President Vladimir Putin warned of further missile assaults on Ukraine after Russia launched the most intensive barrage of strikes against Kyiv and other cities since the beginning of its invasion, signaling a hazardous new escalation in the war.
The bombing on Monday occurred a day after Putin accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out an explosion that destroyed a flagship road and rail bridge connecting Crimea to Russia. Ukraine has not yet claimed responsibility for the explosion. “If terrorist attacks on our soil persist, Russia’s responses will be harsh, and their magnitude will match the level of threat to Russia,” Putin warned in televised remarks to his Security Council on Monday. “There should be no doubt.”
Eleven people were murdered and 64 were injured in the attacks, according to Ukraine’s emergency service on Telegram. Russia conducted 84 missile strikes against Ukraine and 24 drone assaults, including one with an Iranian-made Shahed-136, and air defenses shot down around half of them, according to Ukraine’s General Staff.
At least ten explosions were recorded in Kyiv while Russian forces resumed their missile attack on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, following strikes that killed at least 14 people the day before, according to local officials. Explosions also occurred in Odesa, Dnipro, and Lviv in western Ukraine, far from the front lines.
Because of the damage caused by the assaults, Ukraine’s power grid operator, Ukrenergo, declared rolling blackouts in Kyiv and three other areas on Monday evening, and asked inhabitants to decrease energy consumption in a Facebook message. State emergency service spokesperson Oleksandr Khorunzhyi stated on television that infrastructure facilities had been impacted in eight locations.
The multibillion-dollar Crimea Bridge was Putin’s hallmark project, designed to represent Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Black Sea peninsula. The president compared Ukraine’s administration to “an international terrorist group,” accusing Kyiv of plotting assaults on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and gas pipelines.
Russian officials have confirmed that rail services on the bridge have resumed following the explosion on Saturday, a day after Putin celebrated his 70th birthday. The 19-kilometer (12-mile) Kerch Strait connection is a crucial conduit for the Kremlin to resupply its soldiers in Crimea and Ukraine’s southern Kherson area, where Russian troops are confronting a Ukrainian military counteroffensive.
Following a series of recent military setbacks, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced the appointment of a new leader of its invading troops in Ukraine, Air Force General Sergei Surovikin. He previously led Russian forces in Syria, when Kremlin troops bombarded Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city, destroying most of it.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country and Russia agreed to deploy a regional grouping of armed forces, indicating that the almost eight-month-old conflict is spreading. The Russian military has utilised Belarus as a staging area for its assault, but the Belarusian military has remained neutral thus far.
The strikes on Kyiv and other population centres indicate that Russia’s conflict has “entered a stage of escalation,” according to Alexei Chesnakov, a former top Kremlin official and Ukraine policy adviser.
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