Time.news – More than 10 million Ukrainians are without electricity after the Russian attacks in the last few hours: President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced this in his usual nocturnal speech. There are several Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kiev, which have come under fire from Russian attacks in the last few hours.
Temperatures in the country continue to drop and are leading to an increase in electricity consumption. A situation that “further complicated the already difficult situation of the electricity system”said the national electricity operator, Ukrenergo.
Kiev: “War may end before total liberation”
The war with Russia may end even before the total liberation of the occupied Ukrainian territories. This was stated in a press conference by Mykhailo Podolyak, Ukrainian presidential adviser, quoted by the UNIAN agency.
Podolyak thus commented on the statement by the US joint chief of staff, Mark Milley, according to which there is little probability that Kiev will be able to expel the Russians from all the areas under their control, including Crimea, in the near future.
“I will simply recall that on February 24th they said that the probability of Ukraine resisting was zero percent“, Podolyak affirmed, “today nine months of this war have passed and Ukraine is in a phase of counter-offensive and effective progress in the liberation of its territory”.
“Is a complete one hundred percent military victory possible? Maybe it will turn out a little differently. For example, we will advance into the Lugansk or Donetsk regions and a large city occupied by the Russian Federation for eight years, for example Lugansk, will fall,” he explained the Ukrainian official, “and after that irreversible processes will begin in the political elites of the Russian Federation, and in the society of the Russian Federation”.
Imagine situation: neighbor invades your country, captures part of it, destroys cities, kills tens of thousands of people. When you start to fight back and liberate territories, occupier asks for “ceasefire” and others support it. Imagined? No need for us to imagine, we have it.
— Mykhailo Podolyak (@Podolyak_M) November 17, 2022
“In this way, the war can end even before liberating everything by military means” as “Russia will have lost the war”, underlined Podolyak. The counselor asked, at this stage, “more specific military aid” now that the conflict has turned into a “missile war“. “We need to focus on this, for example, additional air defense, anti-aircraft defense, additional anti-drone systems,” concluded Podolyak, “so Ukraine will reach the conclusion that we consider correct, emphasized by President Zelensky: the liberation of entire territory of Ukraine”.
Moscow: “Nothing to discuss with Washington on Ukraine”
Russia “has nothing to discuss with the US over Ukraine” and if the issue is mentioned during diplomatic contacts it is only at the level of “signals”, as “dialogue is impossible due to the opposing positions“. This was stated by the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, who “took note of the IAEA report which said it had not detected signs of production of a dirty bomb in Ukraine”.
According to Crosetto, the Kremlin wants to “create mass exoduses”
The Russian attack on Ukraine “has changed its strategy: it is now aimed against civilian populations and aims to cause mass exoduses of millions of people who must decide whether to freeze to death or leave their homes. Destroying Ukrainian infrastructure and putting cities in darkness means aiming to export the war to Europesending us thousands of refugees to punish us for wanting to help Ukraine”.
To say it is the Minister of Defence, Guido Crosetto, who, again in an interview with Qn, assures that the government “will necessarily have to pass through Parliament”. “The authorization to send arms – he recalls – expires in 2022 and must be extended in 2023. The line to follow for a possible sixth shipment of arms will be decided by the government, not me alone”.