Russia ups attack day after Biden’s remarks
LVIV: Russia struck military targets in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv with high-precision cruise missiles, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday in the most significant attack on the city in the monthold war even as Ukraine accused Russia of splitting the country into two, vowing “total” guerrilla warfare to prevent a carve up of the country.
According to the Russian ministry, Russia hit a fuel depot being used by Ukrainian forces near Lviv with longrange missiles and used cruise missiles to strike a plant in the city being used to repair antiaircraft systems, radar stations and sights for tanks.
Confirming the attack, Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko said on Sunday that Russia had started destroying Ukrainian fuel and food storage centres, meaning the government would have to disperse stocks of both in the near future.
“The armed forces of the Russian Federation continue offensive actions as part of the special military operation,” the ministry’s spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.
The ministry showed video of the missile strikes in Lviv.
Officials in Lviv, just 60km from the border with NATOmember Poland, said people had been wounded in the missile attacks.
Russia also used sea-based long-range missiles to destroy an arsenal of S-300 missiles and BUK anti-aircraft missile systems near Kyiv, the ministry said. Russian forces also destroyed a number of drones, it said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the West to give his country tanks, planes and missiles to help fend off the Russian forces, which the Kyiv government said were increasingly targeting fuel and food depots.
On the other hand, US officials continued efforts to soften their President Joe Biden’s comments from Saturday. In a fiery speech in Poland, Biden said that Russian leader Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had no strategy of regime change in Moscow, telling reporters in
Jerusalem that Biden had simply meant Putin could not be “empowered to wage war” against Ukraine or anyone else.
After more than four weeks of conflict, Russia has failed to seize any major Ukrainian city and Moscow signalled on Friday it was scaling back its ambitions to focus on securing the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, where Russianbacked separatists have been
fighting the Ukrainian army for the past eight years.
A local leader in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic said on Sunday the region could soon hold a referendum on joining Russia, just as happened in Crimea after Russia seized the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014.
Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to break with Ukraine and join Russia -- a vote that much of the world refused to recognise.
“In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,” Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, said in a statement, referring to the division of Korea after World War Two.
He predicted Ukraine’s army would push back Russian forces.
“In addition, the season of a total Ukrainian guerrilla safari will soon begin. Then there will be one relevant scenario left for the Russians, how to survive,” he said.
Heavy armour
Moscow says the goals for what Putin calls a “special military operation” include demilitarising and “denazifying” its neighbour. Ukraine and its Western allies calls this a pretext for an unprovoked invasion.
The invasion has devastated several Ukrainian cities, caused a major humanitarian crisis and displaced an estimated 10 million people, nearly a quarter of Ukraine’s total population.
In a late-night television address on Saturday, Zelensky demanded that Western nations hand over military hardware that was “gathering dust” in stockpiles, saying his nation needed just 1% of NATO’s aircraft and 1% of its tanks.
Western nations have so far given Ukraine anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles as well as small arms and protective equipment, but have not offered any heavy armour or planes.
“We’ve already been waiting 31 days. Who is in charge of the Euro-Atlantic community? Is it really still Moscow, because of intimidation?” Zelensky said, suggesting Western leaders were holding back on supplies because they were frightened of Russia.
Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko said on Sunday that Russia had started destroying Ukrainian fuel and food storage centres, meaning the government would have to disperse stocks of both in the near future.
In its latest military assessment, the British Ministry of Defence said Russian forces appeared to be concentrating their efforts on encircling Ukrainian troops directly facing separatist regions in the east.
“The battlefield across northern Ukraine remains largely static with local Ukrainian counterattacks hampering Russian attempts to reorganise their forces,” the ministry said. Historic struggle
Biden drew criticism for his improvised remarks during a speech in Warsaw on Saturday that sought to frame the war as part of a historic struggle for democratic freedoms.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden had said of Putin. Earlier he called the Russian leader a “butcher”.
Veteran US diplomat Richard Haass, president of American think-tank the Council on Foreign Relations, said on Twitter the comments made “a dangerous situation more dangerous”.
US officials tried to walk back the president’s words, with a White House official saying they were not a call for Putin’s removal, but rather meant that he should not be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region.
Blinken echoed the sentiment. “As you know, and as you have heard us say repeatedly, we do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia - or anywhere else, for that matter,” he said in Jerusalem.
The United Nations has confirmed 1,104 civilian deaths and 1,754 injuries across Ukraine but says the real toll is likely to be higher. Ukraine said on Sunday 139 children had been killed and more than 205 wounded so far in the conflict.
Ukraine and Russia have agreed two “humanitarian corridors” to evacuate civilians from frontline areas on Sunday, including allowing people to leave by private car from the southern city of Mariupol, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
The encircled port, which lies between Russian-annexed Crimea and eastern areas held by Russian-backed separatists, has been devastated by weeks of heavy bombardment, forcing thousands of residents to take shelter in basements with scarce water, food, medicine or power.
CRIMEANS VOTED OVERWHELMINGLY TO BREAK WITH UKRAINE AND JOIN RUSSIA -- A VOTE THAT MUCH OF THE WORLD REFUSED TO RECOGNISE.