Russian President Vladimir Putin intensifies his offensive against Ukraine. As Moscow’s troops face resistance from the military and civilian militias, the Kremlin has moved to launch more aggressive attacks on civilian infrastructure. The latest alarming signal has been the warning from the Russian Army to the population of various areas of Kiev. The Army has recommended that they leave their homes in the face of an imminent bombardment. Despite insisting all these days that its mission is a “surgical operation” against “extremist forces” and that it would not affect the civilian population, the Russian Defense Ministry has announced that it is preparing to bomb a series of points in the Ukrainian capital . Before that warning, and in an attempt to isolate the Donbas region and gain control of all of eastern Ukraine, Putin this morning launched another intense attack on the city of Kharkiv, the second largest in population in the country (1 .4 million inhabitants) and mostly Russian-speaking. The huge explosion has hit the center of the town – besieged for three days and with the Ukrainian forces repressing the offensive -, reaching the building of the Regional Administration, as reported by the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Ukraine.
“We call on citizens attracted by nationalists to carry out provocations against Russia, as well as residents of Kiev, to leave their homes and move away from the vicinity of relay nodes,” the Russian body warned in a statement referring to a number of communications facilities of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). This afternoon there was a strong explosion in the capital. According to the Ukrainian government, Russian troops have attacked the television tower in an offensive that has potentially affected the broadcast, reports Reuters.
The Russian government justifies the attack on the city with the fact that “calls are continually made to Russian citizens where they are threatened with their physical elimination, as well as to schools, kindergartens, train stations and other social infrastructure.”
Hours earlier, in Kharkov, the video from a security camera in front of the building shows the consequences of the attack, which took place around eight in the morning, shortly after the curfew was lifted in the city. After the impact of the missile, a large ball of fire has engulfed the cars parked in front of the building, next to the symbolic Plaza de la Libertad. The adviser to the Ministry of the Interior Anton Geraschenko assures that the intention of the bombing was to end the life of the governor and the political leadership of the city.
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There is still no information on deaths or injuries from this new bombing of Kharkov, but this Monday, in another attack on civilian infrastructure, ten people were killed during a bombing of a residential neighborhood in the city, according to the mayor, Igor Terejov. The explosion killed an entire family —the two parents and their three children— who were traveling in a car through the attacked area. In addition, the aerial punishment caused dozens of injuries, with which the fatalities could increase in the coming hours.
“A conscious extermination”
Monday’s attack on Kharkov, the most destructive so far in Putin’s war against Ukraine, highlights Russia’s change in strategy in this conflict, the largest in Europe since World War II. “Today it has been shown that this is not just a war, it is a murder of our people, the Ukrainian people,” Terekhov said in a video message posted on social media on Monday.
Nearly 90 apartment buildings in Kharkov, Ukraine’s capital in the 1920s and 1930s and a major educational center, have been damaged by successive bombings. Many parts of the city are without power, water or heat in the dead of winter and a good number of people spend their nights huddled in bomb shelters.
”This is not a random wrong attack, but a conscious extermination of people. The Russians knew what they were shooting at,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday night. “This is, without a doubt, a military crime. A peaceful city. Quiet residential neighborhoods. Not a single military object in sight,” said the Ukrainian leader, who has brought Russia before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes. Specifically, Kiev denounces that 16 children have died in the country as a result of different attacks and that hospitals and other civilian structures have been bombed or have been damaged by attacks in residential areas in the five days of the Russian offensive.
Zelensky has demanded the “immediate” halting of the attacks, the expulsion of Russia from the UN and that no country acquire resources from the Vladimir Putin regime. For its part, Moscow has justified the invasion of the neighboring state by an alleged danger that it will obtain nuclear weapons. As the offensive intensifies, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated in a videoconference speech before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva: “Ukraine still has Soviet nuclear technology. We cannot not act in the face of that danger.”
In Kharkov, Maria Avdeeva, a Ukrainian analyst who lives in that city, says that the bombings are being very intense. Avdeeva was in the street this Monday, with a media group, when one of the bombardments hit a residential area of the city. “It was terrible,” she explains over the phone. “We were in open space with nowhere to hide. The attacks have continued for 15 minutes. That residential area, with apartments and shops, without thousands of objects that could be the target of these attacks, ”she says Avdeeva, by phone. The expert believes that the attack on Kharkov, 30 kilometers from the Russian border, is Putin’s demonstration that he can attack civilians and will not tremble in doing so, as in the wars in Chechnya, where he applied a land policy burned.
The bombing of this Monday in Kharkov also occurred at the time that a Ukrainian and a Russian delegation sat down for the first time to negotiate in Belarus, next to the Ukrainian border, to try to reach a ceasefire. The dialogue table had no concrete achievements, although the teams from both countries have agreed to talk again “in the coming days.” The meeting could be this time on the border between Ukraine and Poland, according to Zelensky government sources.
Meanwhile, very close to Kiev, a huge caravan of Russian military vehicles that stretches 60 kilometers northwest of the city, according to AFP reports, threatens to increase hostilities in the Ukrainian capital, according to satellite images captured by the American company Maxar. The UK defense minister has warned that Russia has “long columns of armored vehicles and logistics vehicles” lined up just a few kilometers from the border and ready to join the offensive and support its troops on the ground. Putin has most of his ground forces more than 30 kilometers north of Kiev, which continues to be in the sights of the Russian president, who wants to extreme the offensive against the capital, of 2.8 million inhabitants, to force Zelensky to capitulate
With the intense attacks on besieged Kharkov and the advance of Russian troops from the south, where they have managed to take control of Berdiansk, on the Sea of Azov, and the harsh offensive against the port city of Mariupol, where the resistance is standing up to Putin’s forces, the Kremlin tries to make a pincer to encircle Donbas. In Mariupol, most neighborhoods are without power or heating after several attacks hit supply points and power substations, local authorities said.
With these wickers, the prospect of building a corridor from the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014 with an illegal referendum, to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions is also advancing. That corridor would allow a connection to the strategic peninsula, which has been experiencing water supply problems since annexation. In addition, Putin intensifies his attack against the city of Kherson, on the left flank of Crimea, a key point that would allow him to launch a harsh offensive against Odessa and gain control of all access to the Black Sea, where three countries of the NATO: Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria. Russian forces surrounded Kherson overnight and set up checkpoints around it, according to local authorities.
Vladimir Putin’s offensive to “denazify” Ukraine and “protect” its citizens has already caused hundreds of deaths and half a million refugees. The Ukrainian Army is managing to contain for now the attack in the most important cities of the country. But the bombardments have continued this Tuesday and the Russian forces advance.
“For the enemy, Kiev is the key target. They want to destroy our state, and that is why the capital is under constant threat,” warned President Zelensky, who has assured that Putin is trying to blow up the city’s main power plant to leave the capital, where there are already supply problems, Without eleectricity. The Ukrainian security forces have also raised their warnings about paramilitary infiltrators in the pay of Russia. The Army assures that they try to penetrate Kiev and that they wear police uniforms or those of the Ukrainian armed forces.
The Kremlin has not seemed to mind the tide of international sanctions on its Russian companies, people and banks. This Monday, Moscow has responded to the reprisals that have closed European airspace to Russian airlines and private planes that are often used by businessmen from the Kremlin’s orbit, with the closure of its own airspace to 36 airlines, including those of the 27 member countries of the EU. Russia has also threatened the EU with further retaliation. “There will be a harsh response to the EU’s actions. Russia will continue to ensure the achievement of vital national interests, regardless of sanctions or their threat,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement in which it has also threatened harsh reprisals against EU citizens and entities involved in the delivery of weapons, fuel and defense supplies to Ukraine.
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