By Tom Balmforth and Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey
KYIV (Reuters) -Russia pounded Ukraine with missiles and drones, killing a minimum of 11 people, in line with officials, after Western allies promised to provide tanks to assist Ukraine fight Russia’s invasion.
Air raid alarms sounded across Ukraine on Thursday as people headed to work. Within the capital, Kyiv, crowds took cover in underground metro stations.
“Not a single room is left intact, all the pieces got hit,” said Halyna Panosyan, 67, surveying twisted sheets of corrugated metal, crumpled masonry and an enormous missile crater outside her ruined house in Hlevakha near Kyiv.
“There was an especially loud strike that made me jump up. I used to be within the bedroom … I used to be saved by the proven fact that the bedroom is to the opposite side of the home.”
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Russian forces trained tank, mortar and artillery fire on greater than 60 towns and villages in an arc of territory extending from Chernihiv and Sumy regions within the north through Kharkiv region within the northeast and within the focal points of Russian attempts to advance in Donetsk region within the east – Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
Ukraine’s military said it shot down 47 of 59 Russian missiles – some fired from Tu-95 strategic bombers within the Russian Arctic. Russia also launched 37 air strikes, 17 of them using Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones. All drones were downed, the military said.
Eleven people were killed and 11 wounded within the drone and missile strikes, which spanned 11 regions and likewise damaged 35 buildings, a State Emergency Service spokesperson said.
Japan on Friday tightened sanctions against Russia in response to its latest wave of missile attacks in Ukraine.
Russia responded with fury to news on Wednesday that Germany and the US would send dozens of contemporary tanks to Ukraine. More tanks will come from Canada, Poland, Britain, Finland and Norway while several more allies including France, Spain and the Netherlands were considering sending tanks too.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who visited Ukraine last week, said IAEA monitors reported powerful explosions near Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station and renewed calls for a security zone across the plant.
But Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the top of Rosenergoatom, the corporate operating Russia’s nuclear plants, said the comments were unfounded and called it a “provocation”.
Russia has previously reacted to Ukrainian successes with massed air strikes that left hundreds of thousands without light, heat or water.
On Thursday, it appeared to follow that pattern. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Russia’s attacks targeted energy plants.
“I held an urgent meeting today in regards to the energy situation – in regards to the shortages which can be occurring and repair work after the terrorists’ strikes. Repair teams are working in those sites,” President Volodomyr Zelenskiy said in a night video address on Thursday.
The Kremlin said it saw the promised delivery of Western tanks as evidence of growing “direct involvement” of the US and Europe within the 11-month-old war, something each deny.
Western allies have committed about 150 tanks while Ukraine has said it needs a whole lot to interrupt Russian defensive lines and recapture occupied territory within the south and east. Each Moscow and Kyiv, which have relied on Soviet-era T-72 tanks, are expected to mount recent ground offensives within the spring.
After being promised modern tanks, Ukraine is now searching for Western fourth-generation fighter jets reminiscent of the U.S. F-16, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister said.
In Odesa, the Black Sea port designated a “World Heritage in Danger” site on Wednesday by the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO, Russian missiles damaged energy facilities, authorities said, just as French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna was arriving.
“What we saw today, recent strikes on civilian Ukrainian infrastructure shouldn’t be waging war, it’s waging war crimes,” she said.
The USA on Thursday formally designated Russian private military company the Wagner Group a transnational criminal organization, freezing its U.S. assets for helping Russia’s military in Ukraine.
Since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 last 12 months, Russia has shifted the main focus of its rhetoric from “denazifying” and “demilitarising” its neighbour to confronting what’s says is an aggressive and expansionist U.S.-led NATO alliance.
Mykola Sunhurovskiy, director of military programmes on the Razumkov Centre think-tank in Kyiv, said Russia’s war was turning right into a protracted campaign that may require greater sacrifice by its people.
“It’s going to require mobilisation of the economy and a move to recent principles of mobilisation for the country’s people,” Sunhurovskiy said.
“This all means the war is entering a protracted phase and martial law will probably be declared in Russia.”
Russia’s invasion has killed hundreds of civilians, uprooted hundreds of thousands and reduced cities to rubble.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; writing by Cynthia Osterman & Shri Navaratnam; Editing by Grant McCool, Robert Birsel)
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