Kyiv, Ukraine — Russia on Thursday fired dozens of rockets at Ukrainian cities, piercing snow clouds and air defenses to kill at least 12 people across the country, in the Kremlin’s campaign to punish civilians as its army fights in eastern Ukraine.
The strike wave came one day after Germany and the The United States has pledged to send dozens of main battle tanks to Ukraine, a significant step in Western military support. According to its air force command, Ukraine managed to shoot down 47 of the 55 missiles, 20 of them in the area around the capital Kyiv.
But a spate of Russian attacks still killed 11 people in 11 regions, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. Another 11 people were injured and 35 buildings were damaged, it said.
A 12th civilian was killed later in the day when a Russian missile hit a village council building in Kochubeivka, a tiny municipality in the Kherson region. a military official said on Telegram.
As it has been for months, Russia appears to be targeting Ukraine’s energy grid in winter weather below freezing. “The main goal is power plants that will provide Ukrainians with light and heat,” Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said in a post on Telegram.
Since October, Russia has launched more than a dozen large missile and drone waves at Ukrainian power plants, as well as many smaller attacks, in a bid to disrupt power supplies and leave civilians without power, heat and light through the winter.
The barrages sometimes came after Ukrainian successes, as in the autumn campaigns the northeast and the Southbut have continued when the pace of battle has slowed a grueling battle of attrition in the east and south.
The rocket attacks have also often landed in residential areas, sometimes with devastating effects as if more than 40 people were there killed in a strike in an apartment building in Dnipro, in central Ukraine.
Big booms shook Kyiv around 10 a.m. local time on Thursday, sending residents fleeing to subway shelters and basements. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person was killed and two injured when a projectile hit a building in the south of the city.
At least one explosion was heard on camera, which interrupted an interview given to Sky News by a member of Ukraine’s parliament. “Where was it?” asks a woman in the video, as lawmakers and the journalist stand amidst destroyed Russian tanks. “Not far away.”
Three people were killed in a Russian strike on infrastructure in Zaporizhia, the Prosecutor General’s Office said on Telegram. There were also reports of rocket attacks in western Ukraine’s Vinnytsia region and outside the port city of Odessa, causing “massive power outages” there, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
France’s Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna was in Odessa on Thursday to meet Mr Kuleba – diplomatic talks that have been literally forced underground by the Russian strikes.
“I had my first diplomatic bilateral meeting in a bunker thanks to a Russian missile,” Ms. Colonna tweeted Thursday. Sharing a photo of the ministers at a table in a bare room. “Coffee was warm, thank you!”
Mr. Kuleba noting that the historical center was Odessa fixed a World Heritage site under threat from UNESCO this week, said on Twitter that the meeting was “probably the first time in history that foreign ministers have held talks in the basement of an opera house.”
The appointment by the UN agency gives the city, which was conquered by the Russian Empire in the late 18th century and named Odessa by Empress Catherine the Great, “access to increased technical and financial international assistance,” UNESCO said. “Ukraine may request this to ensure property protection and help with reconstruction if necessary if attacked.”
Ms Colonna said ministers discussed French support to Ukraine, saying: “Our assistance will continue in all areas and for as long as necessary.”
Mr Kuleba – who joked that the French minister was “the Catherine I like to see in Odessa” – has urged supporters of Ukraine in Europe and the United States to significantly increase their military aid. Shortly after Germany and the United States announced they would send dozens of main battle tanks to Ukraine, he said called for “Western-type fighter aircraft”.
Ukrainian officials have argued that such warplanes would help them defend against Russian missile salvos.
For the past week, the Russian Air Force has been conducting drills north of Ukraine in Belarus, keeping Ukraine on high alert. Every time Russian planes blow up, nationwide air raid sirens sound.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force Command, Ukrainian air defenses shot down 24 Iranian-made ones overnight Shahd exploding drones.
Both the USA and Germany have agreed Patriot Air Defense missile batteries to Ukraine, and the US military is training Ukrainian troops in Oklahoma to use the weapon, which is America’s most advanced ground-based air defense system.
The Biden administration has significantly increased its military aid to Ukraine over the past year, gradually expanding the arsenal of weapons it has agreed to provide HIMARS rocket artillery systems last summer, Stryker armored fighting vehicles, Patriot missiles and now M1 Abrams tanks. Britain has promised to send some of its Challenger 2 tanks, while Germany has agreed to supply some of its Leopard 2 tanks and allow other countries to give theirs to Ukraine.
Military experts and Western officials say they believe Ukraine and Russia will both attempt offensives in the spring as Kyiv deploys the heavy weaponry from the West and Russia deploys the vast numbers of men it conscripted last year.
“Spring and summer seem to be pretty crucial,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at CNA, a research institute in Arlington, Virginia the podcast “War on the Rocks” This week, Mr Kofman said Ukraine’s next offensive would have “a good opportunity to show it can continue to retake territory”.
But unlike his previous offensives in the Kharkiv region to the northeast and the Kherson region to the south, “the next offensive comes with risks,” he said. “If it doesn’t succeed, Ukraine faces the real threat of a counter-offensive.”
Michael Schwartz reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Alan Yuhas from New York.
