Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Another 50 people have been injured in the attack, in which four wagons have burned
At least 22 people died on Wednesday and another 50 were injured by the impact of a missile against a passenger train at a railway station in the town of Chapline, in the province of Dnipropetrovsk, in eastern Ukraine. The projectile hit a wagon and set four other cars on fire, as reported by the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, in a telematic intervention before the UN Security Council, of which Russia, China, the United States, France and the United Kingdom are permanent members. .
“This is how we live every day. This is how Russia has prepared this meeting of the Security Council,” lamented Zelensky, who initially estimated the dead at 15, although he warned that the death toll could “increase.” Hours later, in his daily speech to the country, he gave an account of seven other deaths in the attack. “Chapline is our grief today. So far there are 22 dead, including five people who burned in a vehicle. A young man died, he was 11 years old, a Russian rocket destroyed his house », he lamented.
The massacre at the train station was not the only attack of the day. kyiv reported a series of operations in the rest of the country. In the west, in the Khmelnitsky region, there were several explosions that, according to Belarusian opposition activists, were derived from projectiles launched from neighboring Belarus. Specifically, it would be at least four missiles, according to the DPA agency. Bombings were also confirmed in Yitomir, west of the capital, while in Dnipropetrovsk – the same region where the attack on the station took place – an eleven-year-old boy died from the impact of a missile on a house.
The attack took place during Ukraine’s Independence Day. It was also six months since the beginning of the invasion. In recent days, the kyiv authorities had warned that Russia could intensify its attacks, precisely on the occasion of both events. The United States also feared an escalation of the conflict and, in fact, asked its compatriots to leave the country as soon as possible.
However, the Russian strategy also includes waiting for winter. The ‘special operation’ on Ukrainian soil does not follow the script written by the Kremlin’s military strategists and it seems more than evident that the conflagration is headed for entrenchment. For this reason, the Russian president has turned his gaze to other battlefields, especially energy. The cold winters of northern Europe can become the best weapon away from Ukraine.
The calendar works in favor of the Kremlin. “We have time, we can wait,” they point out from Moscow to the British agency Reuters. Convinced that community unity is beginning to crack, Putin predicts a difficult winter for Europeans. “We are close to seeing protests and riots. Some leaders might think twice before continuing to support Ukraine and think it’s time for an agreement,” they estimate in Moscow. In any case, the official discourse remains along established lines and denies the use of energy as a political weapon.
Cambiar el ‘status quo’
Putin bets, according to some sources close to him, that the dizzying prices of energy, its possible scarcity and the economic crisis that is riding on gas and electricity will persuade the EU to force Zelensky to agree to sign a truce . It is the only path to peace that the Moscow government sees, already convinced that Zelensky will not negotiate of his own free will until Russia abandons all the occupied territory. This was reiterated by the president on Wednesday. “We will resist this invasion to the end, without making any concessions or compromises,” he said during the institutional message. «We do not care about the Army they have, we only care about our land. We have stood firm for six months. It is hard, but we have clenched our fists and fight for our destiny. For us, Ukraine is the whole of Ukraine. The twenty-five regions », he added.
Backed by billions in military aid, training and shared intelligence from the United States and other Western countries, and with a series of military operations against Russian targets that have boosted the morale of its troops, kyiv even sees a chance to turn the facts on the ground. “For negotiations to be possible, it is necessary to change the ‘status quo’ at the front. They need to suffer major tactical defeats,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a presidential adviser, told Reuters.