Russia releases a barrage of missiles throughout Ukraine
From the skies above Belarus to the north and the waters of the Black Sea to the south, Russian forces unleashed a fusillade of cruise missiles across Ukraine on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, in one of the most widespread and coordinated aerial assaults in weeks.
Even as Russia pounded civilian and military infrastructure from the air, fierce fighting raged on the eastern front, where Russian forces pressed to cut off the supply lines for thousands of Ukrainian soldiers.
The Ukrainian military said that Russian warplanes had attacked Ukrainian positions near the eastern city of Lysychansk, the last urban stronghold still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Luhansk province, as Russian forces pressed to encircle the city. In its battered sister city of Sievierodonetsk, Mayor Oleksandr Striuk said Saturday that Russian troops had established full command after the Ukrainian military’s withdrawal Friday.
The missile strikes came hours before President Vladimir Putin of Russia met with President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus in St. Petersburg, Russia. Belarusian forces are also once again conducting military drills near the border with the Kyiv, Ukraine, region, raising tensions and putting Ukrainian authorities on high alert.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency called the Russian assault “a largescale provocation of Russia for the purpose of further dragging Belarus into the war against Ukraine.” Western military analysts say it is unlikely that Belarus would join the Russian war effort, but Lukashenko’s hold on power is dependent on the Kremlin’s support, limiting his room for political maneuvering.
Even as Ukraine faces perhaps its toughest moment on the battlefield since the early weeks of the war, the commander of its military, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, released a video to celebrate the first battlefield use of advanced multiple-launch rocket systems from the United States.
He said the weapons were being used to hit “military targets of the enemy on our, Ukrainian, territory.”
But the Russian missile strikes offered a potent reminder of the vast destructive power of the arsenal at Moscow’s disposal.
The mayor of the embattled southern port city of Mykolaiv, which has been under attack from Russian forces since the start of the war, called for “everyone who wants to survive” to leave, because “it’s not clear when all this will be over.”
The Russian strikes Saturday also hit areas of the country that have been relatively quiet in recent weeks. Even in western and northern regions, where the wail of air alarms had become more sporadic, they rang out numerous times in less than 48 hours to signal that missiles had been fired within striking distance.
Dozens of the missile strikes were launched by Russian aircraft in Belarusian airspace overnight, according to a Belarusian monitoring group, Belarusian Guyun, which has been detailing Russian actions since the start of the war.