The week has started in Ukraine with Russian air strikes on a dozen regions of Ukraine. The missiles have fallen on kyiv and Kharkov, the two main cities in the country, and also in other regions such as Zaporizhia, Dnipro, Odessa, Cherkasi, Poltava, Vinitsia, Chernivtsi, Kirovohrad or Khmelnitskii. It is the 250th day since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 and it becomes a Monday of intense attacks after those that occurred on October 10 and 17, when the main objective – just like today, according to the Kiev authorities — were the country’s energy infrastructures. Beyond the missiles that have hit, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense assures that it has managed to shoot down 44 projectiles with its anti-aircraft systems (18 in the center of the country, 12 in the south, nine in the north and five in the west). One of them even fell into the territory of neighboring Moldova, near the Ukrainian border, without causing any casualties, according to the Interfax agency. Others, however, have reached their goal.
One of the facilities attacked in kyiv has suffered damage that has left 350,000 apartments without power, according to the mayor, Vitali Klichko. The state company and the emergency services, adds the first mayor on his social networks, are trying to restore the service. Meanwhile, several neighborhoods in the capital remain without electricity or water. Up to 80% of the city’s population, with some three million inhabitants before the invasion, has been left without water, according to the newspaper Kiyv Independent, which cites the public company Kyivvodokanal. The authorities have asked the population to accumulate water or buy it within their means. Images of anti-aircraft systems appear on social networks intercepting some of the missiles over the country’s main city.
“Instead of fighting on the battlefield, Russia is fighting civilians,” laments the Government of Ukraine through its Foreign Minister, Dmitro Kuleba, who on his Twitter account asks Russia “not to justify these attacks by calling them ‘ an answer”. For its part, the United States accuses Russia of carrying out a new “barbaric” attack using cold and darkness against civilians, as the ambassador in kyiv, Bridget A. Brink, has denounced on the same social network.
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From seven in the morning the alarms sound and messages arrive on mobile phones, warning of the danger and the need to take refuge in shelters in the face of the possibility of attacks throughout the country. The Ukrainian authorities activate these alerts, which have sounded almost daily since the invasion began, when they detect movements in the Russian Army such as fighter planes, missiles, drones or long-range missiles. About an hour later, information about the impact of projectiles in different regions of the north, south, east and west has begun to emerge. The railway company reports train delays.
In Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city, the metro service remains suspended. The governor of that northeastern region, Oleh Siniehubov, accuses Moscow of having launched several S-300 missiles from the Russian city of Belgorod, across the border. In other regions, such as Zaporizhia in the southeast, Governor Oleksandr Staruj has reported attacks carried out from warplanes. In Dnipro, in the east, the governor, Valentin Reznichenko, has reported the death of a woman.
The governors of some of the bombed cities point out through social networks that, as on previous occasions throughout October, essential infrastructures for the normal development of citizens’ lives have been attacked. Since the 10th, the Kremlin troops have intensified their campaign to hit Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, already damaged by approximately 40% at the gates of a winter that is expected to be very harsh both on the battlefront and for the population of the entire world. country.
Monday’s attacks take place after, on Saturday, the Russian fleet docked in the Black Sea off the coast of Sevastopol (Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Russia) was attacked. Moscow then announced that it was suspending the agreement that allows cereals to be exported from Ukraine to dozens of countries in the world where this grain is essential to face the food crisis.
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