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Russia launched a barrage of missile strikes on Ukraine early on Saturday, stepping up hostilities a day after Ukrainian troops retreated from the embattled metropolis of Severodonetsk.
As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine entered its fifth month, regional governors reported strikes on army bases in western Ukraine’s Lviv area, in Zhytomyr west of Kyiv, and Chernihiv north-west of the capital.
Officers stated some missiles had been intercepted by surface-to-air defence programs. Ukrainian and Russian army claims can’t be independently verified.
Early reviews didn’t point out that there have been a excessive variety of casualties, however Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser in Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration, stated civilian targets had been hit.
Podolyak stated in a tweet: “48 Russian cruise missiles. At evening. All through the entire Ukraine.”
“Russia remains to be making an attempt to intimidate Ukraine, trigger panic and make folks be afraid of Z-monsters,” he added, referring to the usage of the letter Z as a marking for a few of Russia’s invading forces.
The strikes got here simply earlier than Ukrainian officers stated that the majority troops had withdrawn from Severodonetsk, the provincial capital of the jap Luhansk area which a Russian artillery onslaught has basically destroyed, to extra fortified positions.
Russia’s defence ministry stated its forces had taken full management of Severodonetsk and several other surrounding villages after a brutal weeks-long battle.
Close by Lysychansk is the one remaining main metropolis within the Luhansk area that has not fallen to Russian occupation. Ukraine nonetheless controls a number of main western cities within the close by Donetsk province, to the west of Lysychansk.
After failing to seize Kyiv and different main northern cities early in its invasion, Moscow has extra just lately centered its efforts on capturing floor in far jap and southern coastal areas. It now controls 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory.
All through the battle Russia has carried out near-daily missile strikes. Greater than 1,400 have been launched in line with Ukrainian officers, focusing on infrastructure and army installations in addition to making an attempt to stall the transport of heavy weapons from Kyiv’s western backers.
Russia has beforehand fired Iskander surface-to-surface missiles from Kremlin-allied Belarus, and Ukraine’s army intelligence stated Saturday’s strikes had been all fired from Belarus’s territory. That included 12 cruise missiles which had been launched by Russian Tu-22M3 bombers from Minsk’s airspace, the primary time this has occurred in line with Kyiv.
“At present’s missile assaults, all of them, had been carried out in a single day from the territory of Belarus . . . From the air and from the land,” Brigadier Basic Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s defence intelligence, stated.
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, stated Moscow would provide Belarus with Iskander-M tactical missiles that may carry each typical and nuclear warheads.
Putin informed his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko on Saturday that Russia would ship the missiles, which have a most vary of as much as 500km, “over the following few months”.
Lukashenko requested Putin to equip Belarus’s fight plane with nuclear weapons, which he stated was essential “to guard our fatherland, from Brest to Vladivostok” from what he described as a risk from Nato. Putin declined however proposed upgrading Belarus’s fleet of Soviet-made Su-25 fighter jets in Russia.
The Belarusian strongman has deserted a geopolitical balancing act lately and thrown in his lot with Putin, letting him use Belarus for air and missile strikes throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Early within the invasion Belarus allowed Russian forces to advance in direction of Kyiv from its territory however has not despatched its personal forces in.
Budanov stated Moscow is “once more upsetting us to assault Belarus” so as “to create a pretext” for Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko to hitch Russia’s invasion.
Russia was additionally plotting to conduct terrorist assaults in Belarus, Budanov stated, blowing up homes, faculties and hospitals as a false flag operation to be blamed on Kyiv.
Lukashenko “is making an attempt to keep away from this,” Budanov stated, including: “He understands how it will finish for him.”
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