Russia hits fuel, rail targets as US ramps up rhetoric
Austin: Russia must be weakened so it can’t invade again
Russia unleashed a string of attacks yesterday against rail and fuel installations deep inside Ukraine, far from the front lines of Moscow’s new eastern offensive, in a bid to thwart Ukrainian efforts to marshal supplies for the fight.
The United States, however, moved to rush more weaponry to Ukraine and said the assistance from the Western allies is making a difference in the two-month-old war.
“Russia is failing. Ukraine is succeeding,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared, a day after he and the US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Blinken said Washington approved a US$165 million ($249m) sale of ammunition — non-us ammo, mainly if not entirely for Ukraine’s Soviet-era weapons — and will also provide more than US$300M in financing to buy more supplies.
Austin took his comments further, saying that while the US wants to see Ukraine remain a sovereign, democratic country, it also wants “to see Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do things like invade Ukraine”. That appeared to represent a broader US strategic goal. Previously, the US position had been to help Ukraine win and to defend Ukraine’s Nato neighbours against Russian threats.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said weapons supplied by Western countries “will be a legitimate target” for Russian forces. He also warned that the risk of a nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated”.
Speaking in an interview on Russian television, Lavrov said the arming of Ukraine is an attempt to drag on the fighting “until the last soldier” to inflict the most suffering on Russia. Regarding the possibility of a nuclear confrontation, Lavrov said: “I would not want to see these risks artificially inflated now, when the risks are rather significant. It is real. It should not be underestimated.”
Yesterday, Russia focused its missiles and warplanes far behind the Donbas region. Five railroad stations in central and western Ukraine were hit, and one worker was killed, said Oleksandr Kamyshin, head of Ukraine’s state railway. The bombardment included a missile attack near Lviv, the western city close to the Polish border that has been swelled by Ukrainians fleeing the fighting.
Ukrainian authorities said at least five people were killed by Russian strikes in the central Vynnytsia region. Russia also destroyed an oil refinery in Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine, along with fuel depots there, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said.
In all, Russian warplanes destroyed 56 Ukrainian targets, he said.
Philip Breedlove, a retired US general who was Nato’s top commander from 2013 to 2016, said the latest strikes against fuel depots are part of a strategy to deplete key Ukrainian war resources. The strikes against rail targets, on the other hand, are a newer tactic, he said.
“I think they’re doing it for the legitimate reason of trying to interdict the flow of supplies to the front. The illegitimate reason is they know people are trying to leave the country, and this is just another intimidation, terrorist tactic to make them not have faith and confidence in travelling on the rails.”
In Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova that sits along the Ukrainian border, several explosions believed caused by rocket-propelled grenades hit the territory’s Ministry of State Security. There was no immediate claim of responsibility or reports of injuries. Transnistria is a strip of land with about 470,000 people and about 1500 Russian troops based there. Moldova’s Foreign Ministry said “the aim of today’s incident is to create pretexts for straining the security situation in the Transnistrian region”.
Last week, Rustam Minnekayev, a Russian military commander, said the Kremlin wants full control of southern Ukraine, which he said would open the way to Transnistria.
An estimated 2000 Ukrainian troops holed up in a steel plant in the strategic southern port city of Mariupol are tying down Russian forces and apparently keeping them from being added to the offensive elsewhere in the Donbas.
About 1000 civilians were also said to be taking shelter at the steelworks, and the Russian military pledged to open a humanitarian corridor yesterday for them to leave.
The Russian offer was met with scepticism by Ukraine.
The city council and mayor of Mariupol said a new mass grave has been identified about 10km north of the city. Mayor Vadym Boychenko said authorities were trying to estimate the number of victims. It was at least the third new mass grave discovered in Russian-controlled areas near Mariupol in the past week.
—AP