War in Ukraine, day 230 | Kyiv claims new advance, despite Russian bombardment

(Kyiv) Ukraine said on Wednesday that it had retaken several localities from the Russians in the south of the country and welcomed the reaffirmed support of its Western allies who promised to deliver anti-aircraft defenses “as soon as possible” after Russian bombardments. intensive.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg assured that the supply of these systems capable of neutralizing Russian missiles in the Ukrainian sky was “the priority”.

The G7 and the IMF reaffirmed on Wednesday that they would support Ukraine “as long as necessary” to deal with the economic consequences of the Russian invasion, which amount to billions of dollars.

“The key issue is to cover our budget deficit and quickly rebuild the infrastructure” destroyed, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his daily address, thanking the allied countries.

The promise comes as Ukraine has suffered since Monday from “massive” salvoes of missiles, rockets and drones aimed in particular at its civilian energy infrastructure. Russian President Vladimir Putin presented these strikes as retaliation for the explosive attack which damaged the Crimean bridge on Saturday and which he blames on Kyiv.

The Ukrainian Defense Minister, Oleksiï Reznikov, has already hailed “a new era of air defense” with the arrival of the “Iris-T system from Germany” and the forthcoming delivery of “American NASAMS”.

French President Emmanuel Macron also promised anti-aircraft “radar, systems and missiles” in the evening, without specifying when they would be delivered. He reiterated that France was working with Denmark to send six Caesar guns, in addition to the 18 already delivered.

Putin-Erdogan meeting on Thursday

For its part, the United Kingdom announced on Thursday that it would provide Ukraine with additional anti-aircraft defense missiles, including ammunition capable of shooting down cruise missiles.

The AMRAAM missiles, which will be supplied “in the coming weeks” to Kyiv for use by the NASAMS air defense system promised by the United States, are the first given by London to be able to shoot down cruise missiles, underlines the British ministry Defense in a statement.

Tuesday, in a virtual meeting with the G7, Mr. Zelensky had called for help to create an “air shield”, warning that Mr. Putin “still had the means for an escalation”.

At the same time, the 27 members of the European Union agreed to the organization of a military mission to train Ukrainian forces in several member states. Some 15,000 soldiers should be affected initially, according to two diplomats.

For its part, the Kremlin said on Wednesday that it expected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to make Vladimir Putin a concrete offer to mediate the conflict when they met Thursday in Kazakhstan.

“The Turks offer their mediation. If contacts [russo-ukrainiens] were to take place, they would be on Turkish territory, added the Kremlin’s diplomatic adviser, Yuri Ouchakov, to the press.

Worried about a possible nuclear accident, the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, is back in Kyiv, in agreement with Mr Zelensky, he tweeted, after meeting with Vladimir Putin as part of his efforts to establish a “protection zone” around the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

In the meantime, the UN General Assembly on Wednesday condemned with an “overwhelming” majority the “illegal annexations” of Ukrainian territories, and sent, according to US President Joe Biden, a “clear message” to Moscow.

“143 nations have stood on the side of freedom, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Biden said in a statement, saying Russia could “not wipe a sovereign state off the map.”

“Heavy shelling” in Mykolaiv

Russia announced in the morning the arrest of eight people suspected of participation in the attack on the Crimean bridge and claimed to have thwarted two attacks fomented by the Ukrainian special services on Russian territory.

Vladimir Putin had promised a “severe” response to any attack targeting Russia and what it considers to be its territory, while Moscow proclaimed the annexation of Crimea in 2014, then four other Ukrainian regions in September.

Kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the explosion on the bridge connecting Russian territory to Crimea, but Ukraine has always stressed that it intends to reconquer this peninsula and all the territories occupied by Russia.

On the southern front, in the region of Kherson, one of the four which Moscow has claimed to be annexed, five new localities have been reconquered, the Ukrainian presidency said on Wednesday, which would constitute a new setback for the Russian army which has been receding in this zone as in the northeast and east since the beginning of September.

But she noted that Russian artillery was putting up resistance “to deter the counter-offensive along the line of contact.”

The Russian Ministry of Defense assured him that he had pushed back the Ukrainians in the small pocket of the Kharkiv region (northeast) still under Moscow control, in the north of the Kherson region and in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk .

The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Senkevych, said Thursday on Telegram that this city in southern Ukraine, already massively pounded by the Russian army, had suffered “heavy bombardments” overnight, destroying in particular the two upper floors of a five-storey residential building.

In the east, the Ukrainian authorities have announced the discovery of two mass graves in towns in the Donetsk region recently retaken from Russian troops.

In Lyman, a railway junction taken over in early October, a forensic team dressed in protective gear exhumed dozens of bodies, noted an AFP journalist.

On the energy front of the conflict, President Putin has claimed that the ball is “in the court” of the EU for the launch of Russian gas deliveries via the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline unaffected by explosions of which Russians accuse each other and Westerners.