All-out retaliation after the explosion on the Kerch bridge in Crimea. In Kiev, parks, streets and overpasses in the center have been hit for the whole morning. Bombs also on Lviv, Dnipro, Kharkiv. At least 14 dead and 89 injured
FROM OUR MAIL
KIEV – Let’s go back to the shelters but we don’t go to hide. We are not afraid of Putin. Kiev is furious as the sun goes down and the lights of Ukraine remain off for the longest night. Next to the statue of the Mother Country shrouded in darkness, Svetlana rolls her eyes to the sky. The sirens will still sound, I’m sure.
8:24 in the morning. The first to be hit the capital. It hadn’t happened since the end of June. Sirens scream since 6:47 am. Better to go down to the shelters this time, someone writes on Twitter. They will end five hours later. The day of fury. Revenge no, nobody in Kiev agrees to hear this word. a contradiction. It was not us who bombed the bridge in Crimea, the leaders of the Zelensky government reiterate.
Two days have passed since an exploding truck damaged the most strategic point of Crimea. And if you don’t want to talk about revenge, the attack has all the flavor of escalation. Missiles released from the Caspian Sea and Nizhny Novgorod in Russia – but also from Belarus, while fears of Minsk’s direct involvement in the conflict are growing again – hit the center of Kiev. Shevchenko Park, Volodymyrska Street, the 007 office street, a stone’s throw from the Opera. The playground next to the aid distribution center. The road near the University. The kiosk with the best croissants in the capital, where those who have passed through here have had breakfast dozens of times. The presidential palace just 2 and a half kilometers away. A clear message to Zelensky. And a new wave of terror on civilians.
rush hour, when you go to work, take the children to school, the same school that in the cities far from the front had reopened at the beginning of September. She thought she had returned to Kiev life. There will be 14 deaths across the country6 only in the capital (among them also the head of the Ukrainian cyber police, Yuri Zaskoka) and one in his region, then Dnipro with 4 victims. And at least 89 injured. A massacre. Zelensky on Telegram posts pictures of the destruction: The world has once again seen the true face of a terrorist state. They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the earth. And in the evening, in the usual evening roll-out on the street to deny once again the Russian rumors that want him to flee, he thunders: We will rebuild everything.
From the images of the tanks at the front we return to the metro stops. Someone sings. Someone else gets angry. But no one loses control while the shots are still falling on the surface. Who in the house and has a shelter available goes down. Those who don’t have it take refuge in the bathroom. We put the babies in the bathtub because it’s safer, a friend writes to us via WhatsApp. On the Dnipro the Klitschko bridge is also hit, the glass bridge, the one on which you go for a walk to the park on Sunday mornings. Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko shows it still intact, while the municipal services are already working to repair the damage. Our bridge left standing, yours collapsed, some people joke about referring to the Kerch bridge in the Crimea. Beyond the jokes, anguish hovers over the gold and blue of the Orthodox monastery of San Michele. The head of the European delegation Matti Maasikas posted a photo on Twitter that seems to recall the Beirut of the civil war, with cars on fire and columns of smoke on fire. The bodies and blood marks on the asphalt speak for themselves. The seat of the German consulate was also hit. But they all stay. Nobody leaves Kiev today. Our activities continue, we have only suspended the movements, says the International Committee of the Red Cross. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba returns urgently from his trip to Africa.
Kiev, Kyiv, which does not allow itself to be bent by the war and which is preparing to return to the cellar and relive the anxiety of the first days of the war while the fury of the tsar does not stop. Missiles also fall on Dnipro to the south, closer to the front of the autumn counteroffensive. But also Kharkiv, Poltava, Zhytomyr, Khmelnitsky, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Ivano-Frankivsk. About Odessa and Kryvyi Rih kamikaze drones try to shoot down. a shower of fire: 84 cruise missiles and 24 attack drones, including 13 Iranian Shahid-136s. Of these, 56 are intercepted. According to Kiev, critical infrastructures, especially energy supply, located in eight regions, are being targeted. Eleven of these were damaged. In Lviv the electricity grid is hit, the city remains in the dark.
And this is precisely the biggest knot now: the energy supply, the Tsar’s goal to bring the enemy to his knees in view of winter. Due to the attacks, Ukraine stops exporting electricity to Europe in order to stabilize its energy system, let the Kyiv Ministry of Energy know. This is no small problem if we consider that the Ukrainian electricity system was integrated with the European one in March, precisely to reduce energy dependence on Russia and Belarus. And Zelensky himself launched the appeal: it is important to reduce electricity consumption. Let’s hold on. We are working, let’s unite. Only in this way will we pass all the tests.
And as she looks down Svetlana has no doubts. We will succeed, even at the cost of staying in the dark.
October 10, 2022 (change October 10, 2022 | 23:17)
© Time.News