Monthly Archives: September 2023

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Russia unleashed a missile attack on cities across Ukraine before dawn on Thursday, killing two people and wounding at least 20 others, Ukrainian authorities said.

The country’s air force said it shot down 36 of the 43 Russian cruise missiles that were fired “in waves” from 10 strategic aircraft at 3.46am local time.

Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s electricity grid operator, said the Russian bombardment marked the first major “enemy attack in six months” on power infrastructure and caused “partial blackouts in Rivne, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions”.

The attack came hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York and urged countries to strip Russia of its UN veto and back his peace plan to end the Kremlin’s “genocidal” war.

Sirens wailed across Kyiv in the early hours of Thursday, and alerts sent to residents’ phones urged them to seek shelter before explosions from Ukrainian air defence units intercepting Russian missiles rocked the capital.

Debris falling across three districts in Kyiv injured seven people, including a nine-year-old girl, according to the city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko. He said a two-storey building, two vehicles and a gas pipeline had been damaged, and power had been temporarily knocked out in one area.

“Kyiv survived another night attack by Russian barbarians,” said Klitschko. 

An attack on a residential building in the southern city of Kherson killed two civilians and wounded at least five, said regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin.

Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said a missile strike in central Cherkasy damaged a hotel and engulfed it in flames, wounding seven people. Rescuers pulled one person from the rubble and were working to find others, he added.

Three Russian missiles destroyed an industrial facility and a two-storey warehouse in the western Lviv region, while six strikes in Kharkiv damaged civilian infrastructure, local authorities said.

Hours earlier, Zelenskyy denounced Russia’s “criminal and unprovoked aggression” against Ukraine and scolded the UN Security Council for its inaction, calling for Moscow to be stripped of its veto powers in the body. Russia, China, France, the UK and the US are permanent members with veto power.

“The veto should not be used as a weapon by those obsessed with hatred and war,” he said in a speech on Wednesday to the UN Security Council.

Zelenskyy said the UN was in “a deadlock” over Russia’s war against his country, which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions more and badly damaged Ukraine’s economy.

“Humankind no longer pins its hopes on the UN,” said Zelenskyy. “Ukrainian soldiers now are doing at the expense of their blood what the UN Security Council should do with its votes — they’re stopping Russia and upholding the principles of the UN.”

Zelenskyy on Thursday is set to visit President Joe Biden at the White House and meet military leaders at the Pentagon and members of Congress. He is expected to thank them for the $75bn of financial, humanitarian and military assistance given to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, while pushing for more help, including an additional $24bn currently being considered by Congress.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive launched in May has dragged on longer than Kyiv and some of its western backers have hoped.

Ukrainian forces trained and armed by Nato countries have struggled to make a decisive breakthrough against heavily fortified Russian defensive lines across the roughly 1,000km front line.

Ukraine’s limited progress in recapturing occupied territory in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and eastern Donetsk region have come at a high loss of soldiers’ lives and military equipment.

Meanwhile, Kyiv has stepped up attacks on Russian military targets inside Russia and Ukrainian territory under Moscow’s control using domestically produced unmanned aerial and aquatic drones to degrade its enemy’s ability to wage war.

Ukraine claimed its forces had conducted a successful air strike early on Thursday on an airbase in the occupied Crimean Peninsula that Russia has used to support its full-scale invasion.

A Ukrainian intelligence source speaking to the Financial Times said: “Strikes by the Security Service and the Naval Forces hit the target and caused serious damage to the occupiers’ equipment.”

Additional reporting by Roman Olearchyk in Kyiv

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Poland will no longer send weapons to Ukraine, Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said, in an escalation of tensions between Warsaw and Kyiv that threatens the west’s unity in supporting the country as it battles Russia’s invasion.

The threat is the latest salvo in a trade dispute that revolves around Poland’s refusal to accept imports of Ukrainian grain, in contravention of EU rules, as Morawiecki’s ruling party steps up nationalist rhetoric ahead of next month’s elections.

Last weekend Poland, alongside Hungary and Slovakia, unilaterally extended an import ban on Ukrainian grain, even after Kyiv promised to ensure its exports would not harm EU farmers. That provoked a backlash from Ukrainian officials, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Asked whether Warsaw would still support Ukraine militarily, Morawiecki replied on Wednesday evening on the Polsat television channel: “We are no longer transferring any weapons, because we will now arm ourselves with the most modern weapons.”

Morawiecki’s comments signal a remarkable U-turn from a government that had previously been a linchpin of the EU and Nato’s united front in support of Ukraine, as one of Europe’s closest allies of both Washington and Kyiv.

But on Thursday some senior government officials in Warsaw immediately sought to play down the consequences of the prime minister’s comments, insisting Poland remained committed to helping Ukraine win the war and that no decision had been made about long-term deliveries of weapons.

“At the moment it is as the prime minister said, in the future we will see,” deputy prime minister Jacek Sasin told Polish Radio Plus.

Warsaw has consistently urged the west to provide more weapons and financial support to Ukraine and to increase sanctions and political pressure on Russia.

The threat to block future arms shipments could also derail efforts by the EU to agree a €20bn Ukraine weapons fund for the next four years, which requires unanimity among the bloc’s 27 members and is already being opposed by Hungary.

Western officials sought to play down the remarks as an emotional response to the tensions over the grain dispute and the domestic Polish political context, and would not herald the end of Warsaw’s support for Kyiv’s war effort.

“I just don’t see any evidence of that throughout the bureaucracy in Poland. There is a firm commitment to stay the course,” said a senior US official in response to Morawiecki’s remarks. “I don’t think we will see a dramatic shift in alliance unity.”

One EU official said: “It changes nothing at this stage . . . as always with Poland there is usually a huge gap between their public statements and real actions. The real problem might come if they decide to block the [EU weapons fund] which they haven’t so far and I doubt they would.”

Poland is preparing for a fiercely contested October 15 election, in which Morawiecki’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party needs the backing of its rural electorate to win a third term in office.

Another participant in the grain blockade, Slovakia, is holding an election on September 30 whose frontrunner, Robert Fico, wants to stop aid to Ukraine.