Ukraine warned on Thursday of "difficult months ahead" after the "massive" Russian night attack which targeted several cities, at a time when Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington to demand more powerful weapons.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived at the American Congress, where elected officials are debating possible new military and humanitarian aid, and is to be received by President Joe Biden.
At the same time, the question of the transit of Ukrainian grain, blocked in the Black Sea by Russia and subject to embargoes by Warsaw, Bratislava and Budapest against the advice of the EU, began to be resolved in Europe.
Bratislava and kyiv announced that they had agreed on a mechanism and Poland, which this crisis saw announce that it would no longer deliver weapons to Ukraine, promised negotiations.
In Ukraine, the new salvo of Russian cruise missiles left three dead in Kherson, in the south, and seven injured in kyiv, the capital.
“Most of the missiles have been shot down, but only the majority. Not all,” Mr. Zelensky said on Telegram, calling on the West to provide even more anti-aircraft systems to his country.
The upcoming arrival of the cold season makes the country's authorities fear that Moscow will relaunch a campaign of strikes on the energy system to plunge the civilian population into darkness and cold, as during winter 2022.
“Difficult months await us: Russia will continue to attack energy and essential installations,” warned the deputy head of the presidential administration, Oleksiï Kouleba, accusing Moscow of wanting to “sow panic”.
The night's attack targeted "dormitories, gas stations, a hotel, energy and civil infrastructure", he said.
In Kharkiv, a large city in the northeast, workshops and factories were damaged and two people injured, according to the authorities.
"The rocket fell very close, a few meters from us. There was a lot of debris and shrapnel. It caused a lot of damage," Mykola Pogorielov, director of a company, told AFP local.
Yulia Barantsova, a seamstress in a clothing factory, witnessed that the workshops were affected. “The ceilings collapsed, the windows exploded,” she said.
For the first time in six months, energy installations in the west and center of the country were damaged by Russian strikes, causing power cuts in several regions, Ukrainian supplier Ukrenergo said on Telegram.
While Valery Zalouzhny, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, was pleased that his defenses had “destroyed 36 cruise missiles” out of 43, some caused damage and casualties.
In Kherson, in the south of the country, residential areas were hit in the middle of the night, leaving three dead and five injured.
In the capital, kyiv, missile fragments injured seven people, including a 9-year-old girl.
In the Darnytskiï district, in the east of the city, “the windows and doors were blown out,” Maïa Pelioukh told AFP. “A window fell on me.”
“It was very scary,” said Daria Kalna, another witness.
Nine people were also injured in the town of Cherkasy, south of kyiv, and in Rivne (northwest), the attack caused power cuts.
The Lviv region (west), some 1,000 km from the front, was also hit, the governor announced, without giving further details.
These attacks took place a few hours after Moscow claimed to have shot down a total of 22 Ukrainian drones in annexed Crimea, above the Black Sea as well as in the Belgorod and Orel regions.
The Ukrainian army, for its part, claimed to have struck a Russian military airfield near the town of Saky in Crimea during the night with drones and missiles.
The strike inflicted “serious damage” while at least 12 Su-24 and Su-30 combat aircraft were at the airfield, a source in the Ukrainian security services said.
Russian authorities in Crimea, on the contrary, claimed that Russian anti-aircraft defense foiled this attack by Ukraine, which increased strikes on the annexed peninsula and in the Black Sea.
These cross-attacks come after Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Wednesday in New York, at the UN, Moscow's "criminal aggression" and "the blocking" of the international body due to Russia's right of veto in the Security Council.
21/09/2023 16:50:45 - Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
