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NATO says Moscow is using winter as a ‘weapon of war’
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Ukraine asks NATO allies for more air defenses, generators
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Zelenskyy says Russia is planning a move south
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Russian official says attacks in Ukraine are causing some power outages
By Pavel Polityuk
KIEV, Nov 30 (Portal) – NATO allies pledged more weapons for Ukraine and equipment to restore power cut by Russian attacks, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces would defend against attempted Russian advances in several regions.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on Wednesday its forces had repelled six Russian attacks in the eastern Donbass region in the past 24 hours, while Russian artillery relentlessly shelled the right bank of the Dnieper River and the city of Kherson further south.
Ukrainians fled to air raid shelters after air raid warning sirens on Tuesday, although the all-clear was later sounded across the country. In the eastern Donetsk region, Russian forces pounded Ukrainian targets with artillery, mortar and tank fire.
Zelenskyi said Russian military were also attacking in Luhansk to the east and Kharkiv to the northeast, the latter an area Ukraine recaptured in September.
“The situation at the front is difficult,” said Zelenskyy in his nightly video address. In Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv “the occupiers are still trying to advance despite extremely heavy losses”. And “they’re planning something down south,” he said.
Ukraine regained control of Kherson in the south this month after Russian forces withdrew. Portal could not independently verify the battlefield reports.
Foreign ministers from the NATO alliance, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, began a two-day meeting in Bucharest on Tuesday to explore ways both to keep Ukrainians safe and warm and to support Kiev’s military through an upcoming winter campaign.
“We need air defense, IRIS, Hawks, Patriots, and we need transformers (for our power needs),” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters on the sidelines of the NATO meeting, listing various Western air defense systems.
The story goes on
“In short: Patriots and Transformers are what Ukraine needs most.”
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned NATO against supplying Ukraine with Patriot missile defense systems and denounced the Atlantic Alliance as a “criminal entity” for supplying arms to what he called “Ukrainian fanatics”.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said Russian President Vladimir Putin has “tried to use winter as a weapon of war” as Moscow’s forces are losing ground on the battlefield.
US and European officials said the ministers would focus their talks on non-lethal supplies such as fuel, medical supplies and winter gear, as well as military aid. Washington said it will allocate $53 million to purchase power grid equipment.
US President Joe Biden has said providing more military aid to Ukraine is a priority, but Republicans, who will take control of the House of Representatives from Congress in January, have been talking about funding, which has exceeded $18 billion, to suspend.
CUMULATIVE DAMAGES
Russia has launched massive attacks on Ukraine’s electricity transmission and heating infrastructure since October, in what Kyiv and its allies describe as a deliberate campaign to harm civilians, a war crime.
Snow fell in Kyiv and temperatures hovered around freezing, while millions in and around the capital struggled to heat their homes. An official at the energy company said on Facebook that 985,500 customers in Kyiv were without power, and another electricity provider said the city would have emergency power outages on Wednesday.
In a brief post on Telegram, the governor of the Kherson region, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said that half of the city of Kherson was restored with electricity on Tuesday.
Ukrainian forces on Tuesday attacked a power plant in Russia’s Kursk region, causing some power outages, Roman Starovoyt, the region’s governor, said via messaging app Telegram.
A large oil tank was on fire early Wednesday in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders northeastern Ukraine, a local governor said. No casualties have been reported, he added, without commenting on the cause of the fire.
Moscow says its goal is not to hurt civilians, but that their suffering will only end if Kyiv accepts its demands, which it has not formulated. Although Kyiv says it shoots down most of the incoming missiles, the damage has accumulated and the effects are growing stronger with each strike.
A senior US military official said Tuesday Russia was firing unarmed cruise missiles designed to deliver nuclear warheads to targets in Ukraine in an attempt to deplete Kiev’s air defense stocks.
The worst barrage to date occurred on November 23. Millions of Ukrainians shivered from the cold and darkness. Zelenskyi told Ukrainians earlier this week to expect another trial soon that would be at least as damaging.
There are no political talks to end the war. Moscow has annexed Ukrainian territory it says it will never give up; Ukraine says it will fight until it retakes all of the occupied lands.
(Reporting by Portal Bureaus; Writing by Cynthia Osterman and Stephen Coates; Editing by Chris Reese & Simon Cameron-Moore)