AFP, SKNYLIV, Ukraine
Russia on Wednesday launched a wave of missiles and drones at Ukrainian energy facilities, intensifying a months-long bombing campaign at a precarious moment of the war for Ukraine.
The barrage came a day after Kyiv said it had carried out its largest aerial attack of the war on Russian army factories and energy hubs hundreds of kilometers from the front line.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 43 cruise and ballistic missiles as well as 74 attack drones in the barrage, which targeted sites mainly in western Ukraine.
Yaroslava Sukach, 77, a local resident whose house was destroyed, stands next to a crater following a missile strike on the village of Sknyliv, about 60km from Lviv, western Ukraine, on Wednesday.
Photo: AFP
Oleksandra Komuna, an elderly resident of the western Ukrainian village of Sknyliv, was at home during the attack when lamps and plaster began falling.
“All the doors and windows were blown out, everything was blown out. The car was damaged, and the roof was damaged. There were cracks everywhere,” she said. “It’s such a disaster.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was quick to condemn the strikes and called for more robust security assistance from allies abroad.
“Another massive Russian attack. It is the middle of winter, and the target for the Russians remains the same: our energy sector,” he wrote on social media.
The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed in a daily briefing that its forces had carried out “high precision” strikes on energy facilities that “support the Ukrainian military-industrial complex.”
It also repeated the claim that all the designated targets had been struck.
However, the Ukrainian air force said that it had shot down 30 of the missiles and 47 drones, while Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said the Russian attack had “failed”.
Hours after the barrage, Zelenskiy called on the West to use about US$250 billion of unallocated frozen Russian assets to buy Kyiv weapons. He was speaking at a press conference in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda.
“Ukraine will take this money, allocate a large amount for domestic production and for the import of exactly those types of weapons that Ukraine does not have,” he said.
The EU last week paid out to Kyiv the first 3 billion euros (US$3.1 billion) of a loan backed by the interest earned on frozen Russian assets.
The US Department of State on Wednesday announced new sanctions on “more than 150 individuals and entities involved in Russia’s defense industry and supporting its military-industrial base.”
Meanwhile, US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that the new administration would seek “bold diplomacy” to end the war.
“There will have to be concessions made by the Russian Federation, but also by the Ukrainians,” he said.
Moscow has pursued a months-long bombing campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, claiming the attacks targeted facilities that aid Kyiv’s military.
The Russian military had accused Kyiv of using US and UK-supplied missiles for one of the strikes the previous day and promised it would “not go unanswered.”
On Wednesday evening in Russia’s Voronezh Oblast bordering Ukraine several drones “sparked a fire at an oil depot,” Voronezh Governor Alexander Gusev said on Telegram, as videos posted by witnesses showed a substantial blaze.
Kyiv and Moscow’s escalating drone and missile attacks come at a difficult moment for Ukraine across the sprawling front line.
At several key points in the northern Kharkiv and eastern Donetsk regions, Russian forces have been able to steadily advance by exploiting their advantages in personnel and resources.
Building on those gains, the Russian defense ministry on Wednesday said that its forces had captured the village of Ukrainka in the industrial Donetsk region that the Kremlin claims is part of Russia.
Despite the war having ground on for nearly three years, there are still some areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv, which announced on Wednesday that they had exchanged 25 prisoners of war each.
