Russia was branded an ‘arsonist’ by Canada at the G20 on Saturday amid accusations on the ground of deploying launchers to fire missiles from the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, and seek to relaunch its murderous offensive in the East.
Sign of the Kremlin’s desire to continue the war whatever the cost – the Russian army has lost, according to Western experts, 15 to 20,000 men in four months – its representatives went to a military base south of Tehran in twice recently to be presented with Iranian combat drones, said Saturday the national security adviser of the White House, Jake Sullivan, satellite images in support.
Russia also launched a campaign to recruit volunteers in June, which intensified in July, with each of its 85 regions expected to bring together at least 400 men, or more than 30,000 soldiers, according to the American Institute for the Study of war (ISW).
The cost of the war is also economic, first and foremost for Russia, gripped by the throat by the sanctions, but also for the rest of the world, Western countries argued at the G20 in Bali, which however ended on Saturday. without a joint communiqué, for lack of consensus on this point.
Russia’s participation was “absurd” and “amount to inviting an arsonist to a firefighters’ meeting,” said Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
The accusations are of the same order in Ukraine, where the national operator of nuclear energy has accused the Russian army of having installed missile launchers on the very site of the nuclear power plant in Zaporijjia (south), in an area which has been under its control since March.
“The situation is extremely tense and the tension is increasing day by day. The occupants bring […] including missile systems with which they have already struck on the other side “of the Dnieper river” and in the territory of Nikopol, 80 kilometers southwest of Zaporizhia, said Petro Kotin, president of Energoatom, on Telegram.
According to him, about 500 Russian soldiers are on the site of this Ukrainian power station, the largest in Europe.
“We are alive”
The governor of the Dnipro region, Valentyn Reznichenko, denounced on Saturday “a deluge of fire in the morning” on the territory of Nikopol, with the firing of “Grad missiles on residential areas”, and 12 buildings, a school and a damaged university.
In Nikopol, “rescuers found two dead people in the ruins,” he said.
On Friday evening, the Ukrainian Air Force said Russian Kh-101 missiles were fired around 10:00 p.m. from the Caspian Sea at Dnipro, four of which were destroyed.
The southern region command center said at dawn on Saturday that the situation was “tense but under control”.
“The enemy continues to carry out offensives […] but, failing success on the ground, it is stepping up missile and air strikes,” he said on Facebook.
Further north, near Kharkiv, the country’s second city, the city of Chuguiv was hit Friday evening by Russian missiles which killed three people, announced Oleg Sinegoubov, the governor of the region.
In the East on Friday evening, Kramatorsk, the main city of the Donbass basin still under Ukrainian control, in the Donetsk region, had also suffered several bombardments.
“We are alive, it’s a good day,” Olga Dekanenko, a 67-year-old woman, told AFP as she strolled, leaning on her cane, through the ruins of her house in Konstantinovka, a town in the front line struck by Russian artillery.
She doesn’t even remember what happened at dawn. Her devastated little room overlooks the garden where the rocket fell, she found herself at the foot of her bed, under blankets, pillows, stones.
A 24th death in Vinnytsia
Ukraine and its Western allies also remain reeling from the cruise missile strikes that devastated the center of Vinnytsia on Thursday, hundreds of kilometers west of the front.
The toll of this attack was raised on Saturday to 24 dead. “Unfortunately, a woman died in hospital today, she was 85% burned,” announced the governor of the Vinnytsia region, Serguiï Borzov, adding that 68 people continued to receive treatment, including four children.
“The identification of all those responsible” for this attack “has already begun”, warned Friday evening Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Russian society, with so many murderers and executioners, will remain annihilated for generations, and this by its own fault,” he said.
Faced with international condemnations, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have targeted Vinnytsia for a meeting of the “command of the Ukrainian air forces with representatives of foreign arms suppliers”.
A senior US defense official, however, said, on condition of anonymity, to have “no indication of the presence of a military target nearby”.
Russia has never recognized any blunders or crimes by its armed forces in Ukraine and systematically ensures that it only hits military targets.
In Donbass, separatist forces and the Russian military said they were continuing to advance and were in the process of taking full control of the town of Siversk, which came under attack after taking Lysychansk further east earlier this month.
“Russia has already made premature and false declarations of success”, which aim to “demonstrate the success of the operation to Russian public opinion” and boost the morale of the troops, however observed the British Ministry of Defense. He stressed that the Russian offensives in the Donbass remained “reduced” in the face of Ukrainian resistance.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that the Minister, Sergei Shoigu, had visited the soldiers involved in the offensive in Ukraine, without specifying the date of this visit, the second after a first in June, or whether it had taken place in Ukraine or Russia.
He “gave the necessary instructions to further increase” military pressure, the ministry added.
As the repercussions of this war raise serious concerns about food security in part of the planet, US President Joe Biden on Saturday announced $1 billion in aid for the Middle East and South Africa. north.