2023-10-06 13:12:00
The Ukrainian president believes that Russia will soon seek, as last year, to “destroy” the electrical installations of his country where a Russian strike caused the death of a 10-year-old child in the northeast on Friday, the day after one of the deadliest attacks of the war on civilians.
“This winter, Russian terrorists will again try to destroy our electrical system,” warned Volodymyr Zelensky in the evening, who had claimed the day before to have received “clear agreements” from the Europeans to obtain new anti-aircraft defense systems, that Kiev has been demanding for months.
By late 2022, Russian forces had systematically bombarded Ukraine’s critical infrastructure for months, causing massive power outages that left millions of people in the cold and dark.
Friday, following a strike on Kharkiv, “the body of a 10-year-old child was found in the rubble”, announced Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko, adding that his grandmother mother had also perished.
The regional governor, Oleg Synegoubov, reported at least 28 injured, including an eleven-month-old baby who was a member of the family of the two people killed.
Two buildings were damaged and a three-story residential building was destroyed, with police saying two Iskander ballistic missiles hit the buildings.
An AFP photographer saw what appears to be the fragment of one of these devices at the bottom of a large crater dug in a street in the city center. Numerous debris litter the arteries where civilian vehicles are overturned or charred.
A body without a head
Later, Mr. Synegoubov said that a residential building had been bombed in Vovchansk, a city near the Russian border that the Ukrainian military recaptured a year ago. An elderly man suffered “severe burns” and two women were injured.
The day before, at least 52 people, including a six-year-old child, were killed in the Kharkiv region, in broad daylight bombardment of the village of Groza, according to a new report from the governor.
A store and a café located in the same building and where around sixty people were present had been reduced to ruins.
Friday morning, firefighters were clearing the rubble, armed with shovels and backhoes.
In the cemetery at the entrance to the village, Oleksiï is present with members of his family to mark out the location of the graves where his brother and sister-in-law, who lost their lives in the strike, will be buried.
“I don’t know when we will be able to bury them. My brother’s body was whole but his wife’s had no head,” he told AFP.
In an alley, the grave of soldier Andriï Kozyr is covered with flowers and topped with a Ukrainian flag.
Residents who attended his funeral gathered in the cafe which was pulverized.
“Everyone who was at the funeral died. It happened just after people entered the cafe,” says Valentina Koziïenko, 73, who lives opposite.
And he wonders: “How did the Russians know that there were so many people there? Maybe someone told them.”
“War crimes”
The strike on Groza was denounced by the international community, which called for an end to attacks against civilians.
According to the UN, “everything suggests” that it was indeed a Russian missile which struck this village of 330 souls before the tragedy.
Asked about the attack, the Kremlin said on Friday it only struck “military targets”.
For the head of Ukrainian diplomacy Dmytro Kouleba, these “atrocities prove that global support for Ukraine must be maintained and strengthened”. “Weakening it would only lead to more war crimes of this type,” he warned on Friday.
The question of aid to Ukraine is burning: due to a political crisis in Washington, the flow of funds and weapons from the United States could dry up.
-Drone swarms-
The Russian army also sent new swarms of attack drones overnight from Thursday to Friday to strike central, northeast and southern Ukraine.
The Ukrainians claimed to have shot down 25 of these 33 Iranian-made Shahed 131/136s.
The governor of the Odessa region (south), Oleg Kiper, said drones damaged a grain store in the port of Izmail and set fire to nine trucks.
This Danube port, regularly targeted by the Russians, is important for Ukraine because it is used for exports of agricultural products, particularly wheat.
Russia carries out strikes against Ukraine every night, using drones and missiles.
06/10/2023 20:37:30 – Kharkiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
#Ukraine #believes #Russia #winter #destroy #electricity #system