প্রকাশ: 06/06/2022
Russia struck
Ukraine's capital Kyiv with missiles early on Sunday for the first time in more
than a month, while Ukrainian officials said a counter-attack on the main
battlefield in the east had retaken half of the city of Sievierodonetsk.
Dark smoke could be seen from many miles away after the
attack on two outlying districts of Kyiv. Ukraine said the strike hit a rail
car repair works, while Moscow said it had destroyed tanks sent by Eastern
European countries to Ukraine.
In Sievierodonetsk, where Russia has concentrated its forces
in recent weeks, Ukraine mounted a counter-attack that it said took the
Russians by surprise.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday night said
he visited troops in Lysychansk, a town just a few kilometres south from
Sievierodonetsk in the eastern province of Luhansk.
He also travelled to Soledar in the neighbouring Donetsk
province. Russia is seeking to capture both Luhansk and Donetsk, which make up
the broader Donbas region, Ukraine's industrial heartland.
"What you all deserve is victory - that is the most
important thing. But not at any cost," Zelenskiy, wearing his trademark
khaki T-shirt, told Ukrainian troops in a video released on Sunday night.
In the Kyiv attack, one person was hospitalised though there
were no immediate reports of deaths.
The strike was a sudden reminder of war in a capital where
normal life has largely returned since Russian forces were driven from its
outskirts in March.
"The Kremlin resorts to new insidious attacks. Today's
missile strikes at Kyiv have only one goal - kill as many as possible,"
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in a post on Twitter.
Ukraine said Russia had carried out the Kyiv strike using
long-range air-launched missiles fired from heavy bombers as far away as the
Caspian Sea.
Ukraine's nuclear power operator said a Russian cruise
missile had flown "critically low" over the country's second largest
nuclear power plant.
Sunday's attack was the first big strike on Kyiv since late
April, when a missile killed a journalist. Recent weeks have seen Russia focus
its destructive might mainly on front lines in the east and south, although
Moscow occasionally strikes elsewhere in what it calls a campaign to degrade
Ukraine's military infrastructure and block Western arms shipments.
Ukraine claims half of Sievierodonetsk
After recapturing a swathe of Sievierodonetsk, Ukrainian
forces were now in control of half of it and continuing to push the Russians
back, said Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Luhansk province, which includes the
city.
"They will simply try to level everything. They have no
other tactics," Gaidai said of the Russians.
The claims could not be independently verified. Both sides
say they have inflicted huge casualties in Sievierodonetsk, in a battle that
could determine which side carries the momentum into a protracted war of
attrition in coming months.
In another sign Ukraine has held off the Russian advance,
Gaidai said evacuations resumed from the Ukrainian-held part of Luhansk
province on Sunday, and 98 people had escaped. Russian forces have been trying
for weeks to cut off the main road out to encircle Ukrainian troops there, and
evacuations were halted last week after a journalist was killed by shelling.
A Russian state media journalist on Sunday said that Russian
Major General Roman Kutuzov had been killed in eastern Ukraine, adding to the
string of high-ranking military casualties sustained by Moscow.
Ukraine's military reported that its forces repelled seven
attacks in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on Sunday, destroying four tanks and
shooting down a combat helicopter.
In Donetsk, Russian forces have been advancing in recent
days in territory north of the Siverskiy Donets river, in advance of what
Ukraine anticipates could be a push on the major city of Sloviansk.
Britain's defence ministry said on Sunday that Ukrainian
counterattacks in Sievierodonetsk over the past 24 hours were likely to blunt
any operational momentum Russia had gained. Moscow was deploying poorly
equipped separatist fighters in the city to limit the risk to its regular
forces, it said.
Britain announced that it will supply Ukraine with
multiple-launch rocket systems that can strike targets up to 80 km (50 miles)
away.
In a Sunday address in Rome, Pope Francis noted that more
than 100 days had passed since "the start of the armed aggression against
Ukraine", and called the war "the negation of God's dream".
Putin plays down new US Rockets
The United States said last week it would send new, advanced
medium-range rocket systems to Ukraine, which Kyiv hopes will help tip the
balance in the conflict.
Washington has ruled out sending longer-range munitions and
says Kyiv has promised not to strike inside Russia.
In an interview with Russian state television, President
Vladimir Putin played down the impact of the new rockets, although he warned
Washington not to send longer range ones.
The rockets Washington had promised so far were comparable
to Soviet-era weapons Ukraine already had, Putin said.
"This is nothing new. It doesn't change anything in
essence," Putin said. If Washington were to deliver longer range rockets,
"we will strike at those targets which we have not yet been hitting",
he said. He also dismissed the impact of Western drones, saying Russia had been
"cracking them like nuts".
- Reuters
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