Kyiv, Ukraine ( Associated Press) — Russia again launched airstrikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities Thursday as the first snow of the season fell in Kyiv, warning if Russian missiles continue to destroy power plants and gas as winter arrives So is a harbinger of trouble to come.
On the other hand, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced the extension of an agreement signed four months ago to guarantee the safe delivery of grain, food and fertilizer exports from Ukraine through the Black Sea, which was to expire in 2015. Some days.
Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine early Thursday as they feared Moscow could launch another massive missile strike in a war that is now nearly nine months old. At least four people have been killed and more than 20 injured in drone and missile attacks across the country, officials said.
Kremlin forces have suffered a series of setbacks on the ground, most recently withdrawing from the southern city of Kherson. In the face of those defeats, Russia has increasingly resorted to targeted airstrikes against energy infrastructure and other civilian targets in parts of Ukraine.
Thursday’s salute appeared small in scale compared to the barrage by more than 100 missiles and drones that knocked out power to 10 million people earlier this week. According to local officials, it was the worst bomb attack ever on the power grid.
It also fired a missile into Poland, killing two people. Officials are still trying to determine where that missile came from, with early indications pointing to a Ukrainian air defense system designed to counter the Russian bombardment.
In Kyiv, the city’s military administration said its air defense shot down at least two cruise missiles and five drones carrying Iranian-made explosives.
According to analysts, Ukrainian air defense this week has been more successful in intercepting attacks than in previous attacks last month. The improvement is partly due to Western-supplied air defense systems.
But some missiles and drones manage to overcome them.
The governor of the Eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentin Reznichenko, reported a massive fire in Dnepropetrovsk after an industrial complex in the city was attacked. He said eight people were injured, including a 15-year-old girl.
Another Russian attack on a residential building in Vilnius, Zaporizhia province, killed at least four people overnight. According to Kirylo Tymoshenko, an official in the Ukrainian president’s office, rescuers were combing through the rubble looking for more victims.
The Russian offensive also hit the Odessa region in southern Ukraine and the city of Dnipro for the first time in weeks.
In Odessa, it hit an infrastructure target, explained its governor, Maxim Marchenko, on a telegram, who warned of the threat of “massive missile bombardment of the entire territory of Ukraine”.
According to Tymoshenko, several explosions were also reported in Dnipro, where two infrastructures were damaged and at least one person was injured.
Authorities in the Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnitsky and Rivne regions urged the population to stay in bomb shelters.
Increasingly, Russia attacks the Ukrainian power grid with the arrival of winter and increasing their losses on the battlefield. The latest attack came after days of euphoria in Ukraine following one of its biggest military successes: last week’s capture of the southern city of Kherson.
Andrey Ermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, called the attacks on energy targets “naive tactics of cowardly losers” in a post on Telegram on Thursday.
Yermak wrote, “Ukraine has already withstood extremely heavy enemy attacks, which did not give the cowardly Russians the expected result.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the extension of the grain deal was “an important decision in the global fight against the food crisis.”
