This week, fighting continued to rage along the front lines. Ukraine proceeded with its deep strike campaign against war-related targets inside Russia. Russia carried out aerial attacks against Ukraine that devastated civilian infrastructure and claimed dozens of lives.
Russian aerial attacks on the cities of Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and on Kharkiv region early in the week killed 10 people and injured dozens others. A major Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv overnight on Thursday killed at least 30 people and injured 99 others. As of Friday morning, eight people were missing. The search and rescue operation goes on. Kyiv is observing a day of mourning on Friday.
Ukraine continued to conduct strikes on military and oil facilities inside Russia throughout the week. It struck the Dubna satellite communications center in the Moscow region on Tuesday for the second time. The Ukrainian military struck the Ufa oil refinery and a missile component plant in the Penza region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said Wednesday.
Ukraine’s Security Service struck the hangars at the Saky airfield in Crimea, housing fighter jets, the agency said on Wednesday. Ukraine’s defense forces carried out a strike on the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez refinery in the city of Kstovo in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region overnight on Thursday. They also struck a drone storage site, railroad bridge and command-and-observation post in various parts of Russian-occupied territory inside Ukraine, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Thursday.
Ukraine’s Flamingo missiles now have almost half of Russia in reach, Bloomberg News said on Wednesday. Ukraine may have used a long-range ballistic missile in combat for first time, the news agency said Thursday.
Russia is burning, but don’t expect Putin to give up his military goals in Ukraine, CNN said on Monday. Despite the Western sanctions, Russia has expanded its shadow fleet of LNG (liquefied natural gas) vessels, Bloomberg News said Monday.
Zelenskyi urges U.S. to grant Ukraine license to produce Patriot missiles after Russia’s deadly attack.
In his nightly address on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said he hopes the United States will allow Ukraine to produce missiles for Patriot air defense systems under license. He spoke after a major Russian aerial attack on Kyiv that claimed at least 30 lives.
Zelenskyi said the issue of bolstering air defenses “should become one of the key outcomes” of next week’s NATO summit in Turkey.
“If, of course, NATO still means anything to the Allies. Europe must have its own sufficient capability to defend itself against all types of threats, including this one — Russian ballistic missiles,” he said.
The discussions with the U.S. administration over granting Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot missiles have been going on for a long time, he added.
