Russian missiles target Ukrainian grid
Russia sent Ukrainian civilians racing for cover with a rush-hour missile barrage, killing at least one person, the day after Kyiv secured Western pledges of dozens of modern battlefield tanks to try to push back the Russian war.
Moscow reacted with fury to the German and American announcements, and has in the past responded to apparent Ukrainian successes with massed air strikes that have left millions without light, heat or water.
The Ukrainian military said it had shot down all 24 drones sent overnight by Russia, including 15 around the capital, and 47 of 55 Russian missiles - some fired from Tu-95 strategic bombers in the Russian Arctic.
Air raid alarms had sounded across Ukraine as people headed to work. In the capital, crowds took cover for a time in underground metro stations.
Kyiv city officials said a 55-yearold man had been killed and two wounded. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said electricity substations had been hit as Russia continued to target energy facilities.
The Kremlin said it saw the promised delivery of Western tanks as evidence of the growing “direct involvement” of the United States and Europe in the 11-month-old conflict, something
Explosions registered in Kyiv and Vinnytsia as Zelensky hails tank pledges as ‘fist of freedom’
both deny.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy producer, said it was conducting pre-emptive emergency shutdowns in Kyiv, the surrounding region and the regions of Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk.
In Odesa, the Black Sea port designated a “World Heritage in Danger” site on Wednesday by the UN cultural agency Unesco, Russian missiles damaged energy facilities, authorities said, just as French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna was arriving.
Colonna was due to meet her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, to discuss humanitarian and military aid and potentially whether France might join its Nato allies in supplying Ukraine with battle tanks, in this case its own Leclerc model.
Both Moscow and Kyiv, which have so far relied on Soviet-era T-72 tanks, are expected to mount new ground offensives in spring.
Ukraine has been asking for hundreds of modern tanks in the hope of using them to break Russian defensive lines and recapture occupied territory in the south and east.
“The key now is speed and volumes. Speed in training our forces, speed in supplying tanks to Ukraine.
The numbers in tank support,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Wednesday.
“We have to form such a ‘tank fist’, such a ‘fist of freedom’.”
Maintaining Kyiv’s drumbeat of requests, Zelensky said he had spoken to Nato Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg and asked for long-range missiles and aircraft.
Ukraine’s allies have already provided billions of dollars in military aid, including sophisticated US missile systems that have helped turn the tide of the war.
The United States has been wary of deploying its difficultto-maintain M1 Abrams tanks, but ultimately promised 31 to persuade Germany to pledge its more easily operated Germanbuilt Leopards. —