Ukraine: heavy casualties on Dnipro, NATO announces more heavy weapons
LThis weekend’s balance of attacks on the Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, rose on Monday to at least 35 people killed, a day after the announcement by NATO of the future delivery of new weapons of western heavyweights.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke of “positive dynamics” for his troops at the front and Russian-Belarusian military air drills starting earlier this week in Belarus, Russia’s ally Minsk confirmed they only had “defense” nature.
According to Ukraine’s regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko, a Russian attack on a building on the Dnipro on Saturday left at least 35 people dead, including two children, and dozens injured. “Thirty-nine people rescued, 75 injured,” he added on social media.
He said “the fate of the other 35 occupants of the building is unknown” as rescue operations continued.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday that Vladimir Putin had “overestimated the strength” of his troops by invading Ukraine. “We saw their missteps, their lack of morale, their commanding problems, their poor equipment” and their “heavy losses,” he told German daily Handelsblatt.
“The recent (Western) pledges of heavy arms deliveries are very important – and I hope there will be more in the near future,” he added, days before a new coordination meeting in Germany on Jan. 20 on Western countries providing aid to Ukraine. .
Westerners had long been reluctant to ship heavier weapons to Kyiv, fearing they would be drawn into the war. But in early January, France, Germany and the United States finally pledged to send armored infantry or scout tanks – 40 German Marders, 50 American Bradleys and French AMX-10 RCs.
Britain announced on Saturday that it would deliver 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine “in the coming weeks” – the first country to supply Western-made heavy tanks to Kyiv.
Russian diplomacy estimates that the delivery of these weapons “will in no way hasten the end of military hostilities, but only intensify them”.
Kyiv has received from its allies heavy tanks of Soviet design – nearly 300 – but there is still no Western manufacture.
Poland said it was ready on Wednesday to deliver 14 German Leopard 2 heavy tanks, which would require Berlin’s approval.
“As planned”
While his troops appear to be battling Western-backed Ukrainian troops, Vladimir Putin assured that “everything is going according to plan”, in an interview with Russian public television on Sunday.
“The dynamics are positive and everything is going according to the plans of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff. I hope that our fighters will still delight us more than once with their military results,” he said. from a journalist for the Rossia-1 group about “news coming from Soledar”, which the Russian army claimed on Friday had been captured.
The capture of the small Ukrainian town was passed on to Moscow as a success, but Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar assured late Sunday that Ukrainian troops had held their positions in Soledar.
“The battle for Soledar, for Bakhmout, for the entire Donetsk region, for the Lugansk region continues without the slightest pause,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Nuclear
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, is expected in Ukraine on Monday. In a tweet before his departure, he emphasized that his organization would expand its presence in the country “to help prevent nuclear accidents during the ongoing conflict”.
Following the Dnipro attack, the United States denounced “a new example of Russia’s brutal and barbaric war against the Ukrainian people”. A spokesman for the National Security Council assured that they “will continue to provide Ukraine with what it needs to defend itself”.
To the south, on the Kryvyi Rig, one person was killed and another injured Saturday in the demolition of an apartment building following an attack, according to an official report.
And on Sunday, Russian troops again bombarded Kherson, hitting Red Cross infrastructure and buildings and wounding seven people, including one seriously, according to regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevich.
Power outages have affected large parts of the country after these new attacks, according to Ukrainian authorities.
“The production deficit in the electricity system after the attack was huge. Some of the thermal power plants are no longer working,” the CEO of energy company YASNO, Serguiï Kovalenko, said on Facebook, announcing the consequences of curbing the overall supply of electricity. country, especially in kyiv.
“The damage is severe. All the energy companies are carrying out repairs, but we have to be prepared for a long outage,” said Kovalenko.
16/01/2023 10:26:07 – kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
