On Sunday, Vladimir Putin targeted a Ukrainian facility near the Polish border, blowing up foreign fighters and arms shipments, and has threatened to carry out more strikes as a direct warning to the West.
The base at Yavoriv, which is 12 miles from NATO territory, was hit by ‘long-range, high-precision weapons because it was hosting ‘foreign mercenaries and a large shipment of foreign weapons,’ according to Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia’s ministry of defence.
He added: ‘The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.’
According to Konashenkov, up to 180 people were killed in the hit, whereas Ukraine claims 35 perished and another 134 were injured. Witnesses said that many of the foreign recruits were sleeping when the bombs were dropped on the base early Sunday morning. Foreigners are thought to be among those who have been killed.
Several massive bombs destroyed one structure, injured another, and spewed shell fragments into the air, according to British military veterans who survived the attack. Russian cruise missiles, not fighter jets, are understood to have hit the site.
It comes just a day after Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, warned that international aid supplies to Ukraine are valid targets. The strike on a site so close to Poland was ‘deliberate and designed to illustrate a willingness to escalate should the West not cease its supplies,’ according to British intelligence.
The US national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, warned Moscow that any strike on a NATO country, even if unintentional, would cause the alliance to respond with ‘full force,’ implying a direct clash between American and Russian forces, potentially triggering World War Three.
‘I just lied there and thought: I’m going to die,’ James, a former British artillery soldier named only by his first name, told Buzzfeed of hearing the sound of incoming missiles while in bed.
‘A couple of buildings got hit… One they decimated and there was one that was on fire. And then there was just frag[mentation] everywhere. And a crater… in the middle of the camp.’
At the time, a Ukrainian officer estimated that roughly 1,000 foreigners were present at the camp, which was formally named as the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security. Regular military personnel from the United Kingdom and the United States had previously been stationed there to train Ukrainian soldiers, but they were not believed to be present yesterday.
The invasion of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, which was supposed to be a quick and bloody ‘military operation’ to decapitate the leadership and impose regime change, is already in its 19th day, with both sides suffering heavy losses.
In the early hours of the morning, Russian warplanes blasted Kyiv, setting fire to an apartment tower in the Obolon suburb, killing at least two people.
A new round of negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials raised hopes for progress in evacuating citizens from besieged Ukrainian cities and delivering emergency supplies to locations where food, water, and medication are in short supply.
As the battle raged on the outskirts of Kyiv, which Vladimir Putin soldiers are attempting to seize – with limited success – air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west.
Vladimir Putin forces struck an aviation plant in Kyiv, causing a major fire, according to Ukrainian police. Two persons were killed and seven were injured. The Antonov factory is Ukraine’s largest aircraft production facility, producing many of the world’s largest freight planes.
Authorities claimed Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in the city’s northern area, killing two additional people. Firefighters worked to save lives, gently bringing an injured woman away from the blackened and still smouldering structure on a stretcher.
Officials stated a town councillor from Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in the battle. According to regional administration chief Oleksiy Kuleba, shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha, and Hostomel, which have witnessed some of the hardest fightings in Russia’s delayed attempt to take the city.
Despite earlier talks of setting up assistance or evacuation convoys, the encircled southern city of Mariupol, which has seen some of the worst human sufferings as a result of the war, remains blocked off.
According to the Associated Press, a pregnant woman who became a symbol of Ukraine’s misery after being pictured being taken out of a damaged maternity facility in Mariupol has perished along with her baby.
The image of the woman being carried to an ambulance on a stretcher has gone viral, encapsulating the anguish of an attack on humanity’s most helpless.
On Monday, Ukraine announced preparations for fresh humanitarian supplies and evacuation corridors, despite the failure of similar attempts in the previous week due to continuous shelling.
According to Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, the fourth round of high-level talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials is scheduled for Monday, the first in a week. The meetings were to be held by video conference. In Belarus, the previous rounds were held face to face.
Monday’s gathering will be a ‘hard discussion,’ Podolyak wrote on Twitter. ‘Although Russia realizes the nonsense of its aggressive actions, it still has a delusion that 19 days of violence against (Ukrainian) peaceful cities is the right strategy.’
Airstrikes hit residential structures near the key southern city of Mykolaiv, as well as in the eastern city of Kharkiv, and took down a television tower in the Rivne area in the northwest, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office. Overnight, explosions broke out in the Russian-controlled Black Sea port of Kherson.
Three airstrikes targeted Chernihiv in the north overnight, knocking off power to the majority of the city. Several communities have been without power for days. Utility employees are attempting to restore power, but they are regularly shelled.
Despite the fact that Russia’s military is larger and better equipped than Ukraine’s, Russian troops have encountered stiffer resistance than expected, aided by Western arms backing, which has irritated Vladimir Putin.
They have pummelled many cities with persistent bombardment, hitting two dozen medical facilities and causing a series of humanitarian problems, as their march has paused in several locations.
Moscow’s soldiers, according to Ukraine, have failed to make significant progress in the last 24 hours. The Russian Defense Ministry, on the other hand, said that its soldiers had pushed 11 kilometres (7 miles) north of Mariupol and had reached five towns.
President Joe Biden is sent his national security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official amid concerns that Beijing is magnifying Russian disinformation and may be assisting Moscow in evading Western economic sanctions.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the United Nations has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths, though it believes the true toll is significantly higher. According to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office, the death toll includes at least 85 minors. Millions more have abandoned their homes, with over 2.7 million attempting to enter Poland and other neighbouring countries.
Moscow has mounted a multi-pronged onslaught and ringed many cities since beginning its invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The battle for Mariupol in the south is significant because its control might aid Russia in establishing a land corridor to Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The International Committee of the Red Cross described the suffering in Mariupol, where missiles hit a maternity hospital on Wednesday, as “simply immense,” with hundreds of thousands of people facing severe food, water, and medical shortages.
‘Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell,’ the Red Cross said in a statement. ‘Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated.’
On Sunday, Vladimir Putin intensified its offensive in western Ukraine, striking the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security near Yavoriv, a military complex that has long been used to train Ukrainian forces, frequently with instructors from the US and other NATO countries. The location was targeted by more than 30 Russian cruise missiles. According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, the strike resulted in the deaths of 35 individuals and the injuries of 134 others.
The facility is fewer than 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the Polish border and has hosted NATO training manoeuvres, making it a poignant reminder of Russia’s long-held fears that NATO’s expansion to encompass former Soviet states could jeopardise its security – a claim NATO denies.
NATO claimed on Sunday that no forces are currently stationed in Ukraine, despite the fact that the US has boosted the number of troops stationed in NATO member Poland. The West would retaliate, according to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, if Russia’s strikes spread outside Ukraine and damage any NATO countries, even if it happens by accident.
Ina Padi, a 40-year-old Ukrainian who crossed the border with her family, was sleeping in a fire station in Wielkie Oczy, Poland, when she was startled by blasts from across the border that rattled her windows early Sunday morning.
‘I understood in that moment, even if we are free of it, (the war) is still coming after us,’ she said.
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