KYIV, Ukraine, November 18 ------ Russia launched more missile strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure recently, and its forces pressed attacks in eastern Ukraine, reinforced by troops pulled from Kherson city in the south which Kyiv recaptured last week.
NATO and Poland concluded that a missile that crashed in Poland, killing two people, was probably a stray fired by Ukraine’s air defenses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky contested this view in a rare public disagreement with his Western allies. As the winter’s first snow fell in Kyiv, authorities said they were working hard to restore power nationwide after Russia earlier this week unleashed what Ukraine said was the heaviest bombardment of civilian infrastructure of the nine-month war. Explosions were heard again recently in several parts of Ukraine, including the southern port of Odesa, the capital Kyiv and the central city of Dnipro.
Local officials said two people were killed in a missile attack overnight on the southern region of Zaporhizhzhia, three were wounded in an attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv and three were hurt in Odesa. “Missiles are flying over Kyiv right now,” Interfax Ukraine news agency quoted Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal as saying at a conference. “Now they are bombing our gas production, they are bombing our enterprises in Dnipro and Yuzhmash (missile factory).” State energy company Naftogaz confirmed that gas production facilities in eastern Ukraine had been damaged or destroyed. The United Nations’ humanitarian office (OCHA) warned of a serious humanitarian crisis in Ukraine this winter. “Millions are facing constant power cuts, and the lack of energy is also affecting water pumping,” it said in a statement.
On a brighter note, Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry said agreement had been reached on extending by 120 days a deal that allows for the export of food and fertilizers from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports via a protected sea transit corridor. The Black Sea grain initiative, first agreed in July, has helped to alleviate global food shortages and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres welcomed the announcement. President Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, which helped forge the Black Sea grain deal, said he had been informed after US-Russia talks in Ankara earlier this week aimed at reducing tensions over Ukraine that neither party would use nuclear weapons, according to a readout of his comments to reporters.
NATO ambassadors held emergency talks to respond to the blast at a grain facility in Poland, near the Ukrainian border, the war’s first deadly extension into the territory of the Western alliance. However, Polish President Andrzej Duda said the missile appeared to be a Soviet-made S-300 rocket most likely fired accidentally “by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense,” not by Russia. Russia and Ukraine both use the missile. NATO’s chief said Russia, not Ukraine, was still to blame for starting the war with its February invasion and launching scores of missiles that triggered Ukrainian defenses. “This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine,” Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels. Nevertheless, Zelensky said “I have no doubt that it was not our missile”, based on reports from Ukraine’s military which the president said he “cannot but trust”. An adviser to the Polish president said Ukraine was likely to get access to the site of the blast that it has requested.
US President Joe Biden disputed Zelensky’s assertion that the missile was not Ukrainian, telling reporters at the White House: “That’s not the evidence.” Moscow had denied responsibility. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the “mayhem” around accusations of Russian involvement in the blast were “part of a systematic anti-Russian campaign by the West”. Officials reported heavy fighting in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which Russia claims to have annexed along with the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in September after holding what it calls “referendums” there condemned as illegal by Kyiv and the West. “In the direction of Svatove and Kreminna (in Luhansk region), the Ukrainian military has managed to push the enemy back a bit. Local residents say they can hear battles going on nearby,” regional governor Serhiy Gaidar said in a TV broadcast. “In the direction of Bilohorivka (also in Luhansk), the Russians are constantly attacking, trying to recapture the territory of the village, which has been completely destroyed,” Gaidai added.
Moscow’s forces retreated from the southern city of Kherson last week after a Ukrainian counteroffensive. It was the only regional capital Russia had captured since its Feb. 24 invasion, and the pullback was the third major Russian retreat of the war. Investigators in the Kherson region uncovered 63 bodies bearing signs of torture after Russian forces left the area, Ukraine’s interior minister was quoted as saying. Interfax Ukraine news agency quoted the minister, Denys Monastyrsky, as telling national television: “The search has only just started, so many more dungeons and burial places will be uncovered.” Russia denies its troops target civilians or have committed atrocities. Mass burial sites have been found in other parts previously occupied by Russian troops, including some with civilian bodies showing signs of torture.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in the Russian-controlled part of Zaporizhzhia, said a Ukrainian missile struck a village there, killing two people and wounding nine. The top US general, Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played down chances of any outright military victory for Kyiv in the near term, saying Russia still had significant combat power in Ukraine despite setbacks.
Source: rappler.com