It is “one of the greatest aerial attacks” of the conflict that Russia launched on Ukraine on Sunday November 17, “targeting the energy network”, reports The Kyiv Independent.
The capital kyiv notably suffered its first massive missile attack in more than two months, according to the English-speaking Ukrainian site. Explosions were heard in many cities across the country and as far away as the Khmelnytskyi and Volhynia oblasts in western Ukraine. Poland has deployed combat aircraft to preserve its airspace. The human toll of the attack reached at least seven dead and 19 injured, according to The Kyiv Independent.
At the edge of winter, Moscow mainly aimed “electricity production and transmission infrastructure across the country”, says Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko. “Ukraine has long expected another attempt to bring down its energy network,” underlines The New York Times, remembering that “years of relentless attacks have destroyed some 65% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.”
“Putin’s response”
“This is war criminal Putin’s real response to everyone who called and visited him recently. We must obtain peace by force and not by playing appeasement,” reacted Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha, quoted by The Kyiv Independent. A possible reference to the telephone call between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Russian President Vladimir Putin on November 15, the first since December 2022.
By launching more than 200 drones and missiles, its largest salvo since last August and the first large-scale since the presidential election in the United States, the Kremlin also shows that it is “in no mood to compromise after Donald Trump’s victory”, comments the British daily The Guardian.
And this while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready, in an interview broadcast on Saturday, to “do everything so that the war ends next year by diplomatic means”.
Swiss
