Russia pounded Ukraine with a fresh wave of deadly long-range missiles Tuesday, a day after killing 19 in what the UN human rights office condemned as a probable “war crime.”
Those that survived Monday’s bombardment — considered one of the worst in nearly eight months of war — woke again Tuesday to the piercing scream of air raid shelters warning of fresh assaults from the skies.
The worst-hit city in Tuesday’s assault was Zaporizhzhia, where missiles struck a faculty, a medical facility and residential buildings, setting off large fires, in keeping with local city council secretary Anatoliy Kurtev.
A minimum of one person was killed in the town just days after 13 — including 10 children — died when an apartment block was hit Sunday.
The State Emergency Service said the attack got here from no less than 12 long-range S-300 missiles. While designed to be a long-range surface-to-air missile, the S-300 has been increasingly utilized by desperate Russian forces to strike targets on the bottom.
A minimum of three missiles also hit critical infrastructure in Lviv, leaving much of the west Ukrainian city without power just hours after it had been restored after yesterday’s attacks, city mayor Andriy Sadovyi said.
Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that his nation’s energy facilities have turn out to be Russia’s “primary targets.”
“These are war crimes planned well prematurely and geared toward creating unbearable conditions for civilians — Russia’s deliberate strategy since months,” he insisted Tuesday.
Ukraine reported attempted attacks on several other regions Tuesday, insisting it had successfully shot down the missiles.
That included 4 Russian missiles reportedly shot down within the central Dnipropetrovsk region, and one other 4 within the south, where five drones were also destroyed over the Mykolaiv and the Odesa regions.
One other missile was shot down near the skies over Kyiv, the capital where residents once hunkered down in underground shelters for the primary time because the early days of war.
The fresh assaults got here as Ukrainian officials raised the death toll from Monday’s attacks to 19, with greater than 100 others wounded.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned Monday’s strikes as being “particularly shocking.”
“We now have to emphasize that intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects — that’s objects which aren’t military objectives — amount to a war crime,” said spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani, calling on Russia to “refrain from further escalation.”
The commissioner’s spokeswoman also noted that “damage to key power stations and contours ahead of the upcoming winter raises further concerns for the protection of civilians.
“Attacks targeting civilians and objects indispensable to the survival of civilians are prohibited under international humanitarian law,” she stressed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had gloated about his attacks, insisting it was justified due to Ukraine’s “terrorist” actions in blowing up Russia’s key bridge to annex Crimea on Sunday. While Kyiv has not taken responsibility for that attack, it has widely celebrated it.
The speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament went even further Tuesday — likening Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to deranged al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, also warned that Western military assistance to Kyiv — including training soldiers and feeding Ukraine real-time satellite data — has “increasingly drawn Western nations into the conflict on the a part of the Kyiv regime.”
“Russia might be forced to take relevant countermeasures, including asymmetrical ones,” he said.
While stressing that Russia isn’t “enthusiastic about a direct clash” with the US and NATO, he warned: “We hope that Washington and other Western capitals are aware of the danger of an uncontrollable escalation.”
Nevertheless, the top of the UK’s intelligence services insisted the recent escalation is an indication of desperation from Putin and his flagging war.
“We imagine that Russia is running in need of munitions, it’s definitely running in need of friends and we have now seen, due to declaration for mobilization, that it’s running in need of troops,” Sir Jeremy Fleming told BBC Radio 4.
Fleming, the top of GCHQ, will give a speech Tuesday that may declare that Putin “misjudged the situation” and is fast losing the support of the Russian people, in keeping with a transcript shared by The Telegraph.
“The prices to Russia – in people and equipment — are staggering,” he’s because of say within the speech.
“Russia’s forces are exhausted” of their “desperate situation” — and the Russian population “has began to know that too” and are “seeing just how badly Putin has misjudged the situation,” he is predicted to say.
“And so they are feeling the extent of the dreadful human cost of his war of selection.”
Nevertheless, UK intelligence has yet to see any signs that Putin is desperate enough to follow through along with his threats to make use of nuclear weapons, Fleming told the BBC.
“They’re staying throughout the doctrine that we understand for his or her use,” he told BBC Radio 4. “I might hope that we’ll see indicators, in the event that they began to go down that path.”
With Post wires
