Kyiv, Ukraine –
Russia targeted Western military supplies to Ukraine on Sunday, launching air strikes on Kyiv, which it claims destroyed tanks donated from abroad, as Vladimir Putin warned that any Western supplies of long-range missile systems would boost Moscow to hit “objects that we have not yet hit.”
The Russian leader’s secret threat of military escalation did not specify what the new targets might be, but it came days after the United States announced plans to provide $ 700 million in aid to Ukraine’s security. These weapons include four precision-guided medium-range missile systems, as well as helicopters, Javelin anti-tank systems, radars, tactical vehicles and more.
Military analysts say Russia hopes to take over Ukraine’s eastern Donbass industrial region, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian government since 2014, before any US weapons could backfire. The Pentagon said last week that it would take at least three weeks to bring U.S. weapons to the battlefield.
Ukraine says missiles aimed at the capital have hit a train station. Elsewhere, Russian airstrikes in the eastern town of Druzhkivka destroyed buildings and left at least one person dead, a Ukrainian official said on Sunday. Residents described waking up to the sound of rocket fire, with rubble and glass falling around them.
“It was like a horror movie,” said Svetlana Romashkina.
Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kirilenko called on the city’s residents to leave, saying on Facebook that the destroyed buildings could be rebuilt, but “we will not be able to bring back the lost lives.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said precision air-launched missiles were used to destroy workshops in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, including Druzhkovka, which were repairing damaged Ukrainian military equipment.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces had fired five X-22 cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea to Kyiv, and one had been destroyed by the air defenses. Four other missiles hit “infrastructure”, but Ukraine said there were no casualties.
The operator of the Energoatom nuclear power plant said that a cruise missile was buzzing near the Yuzhnoukrainsk nuclear power plant, 350 kilometers (220 miles) south, and warned of the possibility of a nuclear accident if even one missile fragment hit the plant.
In the Telegram application, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that high-precision long-range air-to-air missiles were used on the outskirts of Kyiv, destroying T-72 tanks delivered from Eastern European countries and other armored vehicles at a train repair shop. .
But the head of Ukraine’s railway system rejected claims that there were tanks inside. Alexander Kamishin said four missiles hit the car repair shop in Darnitsa, but no military equipment was stored there. He said the site was used to repair gondolas and grain carriers.
“Russia has lied again,” he wrote in the Telegram. “Their real goal is the economy and the civilian population. They want to block our ability to export Ukrainian products.”
In a televised interview Sunday, Putin focused on Western arms supplies to Ukraine, saying they were aimed at prolonging the conflict.
“All this turmoil over additional arms supplies, I think, has only one goal: to prolong the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin said. He insisted that such supplies were unlikely to change the military situation for the Ukrainian government, which he said only offset losses from such missiles.
If Kyiv receives longer-range missiles, he added, Moscow will “draw the appropriate conclusions and use our abundant means of destruction, which we have in abundance, to strike at those targets that we have not yet struck.”
The United States has stopped offering Ukraine longer-range weapons that could fire deep into Russia. But the four medium-range, high-range artillery missile systems in the security package include wheeled launchers that allow troops to hit a target and then retreat quickly – which could be useful against Russian artillery on the battlefield.
The Spanish daily El Pais reported on Sunday that Spain plans to deliver anti-aircraft missiles and up to 40 Leopard 2 A4 battle tanks to Ukraine. The Spanish Ministry of Defense did not comment on the report.
A rising pillar of smoke filled the air with a pungent odor in Kyiv’s eastern Darnytskyi district above the charred, blackened remains of a warehouse-type structure. Soldiers blocked a nearby road leading to a large railway park.
Prior to Sunday’s attack early Sunday morning, Kyiv had not faced such Russian air strikes since UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ April 28 visit. The attack sparked airstrikes and showed that Russia still has the ability and desire to strike the heart of Ukraine, despite redirecting its efforts to seize Ukrainian territory to the east.
In recent days, Russian forces have focused on capturing the eastern Ukrainian cities of Severodonetsk and Lisichansk. On Sunday, they continued their pressure with rocket and air strikes on towns and villages in Donbass.
In the cities of Slavyansk and Bakhmut, cars and military vehicles were spotted racing toward the city on Sunday from the front line. Dozens of military doctors and ambulances worked to evacuate civilians and Ukrainian servicemen, and a hospital was busy treating the wounded, many of whom were wounded by artillery fire.
The British military said in its daily intelligence update that Ukraine’s counterattacks in Severodonetsk “probably dull the operational momentum of Russian forces, previously gained by concentrating combat units and firepower.” Russian forces have previously made a series of advances in the city, but Ukrainian fighters have withdrawn in recent days.
The statement also said that the Russian military relied in part on the reserve forces of the Luhansk separatists.
“These troops are poorly equipped and trained and lack heavy equipment compared to regular Russian units,” the intelligence update said, adding that the move “shows a desire to limit the casualties suffered by regular Russian forces.”
Both sides in the conflict are waging an information war, especially on television, along with military attacks. Russia’s TASS news agency reported on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had cut off a television service in Donetsk, where a broadcasting tower had collapsed. Ukrainian authorities did not immediately confirm the attack.
In the port of Mariupol in the Sea of Azov, which Russia claims captured in May after a brutal monthly siege, an aide to the mayor said the water supply, contaminated with decaying corpses and rubbish, causes dysentery and poses a threat of cholera and other diseases.
In a statement provided by the Ukrainian news agency Unian, Petro Andryushchenko said Russian authorities controlling the city had imposed quarantine. He did not describe what measures the Russian authorities have involved and his report cannot be confirmed independently.
World Health Organization officials warned last month of the threat of cholera and other infectious diseases in Mariupol.
Away from the battlefield, Ukraine’s national footballers are hoping to secure a place in the World Cup when the team faces Wales later Sunday in Cardiff.
Ukrainian authorities say Ukraine and Russia have exchanged the bodies of slain soldiers in the first officially confirmed exchange. Ukraine said on Saturday that each country had exchanged 160 bodies two days earlier on the front line in the southern Zaporozhye region.
Russian authorities have not commented on the exchange.
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