The frontline Ukrainian city of Kherson is without power again after deadly Russian shelling this week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that town had been attacked 16 times in 24 hours. Zelensky said a minimum of one missile hit a Red Cross aid point, killing a paramedic.
In line with Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Zelensky’s office, the barrage got here after two Ukrainians were killed in town center on Wednesday when a nearby government constructing was targeted.
In line with the voivode Jarosław Januszewicz, the constant volleys again left town without electricity.
The attacks on Kherson – a city the Russians surrendered early last month as they tried to retreat through the natural fortifications of the nearby Dnieper River – mimic Russian strategy across Ukraine.
Seemingly unable to reclaim the territory Kyiv recaptured in a series of autumn counter-offensives, the Kremlin still relies on a tactic that has been its backbone because the start of the war: bombing cities from afar.
Ukrainian officials accuse Russian forces of deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure so as to break Kiev’s will to fight, as did Russian MP Andrei Gurulev, who in October stated on state television that he wanted Kyiv to “swim in shit.” “
Gurulev called on Moscow to attack Ukrainian infrastructure “so as to collapse the country.”
While Russian efforts to seize Russian-controlled territory have stalled in a bitter, bloody stalemate outside the eastern city of Bakhmut, the Ukrainian military said it believed the Kremlin was preparing for a long war of attrition.
“The Kremlin… seeks to show the conflict into a protracted armed confrontation,” Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov told reporters.
Gromov cited reports that Russia was training and equipping troops in Belarus – the Kremlin’s ally on Ukraine’s northern border – as well as transferring Russian warplanes to Belarusian airfields.
“[This] indicates that the enemy is constructing capabilities to perform airstrikes on Ukrainian territory,” he said.
Russian ground forces also tried to seize Ukrainian territory in Zaporizhia province, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and considered one of five Ukrainian provinces the Kremlin claimed it could annex.
“They understand that in the event that they don’t pull the front now, this winter will likely be a disaster for them,” said Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office.
Meanwhile, tens of millions of Ukrainians are left without heat and electricity as Russia’s bombing campaign continues.
Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned on Thursday that the situation in Ukraine was rapidly becoming “extremely difficult”.
“Additional attacks could lead on to a further serious deterioration of the humanitarian situation and cause more displacement,” Turk said after visiting the war-torn country last week.
The international organization estimates that around 18 million Ukrainians are currently depending on humanitarian aid as winter temperatures deepen.
With wires