Russian leadership shares your pain, Putin tells mothers
Nearly half of Kyiv residents were still without electricity on Friday as engineers batled to restore services two days ater Russian strikes hammered the country’s energy grid.
Ater nine months of war, Russian President Vladimir Putin met for the first time with women whose children are fighting in Ukraine, assuring those who had lost sons that he and Russia’s elite “share this pain.”
Russian shelling on the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson killed 15 civilians on Friday, said an official in the recently recaptured city.
“Today, 15 Kherson city residents were killed and 35 injured, including one child, as a result of enemy shelling,” Galyna Lugova said on social media. “Several private houses and high-rise buildings were damaged” in the atacks,” she added. Meanwhile, the governor said Russian shelling had forced the evacuation of patients from hospitals in the city of Kherson.
Utility workers were still working Friday to reconnect the heating and water as temperatures in Kyiv approached freezing, as UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly visited to announce a new aid package. “We have to endure this winter — a winter that everyone will remember,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.
The carefully choreographed meeting at Putin’s residence took place as anger simmers in Russia over a chaotic military drat and deaths of soldiers in Ukraine.
At least one woman at the meeting wore a black headscarf, apparently marking a recent loss.
“We must achieve our goals and we will achieve them in the end,” Putin said during the televised meeting at his residence near Moscow. He also denounced what he called atempts by “the enemy... in the information sphere” to “devalue, (and) compromise” Moscow’s tactics in Ukraine.
“I want you to know — I personally and the entire leadership of the country share this pain,” Putin told the group ahead of Mother’s Day, which is celebrated in Russia on Sunday. “We understand that nothing can replace the loss of a son, a child,” Putin said.
He offered condolences to one of the women saying her son did not die “in vain” and reiterated his pledge to fulfil Moscow’s goals in Ukraine.
Putin told the 17 women that Moscow was fighting the “neo-nazi regime” in Ukraine and warned that they should be wary of what they read on the internet.
“It is clear that life is more complex than what is shown on our TV screens or even on the internet, nothing can be trusted there,” he said.
The mothers, from all over Russia and from different ethnic groups, in turn expressed thanks for his leadership and wished him well, before telling of sons who had fought or died with valour in the service of a noble cause.
“The Special Military Operation has brought us together,” Maria Kostyuk told him before suggesting that the homes of fallen soldiers should be given a star to hang on the door, as they had been in World War Two.
In a separate development, the Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants have been reconnected to the national power grid ater completely losing off-site power earlier this week, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
Millions of Ukrainians have endured the cold without power since Russia fired dozens of missiles and launched drone atacks at water and electricity facilities on Wednesday.
“Yes, this is a difficult situation and yes, it can happen again,” presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said on television. “But Ukraine can cope.”
Germany is to declare the 1930s starvation of millions in Ukraine under Joseph Stalin a “genocide,” adopting language used by Kyiv, according to a drat text seen by AFP on Friday.
The joint resolution by deputies from Germany’s centre-let-led coalition and the opposition conservatives is also intended as a “warning” to Russia as Ukraine faces a potential hunger crisis this winter due to Moscow’s invasion.
Lawmakers plan to vote on the resolution next Wednesday following Ukraine’s memorial day for the Holodomor.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock lent their backing to the parliamentary declaration on Friday via their spokespeople. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called Berlin’s move a “milestone” on Twiter. Baerbock later credited Kuleba with prompting Berlin to pass the resolution.
The president offered condolences to one of the women saying her son did not die ‘in vain’ and reiterated his pledge to fulfil Moscow’s goals in Ukraine; half of Kyiv still without electricity.