Kiev raises the pace of the offensive. Russian strikes on flooded Kherson – time.news

2023-06-09 00:01:26

Of Francesco Battistini

Ukrainian attacks more intense, Zelensky visits flooded areas. Nuclear power plant alarm

FROM OUR REPORTER – There is too much water to even put tears in. And too much death to decamp. And too much anger to fear another war. «We stayed here a year ago, when our neighbors were running away from Putin. And we were there in November, when the Ukrainian army liberated us. And we didn’t move in December when the Russians started again to bomb us from the other side of the Dnipro. And let’s stay here now, in the middle of the water. There is no time to cry. It serves no purpose. We have to react.” Interviewed by Ukrainian TV, relaunched by government blogs and complimented by President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, who came to visit the flood victims of the Dnipro dam: Galyna Kopaeva spreads the flooded rags in the sun, climbs onto the roof to wave them, it becomes the last banner of the resistance and promises that she and her husband and daughter Angelina will not leave Kherson right now. “We survive, we hold on. And we wait.” While on the city – the Ukrainians accuse – Russian bombs rain down and hit those fleeing the water.

Waiting for the counteroffensive. Everyone says that there is, where it is someone knows. «It has begun», shoots the Washington Post, which cites four Ukrainian sources. «A new phase of the war is starting», relaunched the American TVs Abc e Nbc. «We are at the decisive moment», is sure the New York Times, speaking with a deep throat Use. «The counter-offensive has been underway since at least Sunday», rilancia da Zaporizhzhia Putin’s activist Vladimir Rogov. “No confirmation and no denial,” he says Courier an official close to Zelensky. The delivery of silence has been sealing Ukrainian political and military mouths since Sunday, but everyone is making one thing clear: for sure, there are the first signs of «intense offensive operations» and the long-awaited counterattack is probably already this, no trumpet blast, but a series of tears on the southern front, rationing the 70,000 fresh soldiers and above all oiling the weapons prepared by the West.

From the Sweden fresh from Born I’m coming one billion and 600 million dollars in artillery systems, anti-aircraft missiles, Leopard 2 tanks, fifty CV-90 tanks (those capable of hitting a helicopter four kilometers away) and even four companies of mechanized infantry who knew how to use only the old Russian Bmp-1 tanks and now instead they trained, on highly sophisticated technologies, in secret locations. The escalation is already here. And if it’s up to the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, to contradict the former Atlantic secretary Rasmussen and assure the world that “no NATO soldier will ever set foot in Ukraine while the war is on”, i ceceni di Ramzan Kadyrov they have no problem posting photos of the China Tiger armored vehicles that arrived for the first time, and who knows how, from Beijing. Not even Zelensky denies having asked French President Emmanuel Macron by telephone to send, in addition to aid for the flood, also the trainers necessary for the new planes.

He hits hard. Again. In Zaporizhzhia, It sticks to Kherson. But also on Marivka, near Donetsk. To Bakhmut. Nine provinces under fire, dead children in Donbass, dozens injured. The linchpin of the first major Ukrainian attack is the 47th Mechanized Brigade, pushing on the city of the nuclear power plant: 148 explosions in the last 24 hours. But here, however, a serious problem of another type risks presenting itself soon: “The water level of the dam basin is now too low to feed the reserves that serve to cool the reactors,” said the leader of Ukrhydroenergo, the company that manages the infrastructure. According to the Russians, there was a furious 100-minute battle last night that would have caused Kiev losses of 945 men, 33 tanks, 28 armored personnel carriers, three Polish Krab howitzers… The usual hyperbole of Moscow’s defense minister, Serghei Shoighu, but with a fact confirmed by the inhabitants — «everything was shaking, it looked like hell», says engineer Nikolai Timchuk, speaking on the phone – and a result also admitted by the Ukrainian government: the wave on Zaporizhzhia was repulsed by the Russians.

Now in Moscow they are also expecting an attack in Crimea and Putin’s megabridge, built after the annexation, has been closed: the peninsula, already without water due to the destroyed dam, is even more of an island.

June 9, 2023 (change June 9, 2023 | 00:00)

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