Putin vows more slaughter
KYIV: Vladimir Putin has warned more “severe” attacks on Ukraine will come, as one of his security council heads said Russia’s biggest missile attack on the country to date was just “the first episode”.
The Ukrainian military said Russia had fired about 80 missiles on seven cities in the morning rush hour, days after Mr Putin was humiliated when an explosion partially destroyed a bridge linking Russia to Crimea and less than 48 hours after he appointed a notoriously brutal military commander known as “General Armageddon” to revive his faltering offensive.
“They have two targets. Energy facilities throughout the country. The second is people,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a social media video. “They are trying to wipe us off the face of the Earth.” He also said Russia had deployed Iranian kamikaze drones.
The deputy head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev issued a stark warning of more to come, saying: “The first episode
has been played – there will be others.”
In Kyiv, missiles struck a busy road junction, a playground and a pedestrian and cycle bridge. Black smoke billowed into the sky from several locations, including near a monument to Ukrainian independence.
The missile attacks struck civilian areas from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the northeast and Dnipro in central Ukraine. Fourteen people were killed and more than 97 injured, with the death toll expected to rise. Power stations were also hit.
As Ukrainians ran for airraid shelters, Belarus hardman Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin puppet, said he had ordered his troops to join Russian forces near Ukraine.
“The training in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine of Belarusian radical militants for them to carry out sabotage, terrorist attacks and to organise a military mutiny in the country is becoming a direct threat,” he said.
The Kremlin has claimed the escalation is revenge for the bridge attack but military intelligence experts believe the scale of the strikes suggested they might have been planned before the bridge was hit. Ukraine’s military intelligence said orders to prepare the strikes had been given as early as October 2.
In Kyiv, where life had returned to something resembling normality, people are again taking shelter in metro stations. The relative calm had prompted some refugees to return home. “It’s terrifying,” Zhanna, a middle-aged woman who left Britain for Kyiv two weeks ago, said. “Why isn’t anyone willing to teach Russia a lesson?”
Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s
Prime Minister, said Russian rockets had hit key infrastructure facilities in eight regions, and there were power and water shortages in Kharkiv and Lviv.
Kyiv said the attacks were meant to plunge Ukrainians into freezing temperatures without power as winter approached.
“They are unable to fight like men so they hit our cities with long-range missiles,” said Yuriy Sak, adviser to
Ukraine’s defence minister.