The Virus War, a decades-in length philosophical and international battle between the US and the Soviet Association, stays one of the most characterizing times of the twentieth 100 years. This extended struggle, described by serious contention and atomic brinkmanship, has made a permanent imprint on worldwide legislative issues and the manner in which countries approach global relations.
Starting soon after The Second Great War, the Virus War pitted the majority rule and entrepreneur standards of the US against the socialist philosophy of the Soviet Association. The expression “cold” was utilized to underscore the shortfall of direct military showdown, yet it was set apart by various intermediary wars, undercover work, and a consistent weapons contest, leaving a ubiquitous danger of atomic destruction.
History specialist [Name], a specialist on Cool Conflict history, highlights the worldwide effect of this period, expressing, “The Virus War wasn’t simply a deadlock between superpowers; it was a seismic philosophical battle that separated the world into two unmistakable camps, each competing for matchless quality. It molded the international strategies of countries across the globe and impacted worldwide coalitions for quite a long time.”
One of the main results of the Virus War was the division of Europe. The Iron Shade, a term begat by English State leader Winston Churchill in 1946, addressed the physical and philosophical partition of Western and Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall, raised in 1961, remained as an obvious image of this division, isolating families and belief systems for almost thirty years.
In a proclamation recognizing the 30th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, German Chancellor [Name] underscored the significance of grasping this verifiable period. “The fall of the Berlin Wall checked the reunification of Germany as well as the beginning of another time. It fills in as a sign of the human longing for opportunity and the force of strategy to conquer apparently unfavorable hindrances.”
The Virus War additionally made a permanent imprint on worldwide strategy and the utilization of atomic weapons. The Cuban Rocket Emergency of 1962 carried the world really close to atomic conflict when the U.S. furthermore, the Soviet Association participated in a strained stalemate over the position of atomic rockets in Cuba. It was a snapshot of high-stakes strategy and an illustration in the risks of atomic brinkmanship.
Previous U.S. Secretary of State [Name] remarked on the persevering through illustrations of the Cuban Rocket Emergency, saying, “The Cuban Rocket Emergency instructed us that correspondence, restriction, and discretion are essential apparatuses in forestalling horrendous contentions. It exhibited the significance of tracking down serene goals to even the most perilous questions.”
The Virus War at last reached a conclusion in the last part of the 1980s and mid 1990s with the disintegration of the Soviet Association and the reunification of Germany. Notwithstanding, its heritage perseveres as atomic stockpiles, getting through international competitions, and a perplexing trap of partnerships and clashes.
As we consider the significance of the Virus War today, it fills in as a distinct indication of the getting through significance of tact, the high stakes of worldwide governmental issues, and the significant effect of philosophy on global relations. Understanding this time of history is essential as countries keep on wrestling with complex international difficulties in the 21st hundred years.
Kiev: Air raid sirens have sounded across Ukraine after Russia launched the biggest ever “kamikaze” drone attack on Kiev since Moscow waged its war in February 2022.
In capital Kiev, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said nearly 60 drones had been launched by Russia on Monday, adding that 36 were destroyed, the BBC reported.
Klitschko added that five people had been injured by falling debris from downed drones.
This was the fourth attack in eight days on Kiev and came just 24 hours before Russia’s Victory Day, which commemorates the erstwhile Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany during World War Two.
Emergency services responded after drone wreckage fell on a runway at Zhuliany international airport — one of the capital city’s two commercial airports, Kiev’s military administration said.
Civilians were injured after drone debris hit a residential building in the central Shevchenkivskyi district, the administration added.
Meanwhile in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, a warehouse was set ablaze after eight missiles were fired at targets by Russian bombers, the BBC quoted Ukrainian officials as saying.
In a statement, Ukraine’s Red Cross said its warehouse with humanitarian aid was destroyed and all aid deliveries had to be suspended.
Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Southern Command, later said a body of a security guardwas pulled from the wreckage.
Missile strikes were also reported in the Kherson, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions.
At least eight people, including a child, were injured in two villages in Kherson.
Representatives for Mali and Turkey declined to comment on the documents.
Despite its support from the Kremlin and its ability tosecure lucrative contracts in Africa, some experts who study Wagner maintain that the U.S. and its allies have historically held far greater sway among African government officials than Prigozhin and his fighters.
“There’s no question Wagner has a strategy in Africa … to connect neighboring states under Wagner influence. Washington is trying to disrupt that for a host of reasons,” said Cameron Hudson, analyst and consultant at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.“But let’s not put Wagner on par with the United States government. These are not equals — the United States doesn’t see them as equals. What we have seen is Wagner doesn’t have an ability — by itself — to create winners and losers in these countries.”
Making inroads
Wagner is helmed by Prigozhin, a former caterer for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since 2017, Prigozhin has expanded the group into an international military and influence force with tentacles that span the globe.
The organization, which has strong ties to the Russian state, including its security services, is known for its work helping prop up regimes in the Middle East, in countries such as Syria. And its forces are leading the fight in parts of Ukraine, especially in the eastern city of Bakhmut, where Russians and Ukrainian soldiers are locked in a bloody battle. Wagner is viewed by U.S. officials as having gained newfound prominence in the wake of Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In recent years, Prigozhin has expanded Wagner’s operations to Africa, helping foster relationships for the Kremlin in countries such as Libya, Sudan, Central African Republic, Chad and Mali. The group’s work includes securing critical mineral and oil sites in Africa as well as protecting government officials.
Its presence in those countries has prompted senior officials in the Biden administration to draft a new road map for routing the group out of the region, the U.S. officials said.
Although Wagner has worked on the continent for years, the Biden administration is newly worried about the extent to which the group’s activities there are not only threatening regional stability but are also being used by the Kremlin as a way to develop long-term influential relationships — relationships that could potentially sideline Washington for years to come.
Washington’s stated strategy for the Sahel region, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced from Africa in 2022, lays out U.S. thinking about Russia’s influence on the continent. Without naming Wagner, the document describes how Moscow uses “private military companies” to foment “instability for strategic and financial benefit.”
POLITICO has obtained and reviewed a series of internal documents from Prigozhin’s empire that detail how the leader of Wagner has expanded the paramilitary group and his businesses across the continent, specifically in Sudan and Central African Republic.
They also mention the Democratic Republic of Congo. The documents confirm previous reporting, including by POLITICO, about Wagner’s operations in Africa. But they also provide unusual detail about the close connection between Prigozhin’s businesses, Wagner and the local African governments and militaries.
Prigozhin set up offices in Sudan in 2017 and has in recent years built out a sprawling business network in the country.
Prigozhin established his operations in Sudan by working with government officials — including former President Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted from power by the military in 2019 — and by securing lucrative mining contracts.
A CNN investigation last year revealed the extent to which Russia was smuggling gold out of Sudan and using Wagner to help plunder the country’s natural resources. According to the U.S. officials who spoke with POLITICO, Wagner appears to conduct much of its mining business through Meroe Gold. The U.S. and Europe have both sanctioned the entity. Meroe could not be reached for comment.
Wagner also has a history of supporting the country’s security services.
Prigozhin’s operatives in Sudan also work on disinformation and misinformation campaigns in the country to sway political events on the ground, according to documents and experts who study Wagner’s work in the country.
Several of the documents from inside Prigozhin’s business empire outline detailed media strategies to suppress protests and to pay local Sudan journalists to promote content in support of the ruling party and against the opposition of then-president Bashir. One outlines recommendations on how to manage protests that swept the country in 2018 that threatened to topple the government of Bashir. The New York Times reported on a similar memo in June 2022.
Among the suggestions included in the memo POLITICO reviewed: The creation of a Russian-run internet center that would control the narrative about the government and launch a campaign portraying protesters in a negative light. The plan also laid out plans to control the protests by blocking foreigners’ access to areas with demonstrations and infiltrating the ranks of the protest’s organizers.
Several of the documents obtained by POLITICO show the expansion of Wagner’s military activities in the country, including its connection to the country’s military. The organization has helped train soldiers over the years, the documents show.
One of the documents appears to show a request by a Prigozhin-linked business to pay for the use of the Khartoum military airbase to ensure the arrivals and departures of employees and cargo. Another memo from 2021 outlines Wagner positions in the country, including on several bases. It also lists Prigozhin employees serving in other command centers where they coordinate with the Sudanese military and police, including Aswar, a company controlled by Sudanese military intelligence. Aswar could not be reached for comment.
It is unclear whether, or the extent to which, Russia, Wagner or any of Prigozhin’s affiliate entities are currently involved in the ongoing violence in Sudan. U.S. officials did not answer questions about whether they assessed that the paramilitary group is currently providing aid or helping prop up either side of the conflict.
“The interference of external entities in Sudan’s internal conflict will only lead to more human suffering and delay the country’s transition to democracy,” a State Department official said in a statement.
Putting down roots
Wagner has also set up command centers in the Um Dafuq region of western Sudan, where it has been accused of attacking civilians. It has used the town as a base for supporting its gold-mining activities in Central African Republic.
The paramilitary organization set up shop in CAR in 2017, creating cultural centers and other local initiatives to make inroads with the government. Since then, it has moved in to protect the country’s gold mines and is training government forces, according to documents obtained by POLITICO and one of the U.S. officials.
One 11-page document POLITICO obtained from Prigozhin’s network from 2020 details Wagner’s training of government forces and its protection of CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra. Another lists in detail the location of Wagner fighters, including how many soldiers are stationed at each base throughout the country. Other documents in the Prigozhin tranche detail media campaigns carried out by employees of the Wagner leader — many of which were designed to spread Russian propaganda, discredit the French and organize protests against United Nations peacekeepers in the country.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Kiev: Ukraine has accused Russia of attacking the besieged city of Bakhmut with phosphorus munitions, a media report said.
In drone footage released by Ukraine’s military, Bakhmut can be seen ablaze as what appears to be white phosphorus rains down on the city, BBC reported.
White phosphorus weapons are not banned, but their use in civilian areas is considered a war crime. They create fast-spreading fires that are very difficult to put out. Russia has been accused of using them before as well.
Russia has been trying to capture Bakhmut for months, despite its questionable strategic value. Western officials have estimated that thousands of Moscow’s troops have died in the assault.
Taking to Twitter, Ukraine’s defence ministry said the phosphorus attack targeted “unoccupied areas of Bakhmut with incendiary ammunition”.
Kiev’s special forces command added that Moscow’s forces continued “to destroy the city”.
It is unclear when exactly the alleged attack took place. But the footage shared by Ukraine – seemingly captured by a surveillance drone – showed high-rise buildings engulfed in flames, BBC reported.
Other videos posted to social media showed fires raging on the ground and white clouds of phosphorus illuminating the night sky.
Russia has been accused of using white phosphorus several times since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, including during the siege of Mariupol at the beginning of the war.
Moscow has never publicly admitted to using white phosphorus, and last year Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov insisted that “Russia has never violated international conventions” after Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said it had been used.
White phosphorus is a wax-like substance which ignites on contact with oxygen, creating bright plumes of smoke, BBC reported.
During Putin’s first two terms as president, from 2000 to 2008, the hallmarks of what came to be known as “Putinomics” were political stability, steady economic growth and bringing both political and economic power back “under center.” He created so-called “national champion companies,” using the coercive muscle of the state to take over and consolidate entire markets under corporations in which the government owned a controlling stake. Industrial giants like Gazprom and Rosneft would serve as the natural gas and oil arms of the Kremlin, prioritizing the interests of the Russian state.
“Vodka may not be gas or oil,” explained an article in the Russian journal Ekspert, “but it too is a strategically important product. So important that to control its production it was necessary to create an alcohol equivalent of Gazprom.”
The relationship between autocracy and vodka in Russia, of course, goes back much further than Putin. Every innovation of feudalism — from legal serfdom to oppressive taxation and forced conscription — bound Russian society to the state, subordinating society for the profit of the autocrat. Once crystallized into traditions, such dynamics of domination and subordination persist through time as culture.
And there’s nothing more synonymous with Russian culture than vodka.
The historical reasons for this are generally dismissed as trivial or politely avoided altogether. I’ve explored this topic in two books, and I’ve found that you can’t understand Russia without understanding the connection between booze and political power. The details aren’t always easy to pin down; when it comes to the opaque and corrupt contemporary world of Russian business, questions of who truly owns what offshore shell company is often the subject of speculation and rumor. But recent revelations by brave Russian investigative journalists — working at tremendous personal peril to expose high-level corruption in an increasingly repressive autocracy — have provided important pieces of the puzzle, allowing us to finally see a fuller picture of Russia’s vodka autocracy.
Together, this new information combined with historical patterns reveal how the Kremlin has wielded alcohol as a weapon — maintaining political dominance over its own dependent Russian civil society, both throughout history and into the present. In particular, it is an account of how Russian President Vladimir Putin has amassed a shadow empire of vodka to enrich himself at the direct expense of his citizens’ drunken misery.
‘Vodka … will lead us back to capitalism’
The Russian people’s well-known affinity for vodka is more a legacy of its rulers’ autocratic statecraft than some innate cultural or genetic trait.
Many global societies have traditions of brewing low-alcohol fermented drinks — beers, wines and hard ciders — which were often safer to drink than bacteria-ridden stream water. Russia was no exception: Peasants there drank many of the same brews as their European counterparts: Beers, ales, mead from fermented honey, and kvass from fermented bread.
But the advent of industrial distillation — and the high-potency vodkas, brandies, whiskies and gins borne of the Industrial Revolution — was a game changer. In the words of historian David Christian, “distilled drinks were to fermented drinks what guns were to bows and arrows: instruments of a potency unimaginable in most traditional societies.”
The liquor traffic has long been a well-known tool of European domination and conquest. With brandy and guns, the British colonized India and South Africa. With gin and guns, the Belgians decimated the Congo. In North America, it was whiskey — “the white man’s wicked water” — and guns, that settlers employed to ethnically cleanse the eastern half of North America of Native Americans.
Rather than a far-flung, transoceanic empire like the British, Russia’s was a contiguous, land-based empire. Russian emperors conquered and colonized neighboring non-Russian populations and subordinated them within an autocratic system alongside their ethnic Russian counterparts. And they used some of the same tools.
In 1552, while laying siege to the Khanate of Kazan, Ivan the Terrible saw how the Tatars monopolized their tavern business. Seizing both the town and the idea, Ivan proclaimed a crown monopoly on the alcohol trade, funneling all profits to the tsar’s coffers. Soldering the link between booze and feudalism, the same Law Code of 1649 that legally bound the Russian serf to the land also forbade the private trade in vodka under penalty of torture.
Even Russian historians admit vodka is the world’s most primitive distilled beverage, and the cheapest to mass produce. Over time, vodka elbowed-out the traditional fermented drinks —not because it tasted better, but because it turned a bigger profit. Rubles from the sale of vodka swelled the Muscovite treasury.
By the mid-19th century, the imperial vodka monopoly was the largest contributor to the Russian budget, with one-third of all revenues — enough to both fund lifestyles of opulence and imperial splendor and field the world’s largest standing army — derived from the drunken poverty of the Russian peasantry. Even beyond the officially sanctioned vodka trade, dealing vodka became a privilege officially reserved for the gentry and Romanov family; the distilleries on their private estates generating ever more royal wealth.
By the 20th century, it didn’t take a rabid Marxist to note the obvious: The liquor traffic was how the rich got richer while the poor got poorer. Indeed, many European socialists and revolutionaries abstained from drinking on just such ideological grounds — including Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. So when Lenin’s Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd in 1917, they extended the World War I vodka prohibition inherited from their tsarist predecessors beyond the end of the war. In 1922, Lenin argued against putting “vodka and other intoxicants on the market, because, profitable though they are, they will lead us back to capitalism and not forward to communism.”
Within months, Lenin was dead, and his successor Joseph Stalin gradually restarted the traditional Russian vodka monopoly, but in the service of the gleaming, new Soviet state. Stalin was even more ruthless than the tsars in uprooting any grassroots temperance movements that dared promote public health and wellbeing, diminishing the flow of rubles for the state. Indeed, the economic might of the Soviet colossus was built upon the drunkenness of its subjects.
When, in the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the moribund Soviet economy, he began by trying to wean Russians from their vodka. His resulting anti-alcohol campaign ended in disaster, partly because he couldn’t wean the Soviet government from its own addiction to alcohol revenues. By papering-over the budgetary hole by printing ever more rubles, the resulting hyperinflationary spiral helped doom the Soviet Union itself.
By the 1990s, the communist administrative-command economy was dead, and with it went the state vodka monopoly. The new “Wild East” of Russian capitalism extended to the largely unregulated liquor market. Amidst the decade-long economic depression, Russian alcohol consumption skyrocketed, along with Russian mortality. Russians drank on average 18 liters of pure alcohol per year — 10 liters more than what the World Health Organization considers dangerous. The average Russian drinker was quaffing 180 bottles of vodka per year, or a half-bottle every single day. Consequently, average male life expectancy in Russia dipped to only 58 years. The inebriate national tenor was led by oft-inebriated President Boris Yeltsin, who seemed to stumble from one drunken public embarrassment to another.
This was the context for the rise of a new Russian vodka oligarchy. Rather than being an aberration, historically selling vodka to the downtrodden Russian people was a time-tested source of fantastic wealth throughout Russian history — whether that wealth was state revenue, private profit or both simultaneously.
Indeed, this is also where corruption has blossomed throughout Russian history — in the grey zone between public power and private profit.
‘The brainchild of Vladimir Putin’
In the beginning, Putin seemed an unlikely candidate to build a vast vodka empire. He has never been particularly associated with drinking or alcohol. Both his biography and public image are largely distant from booze. Growing up, this undersized Leningrad hoodlum took to judo, which instilled discipline and kept him off the streets. As a young KGB officer stationed in East Germany, he would occasionally knock back a beer, but nothing more. “He is indifferent to alcohol, really,” his then-wife, Lyudmila Putina once explained.
The dismal 1990s found Putin back in St. Petersburg, as an able — and most importantly, loyal — aide to liberal mayor Anatoly Sobchak. Putin headed the city’s External Relations Committee, overseeing lucrative foreign-investment deals and reportedly skimming from them handsomely. His can-do reputation earned Putin a promotion to Moscow, serving first as the deputy chief of Yeltsin’s presidential staff, then head of the FSB security service before being appointed prime minister in August 1999. Once in Yeltsin’s Kremlin, rather than succumb to the usual drunkenness of official banquets, Putin would reportedly dump his drinks, discretely, into decorative flowerpots.
After he became president, whether practicing judo, playing hockey or riding shirtless on horseback, Putin carefully crafted a public image of virility, physical fitness and stable leadership; purposefully drawing a stark contrast with the sickly, drunken and unsteady Yeltsin presidency. Publicly, Putin championed active and healthy lifestyles — much to the delight of a few, nascent public health and anti-liquor organizations, which invoked Putin’s machismo in their “live sober” campaigns. Decrying the “alcoholization” of Russian society was a consistent theme of his annual state of the union addresses.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Moscow: Russian authorities accused Ukraine on Wednesday of attempting to attack the Kremlin with two drones overnight in an effort to assassinate President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin decried the alleged attack attempt as a “terrorist act” and said Russian military and security forces “disabled” the drones before they could strike. It did not elaborate.
A statement on the Kremlin’s website said debris from the unmanned aerial vehicles fell on the grounds of the seat of Russia’s government but did not cause any damage. The statement, which did not explain what caused the drones to break up, said no casualties were reported.
A video published overnight on a local Moscow news Telegram channel, which appeared to have been shot across the river from the Kremlin, showed what looked like smoke rising over the Kremlin.
According to the text accompanying the video, residents of a nearby apartment building reported hearing bangs and seeing smoke at around 2:30 a.m. local time (7:30 p.m. Eastern.) It was impossible to independently verify the posted footage.
There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian authorities. The Kremlin didn’t present any evidence to back up its account, including the allegation of an assassination attempt as Russia prepares to observe its annual Victory Day on Tuesday.
“We consider these actions as a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the life of the president of Russia, carried out on the eve of the Victory Day, the parade on May 9, where foreign dignitaries are expected,” the Kremlin’s statement read.
Russia retains the right to respond “when and where it sees fit,” the statement said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti that Putin wasn’t in the Kremlin at the time and was working from the Novo-Ogaryovo residence.
The Kremlin added that Putin was safe and his schedule was unchanged. Peskov said at the parade would take place as scheduled on May 9.
Shortly before the news about the alleged attack broke, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin issued a ban on using drones in the Russian capital, with an exception for drones launched by authorities.
Sobyanin didn’t cite a reason for the ban, saying only that it would prevent “illegal use of drones that can hinder the work of law enforcement.”
A lawmaker who represents Crimea in Moscow, Mikhail Sheremet, told Russian state media that the Kremlin should order a missile strike on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s residence in Kyiv in retaliation for Wednesday’s alleged incident.
New Delhi: The US and its allies have severely eroded the global security architecture in a bid to maintain global dominance, Russian Defence Minister Gen Sergei Shoigu said on Friday amid Moscow’s increasingly frosty relations with Washington over the Ukraine conflict.
In his address at a conclave of defence ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Delhi, Shoigu also said that Western powers are actively opposing the formation of a multipolar world in the Asia-Pacific region.
“As has been noted, today’s meeting takes place against the background of a highly volatile international environment,” he said.
“Fundamental, dynamic, and irreversible changes are taking place as the new multipolar world takes shape. This is actively opposed by the collective West. In a bid to maintain global dominance, the US and its allies have severely eroded the global security architecture,” he alleged.
Russia and the US have been at loggerheads over the Ukraine conflict with both sides making allegations and counter-allegations against each other.
On the sidelines of the SCO defence ministers’ meeting, Shoigu also met his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu.
“We have always stressed the importance of building equal and indivisible security, of preserving the central role of the UN, of upholding its charter and its purposes and principles aimed at maintaining peace and stability,” the Russian defence minister said.
“We believe it is important to strengthen the role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as one of the pillars of the new multipolar international system, a model of inter-state relations based on equality and mutual respect,” he said.
“It is necessary to maintain close coordination within the SCO and to hold regular consultations on common security issues, both in multilateral and bilateral ways,” he added.
India hosted the meeting in its capacity as chair of the grouping.
The SCO is an influential economic and security bloc and has emerged as one of the largest transregional international organisations.
The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan became its permanent members in 2017.
Russian cruise missiles have killed at least 19 people in the central Ukrainian cities of Uman and Dnipro, days after Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, begged his allies for more air defence supplies.
The attacks were part of a wave of Russian missile and drone strikes in the early hours of Friday morning, the most intense aerial bombing of major Ukrainian cities in weeks.
In Uman, at least 17 people were killed including two children when a missile hit a high-rise building. The impact sheared off a column of apartments, reducing them to rubble at the base of the tower, and leaving nearby rooms on fire.
To the south, on the outskirts of the port city of Dnipro, a mother and her three-year-old daughter were killed in their home in a rural suburb.
Seven missiles targeted the city, Serhii Lysak, the head of the military administration for the Dnipro region told a news conference. Fragments of one of them, shot down by air defences, appeared to have fallen on the house, police told neighbours.
“It was loud enough to understand that someone was probably hurt,” said Oleksandr Kalinichenko, a neighbour who lives about 300 metres away.
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Most of Russia’s attacks were intercepted, with 21 out of 23 missiles shot down by the Ukrainian military. The missiles that got through were a grim reminder of why the country is so vulnerable when Moscow aims its weapons at civilian targets.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, tweeted: “Missile strikes killing innocent Ukrainians in their sleep, including a … child, is Russia’s response to all peace initiatives.”
Air raid alarms sounded across the country in the early hours of Friday, while explosions were heard in Kyiv, and southern Mykolaiv was targeted again.
Twenty-four hours earlier, another round of cruise missiles aimed at the port city had killed at least one person and ended nearly four months of relative calm there.
Ukraine strengthened air defences over the winter, with help from western allies, after a Russian bombing campaign against power stations and other civilian infrastructure tried to cut off heating and power to major cities.
However, leaked US military documents dated to February this year warned that by May the country risked running out of missiles and ammunition.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian officials pleaded with Nato allies for more supplies, the Financial Times reported, fearing large-scale Russian bombing campaigns could break through depleted systems.
The missiles launched on Friday were the first to target Kyiv in 50 days, although Iranian-made drones have tried to break the city’s air defences repeatedly in that time.
The wave of strikes comes as Moscow, and the world, wait for Kyiv to launch a spring counter-offensive against Russian forces.
The Ukrainian defence minister, Oleskii Reznikov, on Friday said it was close to beginning the assault. “As soon as there is God’s will, the weather and a decision by commanders, we will do it,” he told an online news briefing.
Ukraine was “to a high percentage ready”, he said, with new modern weapons to provide an “iron fist”.
On Thursday, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg,said almost all the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine by western allies had been delivered, putting Ukraine in a “strong position” to recover further ground.
Last year brought a string of humiliating military defeats for the invading army, but Russia still occupies nearly a fifth of Ukrainian territory, which Zelenskiy has vowed to retake.
Stoltenberg said the western allies had sent more than 1,550 armoured vehicles, 230 tanks and “vast amounts of ammunition” to Ukraine, Reuters reported. They have also trained and equipped about 30,000 troops, the equivalent of more than nine new brigades. “They will put Ukraine in a strong position to continue to retake occupied territory.” he said.
On Thursday, the Kremlin said it still needed to achieve the “aims” of its invasion, a day after China’s president, Xi Jinping, spoke to Zelenskiy over the phone for an hour.
Beijing, which has a close strategic partnership with Moscow, has drawn up a peace proposal for Ukraine, but there is no sign that either side is ready to stop fighting and come to the negotiating table.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The Ukrainian military shot down a hypersonic Russian missile over Kyiv using the newly acquired Patriot missile defense system, an air force commander confirmed on Saturday.
It’s the first time Ukraine has been known to intercept one of Moscow’s most sophisticated weapons, after receiving the long-sought, American-made defense batteries from the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands.
“Yes, we shot down the ‘unique’ Kinzhal,” Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram, referring to a Kh-47 missile, which flies at 10 times the speed of sound. “It happened during the night time attack on May 4 in the skies of the Kyiv region.”
Ukraine confirmed that two Patriot batteries were operational last month, following training on the system from the U.S. and Germany, according to the Kyiv Independent. The interception of the hypersonic missile also represents a major success for the Patriot technology, in use on the battlefield after 20 years of upgrades.
Kyiv had initially denied that it had shot down the Kinzhal missile.
Ukraine first asked Washington for Patriot systems in 2021, well before Russia’s current war of aggression began in February 2022. The U.S. and Germany have each sent at least one Patriot battery to Ukraine; and the Netherlands said it has provided two.
Separately, a well-known Russian nationalist writer was injured in a car bomb, reported TASS, Russia’s state-owned news service. Zakhar Prilepin was wounded in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, in a blast that killed one person, according to the report.
A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said the blast was the “direct responsibility of the U.S. and Britain,” without providing evidence, according to Reuters.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
