The city of Zaporizhia has been the main target of the Russian terror campaign in Ukraine in recent weeks. At least 13 people have died and 87 have been injured in the early hours of this Sunday in a bombing against a residential neighborhood. This attack is added to the one that on Thursday caused the death of another 14 people in this city and the one at the end of September that left 30 dead in a caravan of civilians evacuated from the areas occupied by Russia. The bombing of Zaporizhia comes a day after the explosion that caused serious damage to the Kerch Strait bridge, the only one connecting Russia with the annexed Crimean peninsula. This construction is key to the supply of material for the Russian troops in the provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhia, in southern Ukraine, which the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, declared annexed along with Donetsk and Lugansk on September 30.
kyiv has not acknowledged responsibility for a possible attack in Kerch, despite the fact that the Ukrainian Defense Ministry publicly celebrated it. Anonymous sources in the Ukrainian government have assured New York Times that his secret services are behind the explosion that sank part of the highway.
The attack this morning has left chilling images, such as that of a block of flats split in two by the impact of a dozen missiles that were fired at the city from fighter planes, according to the governor of the province, Oleksandr Starukh. Russia has alleged in previous attacks of this type that military personnel spend the night in these residential buildings. Testimonies from the scene confirm that among the dead there are civilians, including several children.
The city of Zaporizhia is 25 kilometers from the only war front where the Ukrainian Armed Forces are not advancing. 60% of the homonymous province was conquered by the invader at the beginning of March and illegally annexed to Russia after the celebration of a pseudo-referendum not recognized internationally. Moscow plays in this province with the card of nuclear blackmail: in the town of Energodar, on the banks of the Dnipro River, is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, occupied by Russian troops. Both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations warn of the serious risk of an accident at the plant due to the proximity of military operations.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called the attack “heartless” and “absolutely evil.” “Thousands of samples of this evil have already been produced,” Zelensky said. “From the one who gave this order to all those who executed it. They will have to be held accountable. Safely. Before the law and before the people”, the Ukrainian president wrote in a message on Facebook.
Conquering the 40% of Zaporizhia province that it does not control is a priority objective for Moscow to guarantee the complete annexation of the province. The capital also has a strong symbolic component because it contains the historical origin of the Cossack people and because during the Soviet Union it was one of the most strategic cities of the Russian empire as an energy pole. Added to this is the fact that taking Zaporizhia would mean setting foot on the western side of the Dnipro River, which geographically divides Ukraine in two.
The capital of Zaporizhia goes to bed every night in fear of Russian bombing. In addition to the 13 dead and 87 injured — 60 of whom have been hospitalized, according to provincial authorities — the attack has also left 40 buildings damaged. The magnitude of the tragedy would be greater if it were not for the fact that a large part of its inhabitants have left the city – Zaporizhia had a population of 710,000 people before the war.
In the first months of the war, this city was the main exit route for the population fleeing from the Russian-occupied territories in the same province, but also from the coast of the Sea of Azov, as happened during the siege last spring of the city of Mariupol. The attack at the end of September against a caravan of refugees from villages occupied by Russian forces caused international stupor. The invader has since restricted the exit of more population towards the free zone of Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
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