Washington said on Tuesday evening “not encouraging” Ukrainian drone attacks in Russia, while Moscow reported that one of these machines had hit an airfield near the border on Tuesday, without causing any casualties. During the day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky went near the front, not far from Bakhmout, the main battlefield in eastern Ukraine where the Ukrainian army has been resisting a Russian offensive for months.
This move comes at a time when Russia accuses its neighbor of increasing drone attacks against airfields on its territory. Strikes that kyiv does not claim, but which illustrate the difficulties encountered by the invasion launched on February 24 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We do not encourage and we do not help Ukraine to launch strikes in Russia,” US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken told reporters. “But what you have to understand is that the Ukrainians live every day with the Russian aggression which continues”, he added, accusing Moscow of “making winter a weapon” by bombing the civil infrastructure of Ukraine.
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, speaking alongside Anthony Blinken, stressed that the United States was not preventing Ukraine from developing its own long-range missiles. “The answer is no. We certainly don’t do that,” he said. “We are not doing anything to prevent Ukraine from developing its own capabilities.”
US President Joe Biden has said publicly that he does not encourage Ukraine to acquire long-range missiles, fearing an escalation that could lead the United States to play a more direct role against Russia. Ukrainians continue to suffer power cuts, following a new series of bombings on their country’s energy infrastructure.
In New York (United States), the head of the UN humanitarian agency, Martin Griffiths, expressed alarm before the Security Council: “Since October, the prolonged attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have created a new level of needs that affects the whole country and aggravates the needs caused by the war”.
For his part, President Volodymyr Zelensky broadcast three videos of him in the Donbass, a region which Moscow claimed to be annexed in September without controlling it.
The main information:
– Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited near the front, not far from Bakhmout, the main battlefield in eastern Ukraine where the Ukrainian army has been resisting a Russian offensive for months. He also broadcast three videos of him in the Donbass, a region which Moscow claimed for annexation in September without controlling it.
– Washington said Tuesday evening “not encouraging” Ukrainian drone attacks in Russia, while Moscow reported that one of these machines had hit an airfield near the border on Tuesday, without causing any casualties.
– If the Kremlin does not stop swearing that it will overcome the Ukrainian resistance, the last few months have proved very difficult for the Russian military, faced with Ukrainians motivated and armed by their Western allies.
– Moscow has also denounced in the past two days Ukrainian attacks on Russian military airfields, including two, targeted on Monday, which are several hundred kilometers from the border between the two countries. Russia reported three deaths and two aircraft damaged in one such attack. kyiv has not officially admitted any responsibility.
“The hardest”
“Eastern Ukraine is the most difficult axis (of the front),” Volodymyr Zelensky told soldiers on the occasion of Armed Forces Day. “Thank you for your resilience,” he added before handing out decorations. Not far away, in the pro-Russian stronghold of Donetsk, six civilians were killed in Ukrainian strikes, according to local authorities.
Volodymyr Zelensky goes regularly near the front, something that the master of the Kremlin has never done so far, preferring videoconferences from his office or his residence. The capture of Bakhmout would finally constitute a success for the Russians who, since the autumn, have been accumulating setbacks, forced to retreat in the northeast and the south.
In this context, the Kremlin has decided since October to concentrate attacks on Ukrainian energy installations, depriving the population of electricity, even water and heating, when the temperatures are negative. On Tuesday again, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu justified these “massive strikes” by the need to “reduce Ukraine’s military potential”.
If the Kremlin keeps swearing that it will overcome the Ukrainian resistance, the last few months have proved very difficult for the Russian military, faced with Ukrainians motivated and armed by their Western allies.
Strategic failure
Moscow has also denounced in the past two days Ukrainian attacks on Russian military airfields, including two, targeted on Monday, which are several hundred kilometers from the border between the two countries. Russia reported three deaths and two aircraft damaged in one such attack.
kyiv has not officially admitted any responsibility. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, without providing details, that “necessary measures will be taken”. The Russian newspaper Kommersant writes that Ukraine used Soviet TU-141 drones to strike, in particular, on Monday, the Engels base, which houses strategic bombers and is located 500 km from the nearest Ukrainian border.
The British Ministry of Defense estimated Tuesday that if kyiv had been able to carry out such an operation, Moscow must consider it as “the most significant strategic failure of protection of its forces since the invasion of Ukraine”. Tuesday morning, another drone attack, in the Kursk airfield area, near the Ukrainian border this time, set fire to a fuel tank.
In Warsaw, the Polish authorities also announced that they would accept on their soil the Patriot missile batteries proposed by Germany, which it had previously suggested sending to Ukraine. Germany had offered to deploy these modern American-made air defense systems on Poland’s eastern border after the deadly fall of a Ukrainian missile in this region.