According to Ukrainian sources, the Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s infrastructure on Tuesday was the most massive since the beginning of the war. According to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, around ten million people were temporarily without electricity after the heavy rocket hits and the attack on Ukraine’s energy system. This primarily affects the regions of Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Kyiv and Lviv, said Zelenskyj in his evening video speech on Tuesday. District heating has been switched off in Lviv and other cities. “There are problems with communication and the Internet throughout the country.” The President later added that around eight million people have now been supplied with electricity again.
The Ukrainian President’s Office in Kyiv said it was possible to shoot down around 70 of the incoming missiles. However, 15 energy supply objects in different parts of the country were hit, said Deputy Chief Kyrylo Tymoshenko in the Telegram news service. The capital Kyiv was also hit, with a woman being killed, according to authorities.
In Kyiv, according to the authorities, about half of the city was without electricity. At times, the subway didn’t run, but cars were jammed on the streets for hours. According to the regional authorities, 90 percent of consumers in western Ukraine’s Ternopil region were without electricity. In the city of Lviv it was 80 percent. That’s why the heating and the supply of warm water failed, said Mayor Andriy Sadowyj. Kharkiv in the east was also badly hit. In the night of Wednesday, an air alert was triggered again over Kyiv for 45 minutes.
Even if the attacks on the Ukrainian energy supply caused significant damage, many of the dozens of rockets apparently did not hit the actual target, according to Ukrainian sources. Russia is said to have hit only ten targets in its latest attack. However, significantly more projectiles were fired. “The current situation is that more than 70 missiles and 10 attack drones have been shot down,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. Zelenskyj thanked “all our partners who help us to defend our skies”. He especially praised the NASAMS defense system, it had done a good job.
The Russian military appears to have used much of its remaining precision weapons systems in the November 15 coordinated missile strikes. This is reported by the “Institute for the study of war”. The ISW also believes that the Russian armed forces have severely depleted their inventory of high-precision weapons systems and will likely need to slow down their campaign against critical Ukrainian infrastructure, experts say.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has called for a tough and “principled” response to the missile strike in Poland that killed two. He made that clear during a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Kuleba said on Twitter on Wednesday. Accordingly, he condemned the “Russian rocket terror”.
Russia fires rockets at Ukraine every day. Like US President Joe Biden, Blinken is taking part in the G20 summit of the major industrialized and emerging countries in Bali. After a morning crisis meeting on the Indonesian island, Biden said the missile was unlikely to have been fired from Russia.
Ukraine is urging the establishment of a no-fly zone in the west after a missile hit Polish territory, killing two. “We ask that the sky be closed because the sky has no borders,” Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. This was necessary to shoot down uncontrolled missiles and also to protect the EU and NATO countries is the reality we warned about,” Reznikov added.
Ukraine has repeatedly requested such a no-fly zone from the West because of Russian airstrikes. Russia has been firing rockets at the neighboring country every day during the war that has lasted more than eight months. The federal government, for example, rejects decisions that could lead to a direct conflict between NATO and Russia. A no-fly zone would have to be enforced with fighter jets. That would mean NATO entering the war, Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned in the spring.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned of an escalation after a rocket hit Polish territory with two fatalities. The Portuguese politician expressed great concern at the G20 summit of the major industrialized and emerging countries in Bali on Wednesday. “It is absolutely essential to prevent the war in Ukraine from escalating.” Guterres sent his condolences to the families of the two victims. The incident must be thoroughly investigated.
According to an evaluation, more donations have flowed from Germany than ever before for emergency aid for the people in Ukraine affected by the Russian war of aggression. According to surveys by the German Central Institute for Social Issues (DZI), 862 million euros were donated to those affected by mid-October, according to a new publication by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin). If inflation is included, the total is somewhat exceeded by the donations made after the tsunami in Southeast Asia in December 2004 (EUR 670 million).
As early as March, i.e. shortly after the start of the war, the DZI had expected that the help for the victims of the Ukraine war would become the largest fundraiser in the history of the Federal Republic. In third place in the new evaluation are the disaster donations after the flood in the Ahr Valley in summer 2021 – the donation volume is given as 655 million euros.
Also Read: The Ukraine Update on November 15th
