Vladimir Putin heads for Belarus as Russian ‘kamikaze’ drones strike Kyiv – National | 24CA News
Moscow launched a “kamikaze” drone assault on Monday, hitting key infrastructure in and round Kyiv, as Russian President Vladimir Putin heads for Belarus, fueling fears he’ll stress his ex-Soviet ally to affix a brand new offensive on Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Air Force mentioned its air defences shot down 30 drones, the third Russian air assault on the Ukrainian capital in six days and the most recent in a sequence of assaults since October which have focused the Ukrainian energy grid, inflicting sweeping blackouts amid sub-freezing temperatures.
Kyiv’s mayor mentioned nobody had died or been wounded within the assaults on Kyiv that rocked the capital’s Solomianskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts, in response to preliminary info.
“Kamikaze” drones are cheaply produced, disposable unmanned plane that fly in direction of their goal earlier than plummeting at velocity and detonating on affect.
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Under the darkness of evening, a fireplace raged at one website at an vitality facility within the usually focused central Shevchenkivskyi district, a Reuters witness mentioned.
“I heard an explosion. And in three or four minutes I heard another explosion,” mentioned an outdated man who works at a guard at a close-by hospital.
The Solomianskyi district within the western a part of Kyiv is a busy transport hub, residence to a practice station and one of many metropolis’s two passenger airports.
Residents watch at a burning infrastructure venture hit throughout an enormous Russian drone evening strike in Kyiv on Dec. 19.
Efrem Lukatsky/AP
Kyiv officers mentioned 18 out of 23 drones have been shot down over the town of three.6 million.
“As a result of the attack on the capital, critical infrastructure facilities were damaged,” Vitali Klitschko mentioned on the Telegram messaging app.
“Energy and heating engineers are working to quickly stabilize the situation with energy and heat supply.”
Oleskiy Kuleba, governor of the area surrounding Kyiv, mentioned infrastructure and personal homes have been broken and that two folks have been wounded. He mentioned the assault precipitated “fairly serious” harm and three areas within the area had been left with out energy.
Ukraine’s nationwide energy grid operator, Ukrenergo, mentioned on Telegram drones focused energy crops throughout the nation.
“Currently, the most difficult situation is in the central, eastern and Dnipro regions,” it mentioned.
There has been fixed Russian and Belarusian army exercise for months in Belarus, a detailed Kremlin ally that Moscow’s troops used as a launch pad for his or her abortive assault on Kyiv in February.
Putin’s go to, for talks with Belarusian chief Alexander Lukashenko, can be his first to Minsk since 2019 – earlier than the pandemic and a wave of Belarusian protests in 2020 that Lukashenko crushed with sturdy assist from the Kremlin.
Lukashenko has mentioned repeatedly he has no intention of sending his nation’s troops into Ukraine.
“During (these talks) questions will be worked out for further aggression against Ukraine and the broader involvement of the Belarusian armed forces in the operation against Ukraine, in particular, in our opinion, also on the ground,” Ukrainian joint forces commander Serhiy Nayev mentioned.
Russian troops that moved to Belarus in October will conduct battalion tactical workout routines, the Russian Interfax news company reported, citing the Russian defence ministry.
It was not instantly clear after they would begin.
The 10-month-old battle in Ukraine is the largest in Europe for the reason that Second World War, killing tens of hundreds of individuals, driving thousands and thousands from their houses and lowering cities to ruins.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned the armed forces have been holding agency within the city of Bakhmut – scene of the fiercest preventing for a lot of weeks as Russia makes an attempt to advance in japanese Ukraine’s Donetsk area.
“The battlefield in Bakhmut is critical,” he mentioned. “We control the town even though the occupiers are doing everything so that no undamaged wall will remain standing.”
Zelenskyy on Monday referred to as on Western leaders assembly in Latvia, together with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to provide a variety of weapons programs.
Denis Pushilin, Russian-installed administrator of the portion of the Donetsk area managed by Moscow, mentioned that Ukrainian forces shelled a hospital within the Donetsk metropolis, killing one individual and injuring a number of others.
Russia’s defence ministry mentioned over the previous 24 hours its forces had shot down 4 U.S.-made HARM anti-radiation missiles over the Belgorod area, which borders Ukraine, the state-run TASS news company reported.
Reuters couldn’t independently confirm the battlefield accounts.
Putin casts what he calls Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine because the second when Moscow lastly stood as much as the Western bloc, led by the United States, looking for to capitalize on the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union by destroying Russia.
Kyiv and the West say that assertion is absurd and that Putin has no justification for what they see as an imperial-style warfare of aggression that has resulted in Russia now controlling round a fifth of Ukraine.
Moscow mentioned on Monday Russian and Chinese forces would maintain joint naval drills between Dec. 21 and Dec. 27, involving missile and artillery firing within the East China Sea.
While the drills have been held yearly since 2012, Moscow has sought to strengthen its political, safety and financial hyperlinks with Beijing in latest months and sees Chinese President Xi Jinping as a key ally in an anti-West alliance.
