As Ukraine’s counter offensive presses on, there are concerns the war may be entering a more dangerous phase as Vladimir Putin becomes more desperate to win.
Alla Pugacheva, one of Russia’s most recognizable pop stars, slams Moscow’s ‘illusory aims’ in the conflict.
Russia has widened its strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in the past week following setbacks on the battlefield and is likely to expand its target range further, Britain said on Sunday, as a Russian music icon launched a fresh critique of the war.
Ukrainians who returned to the northeastern area retaken in Kyiv’s lightning advance earlier this month were searching for their dead while Russian artillery and air strikes kept pounding targets across Ukraine’s east.
Five civilians were killed in Russian attacks in the eastern Donetsk region over the past day and in Nikopol, further west, several dozen residential buildings, gas pipelines and power lines were hit, regional governors said on Sunday.
Britain’s defence ministry said Russian strikes at civilian infrastructure, including a power grid and a dam, have intensified over the past seven days.
“As it faces setbacks on the front lines, Russia has likely extended the locations it is prepared to strike in an attempt to directly undermine the morale of the Ukrainian people and government,” it said in a intelligence update.\
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 18 September 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/NZPAVSgfAN
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/j7bINlhTKp
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) September 18, 2022
U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed the U.K.’s statement about Russian setbacks.
“The war is not going too well for Russia right now. So it’s incumbent upon all of us to maintain high states of readiness, alert,” he said on Sunday.
In the village of Kozacha Lopan, some 45 km north of Kharkiv and just five kilometres from the Russian border, a Reuters reporter was taken to a squalid cellar with rooms fitted with iron bars, which local officials said had served as a makeshift prison during the occupation. Local district mayor Vyacheslav Zadorenko said the rooms had been used as a “torture cellar” to detain civilians. Reuters was unable to verify those accounts.
Elsewhere in the region, residents of towns recaptured after six months of Russian occupation, were returning with a mixture of joy and trepidation.
“I’ve still kept this feeling, that any moment a shell could explode or an airplane could fly over,” said Nataliia Yelistratova, who traveled with her husband and daughter 80 km on a train from Kharkiv to her hometown of Balakliia to find her apartment block intact, but scarred by shelling.
“I’m still scared to be here,” she said after discovering a piece of shrapnel in a wall.
Putin has not responded to the accusations, but on Friday, he brushed off Ukraine’s swift counteroffensive and that Moscow would respond more forcefully if its troops were put under further pressure.
Such repeated threats have raised concerns he could at some point turn to small nuclear weapons or chemical warfare.
U.S. President Joe Biden, asked what he would say to Putin if he was considering using such weapons, replied: “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. It would change the face of war unlike anything since World War Two.” A clip of comment in an interview with CBS program 60 Minutes was released by CBS on Saturday.
Some military analysts have said Russian might also stage a nuclear incident at Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant held by Russia but run by Ukrainian staff.
Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other for shelling around the plant that has damaged buildings and disrupted power lines needed to keep it cooled and safe. The plant was reconnected with the Ukrainian electricity grid after one of its power lines has been repaired, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Saturday. It warned, however, the situation at the plant “remains precarious.”