Kyiv, Ukraine –
Russia has pointed to Western military supplies to the Ukrainian government with Sunday airstrikes in Kyiv that said they destroyed donated tanks from abroad, as President Vladimir Putin warned that any Western delivery of rocket systems long-range in Ukraine would lead to Moscow hitting “objects we have not yet hit.”
The Russian leader’s cryptic threat of a military escalation did not specify what the new targets might be, but it comes days after the United States announced plans to deliver $ 700 million in security assistance to Ukraine, which includes four precision and media guides. – Range rocket systems, helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems, radars, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more.
Military analysts say Russia hopes to invade the eastern Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian government for years before any weapons that could change course arrive. The Pentagon said earlier this week that it would take at least three weeks to bring U.S. precision weapons and trained troops to the battlefield.
Russian forces struck the railway facilities and other infrastructure in the early hours of Sunday in Kyiv, which had previously experienced weeks of strange calm. Ukraine’s nuclear power plant operator Energoatom said a cruise missile struck Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant about 350 kilometers (220 miles) south on its way to the capital, citing the dangers. of such a close accident.
There was no immediate confirmation from Ukraine that Russian airstrikes had destroyed tanks.
Kyiv had not faced any strikes since the April 28 visit of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The early-morning attack triggered airstrikes and showed that Russia still had the capacity and the will to hit the heart of Ukraine since it abandoned its nationwide offensive to focus on their efforts to the east.
In a post on the Telegram app, the Russian Ministry of Defense said high-precision, long-range missiles were used. He said the devastating attacks on the outskirts of Kyiv destroyed T-72 tanks supplied by Eastern European countries and other armored vehicles located in the buildings of a car repair company.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 has killed tens of thousands of civilians and incalculable troops, evicted millions from their homes, imposed heavy sanctions on Putin’s government and allies, and strangled exports of wheat and other major critics of Ukraine across the Black Sea. ports: restricting access to bread and other products in Africa, the Middle East and beyond.
In a televised interview on Sunday, Putin criticized Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, saying they intend to prolong the conflict.
“All this fuss about additional arms deliveries, in my view, has only one goal: to prolong the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin said, referring to US plans to supply multiple weapons systems. rocket launch in Kyiv. He insisted that these supplies were unlikely to change much for the Ukrainian government, which said it only made up for the losses of rockets of similar magnitude that they already had.
If Kyiv achieves more powerful rockets, he added, Moscow “will draw the right conclusions and use our means of destruction, many of which we have, to hit those objects that we have not yet hit.”
The missiles hit the Darnytsky and Dniprovsky districts of Kyiv, said Mayor Vitali Klitschko in the Telegram messaging app, marking the Kremlin’s recently reduced goal of seizing the entire Donbas. Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces in the Donbas for eight years and have established self-proclaimed republics.
In recent days, Russian forces have focused on capturing the city of Sievierodonetsk.
A pillar of rippling smoke filled the air with a pungent odor in the eastern Darnystki district of Kyiv, and the charred, blackened remains of a warehouse-type structure were smoking. Police near the scene told an Associated Press reporter that military authorities had banned the shooting. Soldiers also blocked a road in a nearby area that led to a large railroad yard.
The affected areas included facilities for the state-owned railway company Ukrzaliznytsia, Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, told Telegram. The cruise missiles appeared to have been fired from a Tu-95 bomber flying over the Caspian Sea, Air Force Command said on Facebook. He said air defense units shot down a missile.
Energoatom said a cruise missile was dangerously close to the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant. He said the missile “flew very low” and that Russian forces “still do not understand that even the smallest fragment of a missile that can hit a unit of power in operation can cause a nuclear catastrophe and a leak. radiation “.
Elsewhere, Russian forces continued their push to take ground in eastern Ukraine, with missiles and airstrikes on cities and towns in the Luhansk region, with the war now in excess of 100 days.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai told Telegram that “airstrikes by Russian Ka-52 helicopters were carried out in the Girske and Myrna Dolyna areas on Su-25 aircraft – in Ustynivka,” while Lysychansk was hit by a Tochka-U missile. complex.
A total of 13 houses were damaged in Girske and five in Lysychansk. Its mayor, Oleksandr Goncharenko, reported another airstrike on the eastern city of Kramatorsk. No one was killed in the attack, he said, but two of the city’s businesses suffered “significant damage.”
On Sunday morning, the Ukrainian General Staff accused Russian forces of using phosphorus ammunition in the village of Cherkaski Tyshky in the Kharkiv region. The claim could not be independently verified.
The update also confirmed strikes in Kyiv, which occurred in the early hours of Sunday. It was not immediately clear from the statement which infrastructure facilities in Kyiv were affected.
The General Staff said that Russian forces are continuing the assault operations in Sievierodonetsk, one of the two remaining key cities to be captured in the Luhansk region of the Donbas. The Russians control the eastern part of the city, according to the update, and are focusing on trying to encircle Ukrainian forces in the area and “block major logistics routes.”
The UK military said in its daily intelligence update that Ukraine’s counterattacks in Sieverodonetsk were “probably diminishing the operational momentum that Russian forces had previously gained by concentrating combat units and of firepower “. Russian forces had previously made a number of advances in the city, but Ukrainian fighters have retreated in recent days.
The statement also said that the Russian army was partly dependent on the separatist reserve forces in the Luhansk region.
“These troops are poorly equipped and trained and do not have heavy equipment compared to the usual Russian units,” the intelligence update said, adding that “this approach probably indicates a desire to limit casualties. regular Russian forces “.
Away from the battlefield, Ukraine’s national football players hope to secure a place in the World Cup when the team faces Wales on Sunday in Cardiff.
In the field of diplomacy, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was on his way to Serbia for talks with President Aleksandar Vucic earlier this week, followed by a visit to Turkey on Tuesday, where he is expected to the Russian envoy discusses Ukraine with his Turkish counterpart.
Turkey has been trying to work with the UN and countries at war to help pave the way for Ukrainian grain to be exported to Turkish ports, although no agreement on the issue seemed imminent.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser urged European nations to respond with “more sanctions, more weapons” to Sunday’s missile attacks.
Mykhailo Podolyak on Friday referred to statements by French President Emmanuel Macron that Putin had made a “historic mistake” in invading Ukraine, but that world powers should not “humiliate Russia” in order to find a way out. diplomatic when the fighting is over.
Ukrainian authorities said Ukraine and Russia had exchanged bodies of troops killed this week in the first officially confirmed exchange. Ukraine’s Ministry for the Reintegration of the Occupied Territories said on Saturday that each side had exchanged 160 front-line bodies on Thursday in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, parts of which are under Russian control. Russian officials have not commented on the exchange.
At the Vatican, Pope Francis made one of his strongest calls for a ceasefire and peace talks in Ukraine, urging leaders: “Do not ruin the world, please. Do not bring the world to the ruins “. He pleaded during his traditional Sunday blessing from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, urging leaders to listen to “the desperate cries of the suffering people” more than 100 days after the Russian invasion.