KYIV, Ukraine — Russia fired dozens of rockets at Ukrainian cities on Thursday, piercing snow clouds and air defenses to kill at least 12 people across the country, in a campaign to punish civilians. often of the Kremlin while its troops fought in eastern Ukraine.
The wave of strikes came a day after Germany and US pledges to send dozens of battle tanks to Ukraine, a significant step forward in Western military support. Ukraine shot down 47 of the 55 missiles, according to the country’s Air Force Command, including 20 in the area around the capital Kyiv.
However, a series of Russian air strikes still killed 11 people in 11 regions, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said. Another 11 people were injured and 35 buildings were damaged.
A 12th civilian was killed later in the day when a Russian missile hit the village council building in Kochubeivka, a small community in the Kherson region, a military official said on Telegram.
As it has been for months, Russia appears to be targeting Ukraine’s energy grid during the cold winter weather. The Prime Minister of Ukraine, Denys Shmyhal, said in a Telegram post: “The main targets are energy facilities that provide light and heat to the Ukrainian people.
Since October, Russia has launched more than a dozen large rounds of rockets and drones at Ukraine’s energy facilities, as well as numerous smaller attacks, in a campaign to undermine electricity supplies. and leave civilians without electricity, heat, and light in the winter.
Attacks sometimes come after Ukraine’s successes, like its fall campaigns in northeast and Southernbut continued when the fighting speed had slowed down an exhausting battle of attrition in the east and south.
Rocket attacks also often fall on residential areas, sometimes with devastating consequences, like when more than 40 people were attacked. killed in a strike on an apartment building in Dnipro, central Ukraine.
Loud explosions rocked Kyiv around 10 a.m. local time on Thursday, sending residents fleeing into underground shelters and basements. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person was killed and two injured when a bullet hit a building in the south of the city.
At least one explosion could be heard on camera, interrupting an interview a member of Ukraine’s parliament was giving Sky News television. “Where is it?” a woman asked in the video, as legislators and journalists stand among destroyed Russian tanks. “Far-out.”
Three people were killed in a Russian attack on infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia, the state prosecutor general’s office say on Telegram. According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, there are also reports of missile attacks on the Vinnytsia region in western Ukraine and outside the port city of Odesa, causing “massive blackouts” there.
France’s Foreign Minister, Catherine Colonna, was in Odesa on Thursday to meet Mr. Kuleba – diplomatic negotiations were forced into the background by Russian strikes.
“Thanks to a Russian missile, I spent my first diplomatic bilateral meeting in a shelter,” Colonna tweeted on Thursday, share a photo of the ministers at a table in an empty room. “Warm coffee, my goodness!”
Mr. Kuleba, who noted that the historical center of Odesa is point a world heritage site under threat this week by UNESCO, speak on Twitter that the meeting was “probably the first time in history when the Foreign Ministers spoke in the basement of a Opera House.”
The UN agency designation gives the city, which was conquered by the Russian Empire in the late 18th century and named Odesa by queen Catherine the Great, “access to financial support and international engineering is strengthened,” said UNESCO. “Ukraine may require this to ensure the protection of assets and, if necessary, to assist with reconstruction if attacked.”
Colonna said that ministers discussed France’s support for Ukraine, saying, “Our support will continue in all areas and for as long as necessary.”
Mr. Kuleba – person joke that the French minister was “the Catherine that I had the pleasure of meeting in Odesa” – pressed Ukrainian supporters in Europe and the United States to significantly increase military aid to them. Not long after Germany and the US announced they would send dozens of battle tanks to Ukraine, Mr call for “Western-style fighter.”
Ukrainian officials have argued that such fighters would help them defend against Russian missile salvoes.
Over the past week, the Russian Air Force has conducted drills in the north of Ukraine in Belarus, putting Ukraine on high alert. Air attack sirens across the country sound every time a Russian plane takes off.
Overnight, according to the Ukrainian Air Force Command, Ukraine’s air defenses shot down 24 Iranian-made aircraft. Drone explodes Shahed.
Both the US and Germany are committed room not patriotic missile batteries to Ukraine, and the U.S. military is training Ukrainian troops in Oklahoma on how to use the weapon, which is America’s most advanced ground-based air defense system.
The Biden administration has significantly increased military aid to Ukraine over the past year, gradually expanding the types of weapons it has agreed to provide to include HIMARS . rocket artillery system last summer, Stryker Armored Combat Vehicle, Patriot missiles and now M1 Abrams tanks. Britain has promised to send some Challenger 2 tanks, while Germany has agreed to supply some Leopard 2 tanks and allow other countries to supply their tanks to Ukraine.
Military experts and Western officials say they believe Ukraine and Russia will both try to strike in the spring, when Kiev uses heavy weapons sent from the West and Russia deploys large numbers of them. soldiers they recruited last year.
“Spring and summer look set to be quite decisive,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, an institute in Arlington, Va. podcast “The War on the Rocks” This week, Kofman said that in the next attack, Ukraine would have a “strong chance to show that it can continue to retake territory.”
But unlike previous attacks in the Kharkiv region to the northeast and the Kherson region to the south, “the next attack comes with risks,” he said. “If unsuccessful, Ukraine faces the real danger of a counter-attack.”
Michael Schwirtz reports from Kiev, Ukraine, and Alan Yuhas from New York.
