In the aftermath of the sinking of its flagship in the Black Sea, Russia threatened on Friday to intensify its attacks on kyiv after accusing Ukraine of bombing villages on its territory.
“The number and scale of missile strikes on Kyiv sites will increase in response to all terrorist-type attacks and sabotage carried out on Russian territory by the nationalist regime in Kyiv,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. .
The ministry has already announced the destruction of a surface-to-air missile production workshop in the Vizar factory located in the suburbs of kyiv.
Previously, Ukrainian regional authorities reported explosions that occurred overnight southwest of Kyiv, in the Vassylkiv district.
Ukraine’s anti-aircraft defense “came into action” and anti-aircraft alerts have sounded several times since Thursday evening in the capital region, said its governor, Olexander Pavliuk.
Even though Russian troops withdrew from the kyiv region at the end of March, these alerts remain quite frequent there.
“Anti-Ukrainian hysteria”
Russia claims that Ukraine bombed Russian border villages, accusations dismissed by the opposing camp. According to the Ukrainians, it is the Russian secret services that carry out “terrorist attacks” in the border region to fuel “anti-Ukrainian hysteria”.
The Russian Investigative Committee claimed that two Ukrainian helicopters ‘equipped with heavy weapons’ entered Russia and carried out ‘at least six strikes on apartment buildings in the village of Klimovo’, in the Bryansk region .
Seven people, including a baby, were injured “to varying degrees”, according to these Russian accusations, the validity of which is impossible to verify independently.
Russia also claimed on Friday that it killed around 30 “Polish mercenaries” in a strike carried out in northeastern Ukraine, amid heightened tensions between Moscow and Warsaw.
“As a result of the strike, a detachment of mercenaries from a Polish private military company […] was liquidated in the village of Izyumske, in the Kharkiv region. Up to 30 Polish mercenaries were eliminated,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
” Hard blow “
These Russian announcements come the day after the loss of their flagship, the Moskva, engulfed in the waves of the Black Sea.
This 186-meter-long missile ship sank on Thursday after being hit by a Ukrainian missile according to kyiv, due to an accidental fire according to Moscow.
The loss of this ship is “a blow” to the Russian fleet in the region, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Thursday, with “consequences for their combat capabilities”, the Moskva being a “key element of their efforts to establish naval dominance in the Black Sea”.
It “provided air cover for the other vessels during their operations, in particular the bombardment of the coast and the landing maneuvers”, detailed for his part the spokesman for the regional military administration of Odessa Sergei Bratchouk.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday evening that the Moskva “lost stability due to hull damage sustained in the fire following the detonation of ammunition” while towing.
Whatever the circumstances of the sinking, it is one of Russia’s biggest setbacks and a major humiliation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hit the nail on the head in his evening ritual video message by referring to Ukrainians as “those who showed that Russian ships can only go to the bottom”.
Military setbacks in Ukraine could prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin to resort to a tactical or low-power nuclear weapon in that country, William Burns, the head of the CIA, the main US intelligence agency, warned on Thursday.
But “we haven’t really seen any concrete signs like military deployments or measures that could heighten our concerns,” he insisted.
Translating into words the level of extreme hostility reached in this conflict, as much as the gravity of the atrocities attributed to Russian forces, the Ukrainian Parliament voted on Thursday a resolution qualifying the Russian offensive as “genocide”.
“Thousands of Tanks”
In the largest region of Donbass, that of Donetsk, where “fighting is taking place on the entire front line”, three people were killed and seven injured, according to the Ukrainian presidency.
The other region of this mining basin, that of Lugansk, was the scene of 24 bombings which left two dead and two injured, according to the same source.
Russia, whose announced massive offensive in the Donbass has still not started, is struggling to take full control of Mariupol, a strategic port in the Sea of Azov.
President Zelensky has remained since the beginning of the war entrenched with his administration in the center of the capital, from where he has not ceased to demand from the West deliveries of heavy armaments which are lacking to resist the firepower of the Russians.
“Russia has brought thousands of tanks, artillery pieces and all sorts of heavy weapons to the region, simply hoping to crush our army,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba insisted on Thursday.
“Calcined”
US President Joe Biden finally acceded to Ukraine’s request on Wednesday, promising massive new military aid of $800 million, including armor and long-range guns.
His French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, challenged by Volodymyr Zelensky on his refusal to endorse the word “genocide” used by Joe Biden to justify his military aid, underlines for his part that “the States which consider that it is a genocide must by international conventions to intervene”. “Is this what people want? I don’t think so, ”commented Mr. Macron.
It is in Mariupol (south-east) that could be recorded in the immediate future the heaviest human toll of this war. The Ukrainian authorities have mentioned some 20,000 dead.
Galina Vasilyeva, 78, points to a nine-storey building completely burnt down: “Look at our beautiful buildings! she exclaims. “People are burned inside,” says this retiree, queuing in front of a truck of pro-Russian separatists distributing humanitarian aid.
The martyred port city, which AFP was able to see during a press trip organized this week by the Russian army, suffered a deluge of fire, which devastated the infrastructure and homes of the half-million of people who lived there when Vladimir Putin launched his offensive against Ukraine on February 24.
Today, after more than forty days, the fighting is confined to the vast industrial zone near the seaside, as Russian forces and their separatist allies in Donetsk have imposed and then gradually tightened their terrible siege.
The conquest of this city would allow the Russians to consolidate their territorial gains by linking the Donbass region, partly controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014, with Crimea annexed the same year.
Shelling also continues in the eastern part of Ukraine. According to the governor of the region, more than 500 civilians including 24 children have been killed in the Kharkiv region (north-east) since the start of the Russian invasion.
Analysts say Russian President Vladimir Putin, mired in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, wants to secure a victory in Donbass ahead of the May 9 military parade in Red Square marking the Soviet victory over the Nazis in 1945.