Chris Lange, FISM News
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Russia hit targets across Ukraine overnight in its second major salvo of aerial strikes in three days. Thirty-four civilians, including three children, were wounded in the attack that damaged dozens of apartment blocks, houses, schools, and shops, Reuters reported.
A railway hub was set ablaze in a missile strike on Pavlohrad in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, where widespread damage was reported. A Kremlin-appointed official in the region posted a video of the fire on social media and claimed that military targets were struck.
Eighteen cruise missiles were fired in total from Russia’s Murmansk oblast in the northwestern part of the country and the Caspian region in the south, 15 of which were intercepted, according to Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
“Around 2:30 am (1130 GMT), the Russian invaders attacked Ukraine from strategic aviation planes,” Zaluzhnyi said, according to the report.
The attacks followed Friday’s launch of more than 20 cruise missiles and unmanned aerial explosive drones at Ukraine which targeted the capital city of Kyiv for the first time in nearly two months. Twenty-three people in the nearby city of Uman were killed in that attack. Early reporting on the strikes indicated that three children were included among the dead; however, the number rose to six in subsequent reports.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared in a video message Saturday that “anyone” involved in the missile attacks, no matter how small their role, is an “accomplice [to] murder”
“Not just those who give orders, but all of them, they are all terrorists and murderers and they must all be punished. And definitely – those who committed the primordial crime, from which all others began – the crime of aggression,” he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian forces have made only incremental gains in the past five months that have seen the bloodiest ground combat since the February 2022 invasion. The Associated Press reports that more than 350,000 troops from both sides have been killed in the fighting to date.
The recent resumption of Russia’s wintertime strategy involving aerial attacks targeting Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian areas comes at a time when Ukraine has been bolstering its forces with Western-supplied armor in preparation for the spring counteroffensive. Meanwhile, allied countries continue to send in ammunition and train Ukrainian troops on new equipment overseas.
MASSIVE DEFENSIVE WORKS IN PREP FOR RUSSIAN COUNTEROFFENSIVE
Russia has created “some of the most extensive systems of military defensive works seen anywhere in the world for many decades” since the summer of 2022, according to the U.K.’s Defense Ministry.
“These defenses are not just near the current front lines but have also been dug deep inside areas Russia currently controls,” the Ministry said in its latest assessment of the conflict in Ukraine.
The report noted that Russia has particularly endeavored to “fortify the northern border of occupied Crimea, including with a multi-layered defensive zone near the village of Medvedevka.”
The Kremlin has blamed a Ukrainian drone attack on a fire that broke out at an oil depot in the peninsula’s port city of Sevastopol Friday. Russian officials said on the following day that the blaze had been contained.
The report also pointed to satellite imagery showing that “hundreds of miles of trenches” have been dug within Russia’s borders, reflecting Moscow’s “deep concern that Ukraine could achieve a major breakthrough” in the conflict.