The attack, which raises questions about the real objectives of the Kremlin, occurred while President Joe Biden was visiting neighboring Poland.
Russia launched three missiles on Lviv, one of the Ukrainian towns closest to the border with Poland, on Saturday, just one day after announcing its intention to concentrate its offensive on Donbas, in the east of the country and opposite the city that has trembled again under the bombs. The explosions caused five injuries and a global chill. The shells fell four hundred kilometers from Warsaw, where the US president was meeting with a group of Ukrainian refugees. Never have Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin been so close to physical destruction in their protracted confrontation, nor has the world come so close to the dreaded superpower war.
The city turned into a gateway for those escaping the horror of war had not been attacked again since the 18th, when Russian forces destroyed an aircraft factory. The bombardment caught by surprise a population that was beginning to take to the streets with caution, but also with relative calm, especially after the Moscow General Staff reported on Friday that it was directing its war machine to the east. The mayor, Andri Sadovi, urged residents to lock themselves in shelters. Lviv is to the west and already in the previous bombing it was considered reckless to attack a square so close to a country that has been a NATO ally since 1999. The blast now affected several fuel depots, whose fire could be seen from a long distance.
absolute uncertainty
The aggression increases uncertainty about what strategy the Kremlin is actually pursuing. Either he lied on Friday when he narrowed his goals in Ukraine to targeting only the “liberation” of Donetsk and Lugansk, or he follows his apparent original roadmap: conquer Donbas and raze anything else that might strengthen the soldiers and the Ukrainian militias. A cold calculation bathed in blood.
A couple of weeks ago, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov already put it in words when he pointed out that Russia was interested in the territory south of the Dnieper to end the “genocide” of the separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk. Moscow suggested that the rest of the attacks were aimed at taking down military bases, as well as local networks and logistics centers, to thwart any attempt by Ukraine to constantly replenish troops and arsenals on the eastern front. The bombing this Saturday afternoon would fit into that assumption. The Russian General Staff assures that its units have destroyed the Ukrainian capacity to respond with aviation and, practically, with advanced artillery. It would entrust the weight of the counteroffensive to its ground forces and in that logic of war it would make sense to attack fuel depots. But they are all theories.
The US Department of Defense delved this Saturday into that kind of blind well that is the Kremlin’s intentions. His latest report notes a slowdown in Russian ground troops around the capital, kyiv, and other cities. The bombardments, on the other hand, are incessant in cities such as Kharkov, Kherson, Mariupol and Chernigov. The Pentagon believes that the aerial punishment reveals Russia’s refusal to lose more soldiers in direct confrontations, possibly to increase its presence in the conquered enclaves and entrench them. “It seems that (Russia) has ceased all interest in terms of the movement of its troops by land towards kyiv, but obviously air attacks, such as bombing and long-range attacks continue to occur,” said a senior Pentagon official.
The key
-
200
civilians have died in attacks on the city of Chernigov, which is in a “catastrophic” situation -
5
People were injured this Saturday in the missile attack on fuel depots in Lviv
From Warsaw, US President Joe Biden disdained the change in strategy announced by the Kremlin. Nor does the British Ministry of Defense believe it and the reliable Institute for the Study of War in the United States maintains that the reading that Russia will stick to Donbas “is probably inaccurate”, at least as long as it does not stop “trying to advance and seize of more territory. Putin may also pursue the triple goal of achieving material “benefits” with the conquest of land, isolating the Ukrainians in the east and using his dominance over this strip – extended to Crimea – in political negotiations.
What do you think while the Government of kyiv? Despite the fact that its Intelligence has detected the movement of rival units to the east -without going any further, this Saturday they broke the Ukrainian ranks in Izium, in the Kharkov region-, the Army affirms that the Russians are retreating fundamentally due to their counteroffensive and neither He rules out that Russia is actually seeking to regroup to carry out a large-scale attack on kyiv. Missile platforms continue to surround the capital.
Outside of strategies, blood continues to flow over the devastated country. The artillery barely stopped this Saturday in Kherson -subjected to continuous attacks and counter-offensives by the two armies-, Kharkov and kyiv. The brutality with which Russia is used has devastated Mariúpol – where even the pets have served as food and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, wants to arrange a rescue operation with Vladimir Putin – and Chernigov, a town near the Russian and Belarusian border in the that 150,000 residents remain trapped after the invaders have blown up the only bridge left standing. They live among ruins. There is almost no food, electricity is cut off and the wounded are piling up in hospitals. Its mayor, Vladislav Atroshenko, explains that 200 civilians have already died and that he will do his best not to allow one more. “We are deciding how to get the seriously injured out by any means. We can’t operate on them here », he exclaims. War creates victims and titans.
The Kremlin puts its services abroad on alert
The Ukrainian intelligence services, as well as the Pentagon, consider that Russia has begun to mobilize troops stationed abroad to reinforce its military power in an invasion that resists it day after day. On this Saturday there was hardly more than one significant advance with the occupation of Slavútych, a city located on the outskirts of the Chernobyl exclusion zone and where the workers of the nuclear power plant that crashed in 1986 reside. The invaders seized the City Hall and they retained the mayor, Yuri Fomichev, who later explained to the population that “if there are no soldiers in the city, the Russians will let us live in peace and the possibility of leaving it will be resumed.”
kyiv assures that the Kremlin has begun to move units from Dagestan, a Russian republic located in the Caucasus, to move them near kyiv and the United States believes that it has also called part of its troops in Georgia. According to analysts, thousands of professionals are deployed from these enclaves to Syria and Tajikistan and many form motorized brigades of well-trained riflemen for ground combat, according to the ‘Washington Post’.
Russia accuses the casualties among its ranks – some 15,000 soldiers according to NATO and just 1,300 in the Moscow version – and also the successive assassinations of generals, especially at the hands of snipers. The problem is that he can’t order a general mobilization either if he doesn’t want to weaken his bases abroad, so he could only call in the soldiers he needs to cover his casualties. The most prepared are in the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and in Armenia, Syria and Tajikistan, from where any Afghan threat is monitored.
#Russia #bombs #Lviv #day #announcing #limiting #offensive #Donbas