KYIV, Ukraine — Russia targeted Ukraine’s already devastated infrastructure with more than 100 drones, rockets and missiles on Friday, raining explosives down cities across the land country when President Volodymyr Zelensky returned from a three-day trip across Europe to demand that Ukraine’s allies send more weapons, and faster.
The strikes, the first heavy air strikes in weeks, came as fighting on the ground intensified, as Ukrainian officials called it. a new winter attack.
Russia has poured troops and equipment into eastern Ukraine, in a first phase that Ukrainian and Western officials say will be a major effort to swallow more of the Donbas region before Kiev can deploy powerful weapons. from the West and launch its own attack.
Fighting was particularly intense around the Russian-occupied city of Kreminna and the Ukrainian-controlled city of Bakhmut, about 30 miles apart in Donbas. mineral-rich region in the east of the country where the secessionists marched a year-long campaign to secede from Ukraine before the invasion.
Russia has made minor tactical gains over the past week, amid heavy fighting and heavy casualties on both sides, military analysts said, but as of Friday, there was no evidence. about a big breakthrough.
Ukraine’s air force described Friday’s aerial attack as a “major attack” and said it involved 71 cruise missiles, seven Iranian-made drones and about 35 S-300 missiles, anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has used against targets on the ground. . Ukraine said in a statement that it shot down 61 cruise missiles and five drones, but that it was not capable of intercepting the S-300.
“Their target is civilians, civilian infrastructure,” Zelensky, who was on his way back to Ukraine after a stopover in Poland, said in a video statement. He added: “This is a horror that can and must be stopped – to be stopped by the world.”
Ukrainian officials said two of the Russian missiles, fired from ships in the Black Sea, had crossed the airspace of Romania, a NATO country, and Moldova, a non-NATO country, on their way. to Ukraine. Romania rejects the claim that their airspace has been violated, which risks increasing tensions between NATO and Moscow.
Russian missiles have flown over Moldova, a tiny country located between Ukraine and Romania, several times, despite Moldova’s objections. Moldova’s prime minister on Friday announced her resignation in a reshuffle over problems she attributes to the war, but her party remains in power.
Mr. Zelensky has repeatedly argued that NATO also sees itself as being threatened by Russia, trying to push the alliance to become more involved in the war. In November, he asserted that an explosion was just across the border in Poland killed two people was caused by a Russian missile, even after Polish and NATO officials said it was indeed a remnant of a Ukrainian air defense missile.
This week, Mr. Zelensky made a whirlwind trip to Europe — this was only his second trip abroad since the war began — to rally support among Ukraine’s allies and plead for heavier weapons. He has traveled to the UK, France, Belgium and Poland, meeting with heads of state and speaking to British and European parliaments.
His lobbying has contributed to Western commitments to a range of sophisticated weapons systems, including long-range rocket artillery, tank and anti-aircraft missiles. Britain is also considering supplying fighter aircraft.
President Biden will travel to Poland on February 20, the White House announced on Friday, to meet with Eastern European leaders, who have been among the nation’s most vehement supporters of Ukraine since the invasion. Russia’s strategy began on 24 February last year.
Since October, Russia has carried out more than a dozen major attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities, as well as numerous smaller attacks, trying to overwhelm air defenses that have become more adept at against attacks. Frustrated on the battlefield, Russian forces turned to try to neutralize Ukraine and so that commoners have no power, heat And even water throughout the winter.
According to Ukraine’s Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko, the full extent of damage from Friday’s strikes is not yet clear, but energy infrastructure has been affected in six regions of the country.
“Emergency shutdowns are already in place in many areas,” Mr. Galushchenko said in a statement, added that energy workers are working to restore supply. State electricity company Ukrenergo confirmed damage to some high-voltage infrastructure in the eastern, western and southern regions of Ukraine.
S-300 missile launched from Belgorod in Russia and the occupied city of Tokmak in southern Ukraine, towards targets in the cities of Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, officials said.
Anatolii Kurtiev, secretary of the Zaporizhzhia City Council, said that at least 17 rocket attacks were reported there in less than an hour – the most intense shelling since the war began. Oleh Syniehubov, head of regional government, said that in Kharkiv, in the northeast, in the east, 10 explosions were reported overnight. In both cities, officials said the extent of the damage was not immediately clear.
As air raid alarms sounded and civilians ran for shelter on Friday, Ukrainian air defense units spread out into wide open spaces with unobstructed firing ranges around major cities, in a series of steps that are now thoroughly rehearsed, while radar stations scan the sky.
Captain Andriy, a radar operator who, like other members of his team, said: “As soon as my station registers something, we see it in the system” on the map. computer.
Ukraine operates new Western-supplied anti-aircraft weapons, including German-made ones IRIS-TILLION And US-Norway NASAMS rocket, as well as older Soviet-designed air defense systems. But it also relies on mobile groups in machine-gun trucks, which can be effective against relatively slow-moving drones. Soldiers with shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles can sometimes shoot down cruise missiles at low altitudes.
Captain Andriy said: “This morning, three ballistic missiles flew past us, but they were too far away to shoot down. He operated the radar for his air defense team and used a tablet that showed missiles flying across Ukraine, including those that could outrun his machine gunners.
One private, who gave his name only, Oleksandr, spent hours on Friday getting ready with a shoulder-fired missile. He hasn’t had a chance to use it, but “we’re learning,” he said. “We shoot down more these days.”
Over the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian warplanes raced across the sky to intercept incoming missiles, and air defense systems rumbled. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 10 rockets were shot down in the city, although power transmission lines were damaged. He said engineers are working to restore the lines.
On the ground, Ukrainian forces on Friday fought advancing Russians in pine forests near Kreminna, and held on to increasingly precarious defensive positions in frozen trenches and ruined buildings. around the ruined city of Bakhmut, according to Ukrainian officials and military analysts.
The pace of Russian activity continues to increase, but Britain’s defense intelligence agency thinks Kyiv is trying to hold on to its defenses on a large scale.
Serhiy Haidai, head of the Luhansk regional military junta, said in a statement on Friday about Ukraine’s efforts to repel the Russian attack: “It was quite difficult for the fighters of the country. us, but they got the situation under control.”
Afterward drafted about 300,000 men Last fall, Russia had about 150,000 troops in Ukraine and could send more, analysts said, but many of them were rudimentary conscripts with little training or motivation. US officials estimate that about 200,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded over the past year — more than the Kremlin initially assigned to the invading force.
Since Russia launched the invasion, its forces have rarely achieved rapid results; instead, its advances took place over weeks and months of grueling fighting. They fought for months to capture Bakhmut, which Moscow saw as the starting point to attack the Ukrainian stronghold of Kramatorsk, an important step towards capturing the entire Donbas, where Russia illegally annexed, although not in complete control of the area. In addition, Kreminna and Bakhmut are both located along important highways.
Russia continues to make slow progress in its efforts to cut off Ukrainian troops defending Bakhmut, the British defense intelligence agency said on friday.
Last summer, Ukraine abandoned its cities Sievierodonetsk And Lysychansk face an onslaught of Russian aggression, rather than risk encircling its forces. But Mr Zelensky recently said there would be no such retreat for Bakhmut.
Report contributed by Maria Varennikova from Kyiv, Monika Proncczuk from Brussels and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York.
