2024-03-25 12:32:40
kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, suffered this Monday morning from a lightning bombardment launched by the Russian armed forces deployed in Crimea. At least six hypersonic ballistic missiles fired from the peninsula illegally annexed in 2014 by Moscow have reached the city, causing destruction in four districts. The speed with which the projectiles have reached the Ukrainian capital, without the anti-aircraft alarms being able to even warn of the danger, has caused panic among the citizens. It is the third attack suffered by kyiv in five days.
Russian military analysts have stated that the Russian army has used Zircon missiles, one of the most innovative precision weapons in its arsenal. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that two of the missiles were intercepted in kyiv. Their cruising speed, well above the speed of sound, prevented the anti-aircraft alarms from being activated before the arrival of the projectiles or from being shot down during their 600 kilometer flight from Crimea to the capital.
Ukraine suffers from a serious deficit in anti-aircraft ammunition, and once again bursts of anti-aircraft machine guns have been heard in the capital trying to shoot down the missiles, a measure that is especially effective against drones. “We will never tire of repeating that Ukraine needs more anti-aircraft defenses. This is security for our cities and to save human lives. “Everyone in the world who respects and protects lives must stop this terror,” the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on his social networks.
kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has reported damaged buildings in four districts due to the fall of the intercepted missiles. The worst part has been a municipal administration headquarters in the Pechersk district, which has been completely destroyed, causing at least five injuries.
The Russian state agency TASS has assured that the main objective of the attack has been the Zhuliani airport, the second in the capital and located in the urban center. According to TASS, Russian missiles have destroyed two American Patriot air defense batteries in Zhuliani. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have not commented on this information. Russian military accounts have claimed that the Strii air base, in the west of the country, was also bombed on Sunday. Defense analysts of the invading country believe that its army is intensifying its attacks against Ukrainian airfields to prevent the expected entry into action in the war of F-16 fighters provided by NATO allies to Ukraine.
The bombers of the Ukrainian Air Force also had a special role this weekend, when their long-range Storm Shadow missiles attacked the communications center of the Russian fleet in Crimea, as well as three landing ships, according to the ministry. of Ukrainian Defense. The former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valeri Zaluzhni reported last November that Ukraine only had about forty military aircraft left, compared to the 120 with which the war began in February 2022.
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Russia has been intensifying its bombing since last week against Ukraine’s power grid. Shahed drone bombs damaged two electrical substations in Odessa and Mikolaiv, in the southwest, on Sunday night. Ukraine also suffered a massive attack against nine provinces in the early hours of Sunday, just one day after the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, accused the Kiev authorities of being involved in the jihadist attack that ended the life of at least 137 people in a Moscow concert hall. Ukrainian authorities have assumed that Putin would use this accusation to increase his war effort in Ukraine.
Attacks on Russian military targets in Crimea, a region that Putin considers vital to Russian national identity, are also a recurring excuse for the Kremlin to launch retaliatory bombings. Another factor that may have triggered the recent large-scale Russian bombings, after months of less activity, is the offensive that the Ukrainian intelligence services are carrying out, using bomb drones, against Russian oil refineries, and which could have interrupted more 10% of fuel production, according to reports from the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense.
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