New attacks on Russian soil attributed to Ukraine. Three soldiers of the Kremlin forces have died this Monday after a drone attack on Russia’s Engels military base, some 600 kilometers from the border with Ukraine, as acknowledged by the Russian Defense Ministry, which has assured that the plane is part of the arsenal of the Kiev troops. The attack is the second this month against the strategic military installation in the Saratov region on the Volga, a base housing bombers capable of carrying conventional missiles of the kind Russia uses – along with Iranian kamikaze drones – to attack infrastructure . However, Ukrainian energy companies and civilians can also carry nuclear weapons.
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The latest attack, which at various points follows other previous attacks that the Ukrainian government has not blamed, reveals the cracks in Russia’s air defense system. Also, the flaws in the planning of the Kremlin’s full-scale war in Ukraine, which has entered its eleventh month, exposing the plight of the Russian army and its troops, once one of the world’s most feared forces.
The Zelenski government is sticking to its cryptic stance on Monday’s attack on Engels. As in the previous cases, the Ukrainian army does not admit responsibility. After the Dec. 5 event — both at the same Engels base and at another facility in the Ryazan region — Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksi Reznikov repeated a Soviet-era joke about negligent smoking. “Russians very often smoke in places where it’s forbidden,” ironed Reznikov, pointing out that thanks to this “cigarette” incident, Russia will find it harder to attack Ukraine.
Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ignat said Monday that the incident at the Russian base was another “consequence of Russian aggression.” “Another ‘blast’ as we’re used to hearing. These are the consequences of what Russia is doing on our country. If the Russians thought that the war would not hit them, they were very wrong,” he noted in a commentary on a live TV show. “These things are happening more and more often and we hope that Ukraine will only benefit from it,” he added.
The Russian Defense Ministry has assured that the Ukrainian drone did not hit the base but was shot down by its air defenses at “low altitude” and that its remains killed the three soldiers, members of its air force, the state news agency said in a statement mug Russia assures that the blast did not damage any of its planes, but testimonies broadcast by specialized Telegram channels – both Russian and Ukrainian – assure that there was damage.
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Telegram channels of Russian social media and war bloggers have exploded after the Engels airbase incident, as in previous incidents. The blast has sparked complaints from some of the most critical commentators on Putin’s military strategy, who have leveled charges at what they saw as Russian defense failures. “The war opened our eyes to many things, as it should have done,” began Aleksandr Jodakovski, one of the leaders of Russia’s military leadership of pro-Russian separatists that the Kremlin has raised and nurtured in the region Telegram channel Donbass Ukraine.
A few days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the situation in the Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by the Kremlin as “extremely difficult” and recognized the less than ideal state of the Russian army with the intention of providing it with unlimited funds for his war in Ukraine.
After earlier attacks on Russian territory in early December, Moscow began a bombing campaign against Ukraine’s infrastructure, which further exacerbated the problems of supplying electricity and gas to civilians in the depths of winter. This Monday, following fresh morning attacks in Zaporizhia, Kharkov and several cities in the Donbass region, Ukraine’s electricity company announced that there will be planned emergency power cuts in five regions of the country, including the capital Kyiv, in an attempt to do so Dealing with the overload of a very depleted and damaged energy system.
A New Year’s Eve in the dark
Zelenskyy has warned that the Russian army could step up attacks on the power grid in the coming days to keep the public in the dark ahead of the New Year’s Eve celebrations. “We must be aware that our enemy will try to make this time dark and difficult for us,” he declared in his late-night speech, which was posted on social media. “[Rusia] it is trying to offset its losses with the glee of its propagandists after the rocket attacks on our country, on our energy sector,” he added.
In Kherson, the Black Sea port city that was under Russian occupation until early November and whose loss hit Putin hard, the Kremlin launches its brutal bombing raids from positions across the Dnieper to which it has retreated. This Monday, after one of the worst attacks this weekend that killed a dozen people and wounded about 60, authorities have again called for evacuations, fearing the bombings will increase in the coming days.
The city’s streets are sparsely populated with pedestrians, a few citizens on bicycles, and very few cars. Traces of Russian bombing on Russia’s biggest victory up to November – its only capture of a regional capital since the invasion began in February – are visible on many apartment buildings in the areas near the Dnieper. Even in the center of the city, where citizens are fed up with the situation.
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