“We are aware that attacks on us will increase, that the enemy will take revenge, that there will be rocket attacks and artillery shelling,” said Natalya Goumenyuk, spokeswoman for the Southern Military Command from Ukraine.
Kyiv fears a nuclear attack
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that “the whole world” should be “concerned” about the risk that Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon. In this context, Berlin announced on Friday that it was ready to release more than one billion euros in military aid to Ukraine. This is the German government’s response to the Ukrainian authorities’ growing criticism of the apparent lack of arms support in Kyiv.
In a video message, Zelenskyy told Westerners: “You can make the war much shorter. The sooner and in greater quantity we receive the requested weapons, the stronger our position will be and the sooner peace will come.
Russia this week sent a formal complaint to the United States, warning the US government of “unpredictable consequences” following its sharply increased military aid to Ukraine. According to the diplomatic note, Moscow warns Washington and NATO against sending “more sensitive” weapons to Ukraine, judging that such military equipment “adds fuel to the fire” and could have “unpredictable consequences,” the Washington Post reported. .
The Vizar factory was bombed.
FADEL SENNA/AFP
Russia set the tone on Friday morning. “The number and scale of rocket attacks on sites in Kyiv will increase in response to all terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage carried out on Russian territory by the nationalist regime in Kyiv,” the Russian Defense Ministry warned. An armaments factory in the Kyiv region has been hit by a Russian strike. The Vizar factory produces the Neptun anti-ship missiles, which the Ukrainians claim to have fired on the Moskva.
An official at the Russian National Defense Center, Mikhail Mizintsev, claimed the authorities in Kyiv were planning a “new egregious provocation” to accuse Russian forces of committing war crimes. According to him, Ukrainian troops are preparing to hit civilians gathered at Lozova station with a Tochka-U missile in an attempt to flee the fighting in the Kharkiv region.
Targeted buses
Russia said Thursday Ukraine had bombed Russian border villages. Kyiv denied this and in return accused the Russian secret services of having carried out “terrorist attacks” across the border.
According to local authorities, ten people were killed, including a 7-month-old baby, and 35 others were injured in a Russian fire on buses evacuating residents of the Kharkiv region.
Hundreds of bodies were found in Boutcha.
GENIA SAVILOV/AFP
In Boutcha, a place near Kyiv that has become a symbol of atrocities attributed to Russian forces, 95% of the dead were shot, police chief of the capital region Andriï Nebitov said on Friday. According to the mayor of Boutcha Anatoly Fedoruk, more than 400 bodies have been discovered there since the Russian troops left.
Strikes in the Donbass
In the largest region of Donbass, Donetsk, where “fighting is going on along the entire front line,” three people were killed and seven injured, the Ukrainian presidency said. The other region of this mining basin, that of Lugansk, was the scene of 24 bombings, leaving two dead and two wounded, according to the same source.
During the night from Friday to Saturday, the mayor of the city of Aleksandria, around 300 km south-east of Kyiv, announced on Facebook that a Russian missile had hit his city’s airport. He said rescue teams were at work, but without immediately claiming casualties.