Ukraine, hit in its infrastructure and confronted with Russian forces in the south and east, was alarmed by the possible opening of a new front in the north. This “threat of resumption of the offensive on the northern front by the Russian armed forces is growing”, declared to the press, Thursday, October 20, Oleksiï Gromov, an official of the Ukrainian general staff. According to him, “this time the offensive could be west of the Belarusian border to cut off the main supply routes for weapons and military equipment” foreigners arriving, particularly via Poland. In this context, the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, underlined Thursday before the European Council that the Ukrainian proposal to deploy an international monitoring mission on the border between Ukraine and Belarus “became more relevant every day”. Follow our live.
Iranian soldiers in Crimea, according to Washington. “We believe that Iranian soldiers were on the ground in Crimea and helped Russia”, said Thursday the spokesman of the National Security Council of the American presidency, John Kirby, of the attacks of kamikaze drones on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure in recent days, and in particular on kyiv. Iran was already sanctioned Thursday by Ukraine’s Western allies for deliveries of suicide drones that Moscow and Tehran continue to deny.
Russia adopts the strategy of “electric chaos”. After a series of defeats for its army on several fronts in Ukraine, Moscow has resolved on a brutal change of strategy: to strike massively at Ukrainian power stations as winter approaches. Since early October, Russian forces have fired salvoes of cruise missiles and launched hundreds of suicide drones at energy facilities across Ukraine, including the capital kyiv, succeeding in paralyzing some 40% of the Ukrainian electricity grid.
Zelensky accuses the Russian army of having undermined a dam. The Ukrainian president on Thursday accused the Russians of having undermined a dam of a hydroelectric power station located in the Kherson region, in southern Ukraine, and under the control of Moscow forces. “According to our information, the aggregates and the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station were mined by Russian terrorists”said Volodymyr Zelensky in his daily address published on social networks.