“Every country has the right to defend itself. So does Ukraine,” he said. In the case of the Ukrainian attacks, the context must also be seen. These are massive attacks by Russia on civilian infrastructure aimed at depriving Ukrainian civilians of water, heat and electricity in winter.
The Ukrainian army only announced late on Thursday that it had attacked Russian bases near the industrial port city of Berdyansk. About 50 Russian soldiers were “liquidated” in the process, the General Staff in Kyiv said. The military in Kyiv has not provided any information about the weapons systems used to attack Berdyansk. The city on the Sea of Azov is almost 100 kilometers behind the current front lines. On Thursday, Ukraine was attacked by Russian rockets in several regions of the western part of the country.
According to the authorities, Ukrainian air defense repelled drone attacks in and around Kyiv and in the east of the country on Friday night. “Russia has again taken aim at our infrastructure objects,” Kiev region military governor Oleksiy Kuleba said on his Telegram channel on Friday. According to him, the air defense shot down the drones. There was no damage.
The city administration in Kyiv also said the night attack was moderate. Five drones were shot down over the capital. An administration building was partially destroyed and the windows of a residential building were damaged. There were no reports of deaths or injuries.
“For the second consecutive night, our anti-aircraft defenses have eliminated all five enemy ‘Shahed’ (drones) that were over the area,” military governor of Dnipropetrovsk region around Dnipro city, Valentyn Resnichenko, said on his telegram channel. . So there were attacks in three different counties. According to Task Force East of the Ukrainian Army, all attack drones were also destroyed in the neighboring region of Zaporizhia.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged that most regions of the country are suffering from power outages following massive Russian missile strikes. “But this is nothing compared to what could have happened if not for our heroic anti-aircraft and air defense forces,” Zelenskyy said in a videotaped speech late on Thursday. Air commandos in central, southern, eastern and western Ukraine repelled 54 Russian missiles and 11 drones during one of the biggest Russian airstrikes since the war broke out in February.
“This year there are two more days, maybe the enemy will try again to make us celebrate the New Year in the dark,” Zelenskyy warned of further attacks. “But no matter what they plan to do, we know one thing about ourselves: we will persevere.”
In his talks with foreign leaders, the Ukrainian leader is trying to gain their support for an International Criminal Court modeled on the post-World War II Nuremberg tribunal, in which Moscow politicians and military would be held accountable for the war of aggression against Ukraine.
However, Ukrainian presidential adviser Alona Werbytska reported that 15,000 people are missing in Ukraine, “including many civilians”. The fate of these people is totally uncertain, the ombudsman said. “We don’t know what happened to them,” she said. “Are they also in Russian captivity, were they kidnapped from Russian-occupied areas or maybe they were killed a long time ago?
After the discovery of a Ukrainian missile in Belarusian territory, the Ministry of Defense of Kyiv offered to cooperate in the investigation of the incident. A ministry statement released late on Thursday said the agency was ready for an “objective investigation into the incident”. State media in the Belarusian capital Minsk reported that a missile launched by the S-300 air defense system landed in Belarusian territory on Thursday morning.
US President Joe Biden signed the multi-trillion dollar budget on Thursday night, which includes $45 billion (€42.26 million) in support of Ukraine. Britain also wants to continue sending billions of dollars to Kyiv. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said £2.3 billion in military aid would flow in next year. This corresponds to the amount transferred this year.