KYIV, Ukraine – Russia launched a series of rocket, drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities over the night of Thursday and into Friday, creating havoc. inside the country hours before the Kremlin announced the annexation of a large swath of eastern Ukraine.
The deadliest deadly attack has landed in Zaporizhzhia, one of four Ukrainian provinces that the Kremlin announced on Friday after a merger process condemned by the West as a sham, and it happens. after a humiliating defeat on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. The attack killed 25 civilians waiting at a checkpoint and bus station and wounded 66 others, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said. That would make it one of the deadliest single attacks against civilians in recent weeks.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine condemn the strike at the checkpoint is the work of “terrorists,” while Bridget Brink, the US ambassador to Ukraine, called it “horrific news.”
The wave of overnight attacks came before Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, in a defiant and courageous speech on Friday, declared four regions – Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk – where battles were fought. acrimonious is the territory of Russia. Moscow says it will now defend rather than attack the territory and will use whatever means necessary to do so, a thinly veiled nuclear threat.
However, even as the Russian leader spoke, Zelensky announced that Ukraine had officially applied for “faster accession” to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while Ukrainian officials said the the country’s military force has moved closer to encircle The Russian-occupied town of Lyman, An important strategic center in the Donetsk region lies within territory that Putin is claiming.
“It is in Ukraine that the fate of democracy in the face of autocracy is being decided,” Zelensky said. “It is here, with the solidity of our national borders, that we can guarantee the stability of the borders of all European countries.” Zelensky said Ukraine’s NATO app can be tracked quickly, just like the Swedish and Finnish apps.
In the past, NATO members, who follow the treaty to protect all countries in the alliance against attack, have resisted granting membership to countries with unresolved territorial disputes. But at a news conference on Friday, NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, said the alliance would consider Ukraine’s application.
In his statement, Zelensky said Ukraine had sought to negotiate a security settlement with Russia for many years, but was repeatedly rejected. Now, he says, he will never negotiate as long as Putin remains the leader of Russia. “It is clear that this is not possible with this Russian president,” he said.
In Ukraine, heavy Russian bombardment of civilian targets combined with a merger ceremony in Moscow that was seen as ostentatious and even delusional created a stream of angry and cynical comments.
“Pain and fury,” wrote Angelina Koshel, a Ukrainian Facebook user, summarizing the mood as Russia asserts ownership over territory its military occupies in Ukraine, along with large swaths of the land. large that the country did not capture or withdrew.
“Is this the enemy’s way of inviting us into Russia?” Ms. Koshel wrote. “There will be no forgiveness for those who kill those who live peacefully.”
The attack on the checkpoint and the bus station in Zaporizhzhia scattered shrapnel on vehicles full of passengers. On the side of the road, a deep pit dug deep into fertile black soil, and bodies were scattered next to damaged cars and trucks.
Zaporizhzhia governor Oleksandr Starukh said those at the checkpoint were waiting to be allowed into Russian-occupied territory to pick up relatives and provide humanitarian aid, Zaporizhzhia governor Oleksandr Starukh said in a statement. reported on the Telegram social media app. “All of them are civilians, our compatriots,” he added.
Also on Friday, Iranian-made kamikaze missiles and drones recently purchased by the Russian military hit residential areas in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, killing at least three people and killing at least three people. 19 people were injured, the regional governor said, and a rocket attack hit a parking lot. A bus in the city of Dnipro killed one person and set fire to 52 buses.
For Ukrainians, the celebratory tune in Moscow is more than illusory because of its contrast with the macabre scenes at the sites of rocket and missile attacks. It also comes just weeks after the Ukrainian army inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Russian army in a counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, forcing the Russians to retreat, leaving their tanks behind. their own destruction and war dead right on the side of the road.
Ukrainian officials have consistently said they will ignore Russia’s territorial claims and push for counter-attacks in eastern Ukraine and around the southern port city of Kherson. Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported that, in addition to drawing close to the encirclement of the town of Lyman, a strategic Russian logistics center in eastern Ukraine, on Friday the Ukrainian army captured the town of Yampil in the Donetsk region.
In total, Russian missile and missile attacks in and near four provinces Russia claims to have annexed have killed 30 civilians and wounded at least 107 others, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukrainian regional government said.
The result was deep anger towards Russia within Ukraine on a day presented in Moscow as a day of reunion of two brotherly peoples.
Borys Filatov, mayor of Dnipro, one of the cities bombarded, wrote that he hoped to see Russian soldiers “hanging from trees” like the debris from the explosions he saw at the airport. the site of the missile attack. “Only the strength of our revenge matters,” Mr. Filatov said.
The city of Zaporizhzhia, a major regional hub on the Dnipro River, is often the first stop for civilians fleeing Russian-controlled territory further south. It’s where they can find food and shelter before moving to other parts of the country, often farther west, away from skirmishes. But every day there are long convoys going in the other direction, into Russian-controlled territory. It is at this intersection, the focal point for family reunions and humanitarian aid shipments, that the deadliest blow comes.
Among the civilian victims of the strike, Oleksiy Voronin, the founder of a relief group whose pickup trucks were riddled with shrapnel on Friday, saw a grim warning from Moscow. “The events of today are like a message” from Russia, he said, though a message he will never accept. “It’s not your territory.”
Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
