 million euros in the short term for its battered energy sector.
He also said that his country needs spare parts for repairs, high-capacity generators, extra gas and increased electricity imports.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Ukraine’s allies to provide his country with more weapons to help it “fight through the winter” and sustain Kyiv’s military advances.
The Kremlin meanwhile said it had not received any proposals from Kyiv to pause fighting in Ukraine during the upcoming holiday period and that a ceasefire was not on Moscow’s agenda.
“No, no proposals have been received from anyone and no topic of this kind is on the agenda,” the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
In nearly 10 months of fighting, Russia has yet to fulfil any of its stated key goals in what it refers to as its “special military operation” in Ukraine, including seizing the capital or the eastern Donbas region.
The Moscow-installed leader of Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Wednesday however called for Russia to widen its goals and annex two more areas of Ukraine, the Black Sea region of Odessa and Chernigiv in the north.
Separately, Ukraine’s SBU security service said it was carrying out raids at churches and monasteries across the country in its most recent searches on religious sites of the Russia-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
UK SLAPS NEW SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA AND IRAN
The UK has announced new sanctions against top Russian and Iranian officials believed to be involved in the producing and supplying drones to target Ukraine.
On Tuesday, the government said 12 Russian military commanders would be subject to assets freezes and travel bans, including Major General Robert Baranov, who is said to be in charge of a unit programming and targeting cruise missiles.
The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said more than 6,000 Ukrainian civilians are thought to have been killed since the Russian invasion in February, mainly as a result of missile and artillery strikes.
“Intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects is a serious violation of international humanitarian law. Those responsible must be held to account,” it said.
Iranian-manufactured drones supplied to Russia have played a “central role” in such attacks, the FCDO said.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the Tehran regime, which has been hit by a wave of civilian protests in recent months, was “striking sordid deals” with Moscow “in a desperate attempt to survive”.
Last week, the US voiced concern at what it said was a “full-scale defence partnership” between Russia and Iran, calling it “harmful” to Ukraine, Iran’s neighbours and the world.
The latest UK sanctions target four Iranians, include the managing director of the company that manufactures engines for drones used by Russia to attack Ukraine, he added.
On Monday, Mr Cleverly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “waging a 19th-century war of imperial conquest” against its neighbour.
“Putin’s goal is to turn back the clock to the era when might was right and big countries could treat their neighbours as prey,” he added.
RUSSIA’S ‘BRUTAL TACTIC’
Meanwhile, Germany has pledged an additional $US53.2 million ($A77m) to support Ukraine during the winter period as it faces ongoing Russian attacks on its critical infrastructure, leaving millions of civilians without electricity, heating and water.
In a tweet, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock accused Mr Putin of trying to “break Ukrainians with his brutal tactic of plunging them into the cold,” adding: “We won’t let that happen.”
Germany will send equipment to help restore Ukraine’s energy grid, including generators and transformers, Ms Baerbock posted.
“Putin’s bombs mean that doctors have to operate on a boy’s heart by the light of their cell phones. That children do homework in candlelight with hats, scarfs & jackets,” she added.
The money was part of a total of more than one billion dollars pledged by 46 countries and 24 international organisations at a conference in Paris on Tuesday that aimed to mobilise immediate support for Ukraine between December and March.
Switzerland also announced a pledge of more than $100 million to Ukraine, according to a Tuesday press release by the Swiss government.
– With AFP
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