▲ Rescuers remove an injured person from the Sports Palace in Kharkiv after being hit by a Russian missile.Afp Photo
Juan Pablo Duch
Correspondent
The newspaper La Jornada
Monday, September 2, 2024, p. 29
Moscow. Ukraine attacked Moscow and 15 regions of Russia with 159 drones in the early hours of yesterday morning, and Russia responded by launching ballistic missiles throughout the day. Iskander-M and guided bombs FAB-500 against the city of Kharkiv and unmanned aerial vehicles against five Ukrainian regions.
At the same time, the fighting in Donetsk and Kursk did not cease, and the danger remained for both of them: for the Ukrainians, the Russians are still approaching the city of Pokrovsk, and for the Russians, the Ukrainians are not giving up on the idea of encircling the enemy troops in the part of Russian territory, a strip of about 1,300 square kilometers, which they still control.
The Ministry of Defense, in its daily war report, reported that all Ukrainian drones had been shot down, without specifying – as is usual for its press service – whether any of them hit a potential target or whether fragments fell on civilian buildings or military facilities and energy infrastructure.
It is only known that yesterday videos and images of explosions and fires in refineries and fuel depots in different areas of Russia circulated on social media; among other disasters, one corresponded to the main refinery in Moscow and one of the largest in the country, in the Kopotniya district, after a drone or fragments of it fell on one of its facilities.
According to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, air defences managed to repel nine attacks on the Russian capital overnight, shooting down or diverting seven in the outskirts and two that did enter its airspace, being shot down near the Kopotniya refinery. Firefighters managed to extinguish the fire at around 11 a.m.
Two large hydroelectric power plants, one in Kashira in the Moscow region and another in Konakovo in the Tver region, were also among the targets of the Ukrainian attack, causing fires that authorities said were put out and did not affect the electricity supply or heating system.
According to a statement by the Russian military, the largest number of unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down in the border regions with Ukraine: 46 in Kursk, 34 in Bryansk, 28 in Voronezh and 14 in Belgorod.
Eight drones were intercepted in Ryazan, five in Kaluga, four in Lipetsk, three in Tula, two in Smolensk, two in Tambov, one in Ivanovo, one in Oryol and one in Tver. Four of these regions were attacked by drones for the first time since hostilities began in February 2022.
Although the military department did not include the Yarsolavl region, which has a major refinery, in its statement, its governor, Mikhail Yevrayev, reported that the anti-aircraft defense of the town of the same name shot down a drone.
Until yesterday, Ukraine had dealt its biggest blow against Russia with unmanned aerial vehicles in the early hours of August 14, when the Russian military claimed to have shot down more than 100 drones in eight regions of the country.
The Ukrainian Air Force, for its part, claimed that it shot down eight of the 11 drones that Russia launched during the early morning against Ukrainian grain and agricultural logistics in Odessa, Mikolaiv, Kherson, Kirovograd and Dnipropetrovsk. a ballistic missile Iskander-M damaged several trucks used to transport grain, he added.
Hours later, Russia bombed Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, the head of the region’s military administration, Oleh Syniehubov, reported, adding that fighter-bombers Su-34from the Russian region of Belgorod, 25 kilometers from the border, launched guided aerial bombs FAB-500 and missiles in five areas of three districts of that city, leaving six dead and 97 wounded.
Ukrainian authorities – including President Volodymyr Zelensky – do not hide anything and often even upload videos on the Internet detailing the casualties among the population and the devastation caused by Russian attacks, in contrast to the secrecy that prevails in official reports by the Russian military on civilian casualties caused by the Ukrainian army.
Ukraine yesterday released images of burning apartment buildings and of what was left, reduced to ruins, of the Sports Palace, the largest in Kharkiv and which was also used as a conference venue, as well as a post office, a supermarket and several shops.
According to experts, kyiv’s information strategy has a dual purpose: to give the impression that these were direct Russian hits against civilian facilities and, in the process, to send a message to the United States and its allies that they need more anti-aircraft defense systems.
The rulers of the Russian regions suffering from Ukrainian attacks, without deviating from the Kremlin’s line of keeping quiet about the losses, are responsible for publicizing what public television commentators then call for several days. abominable crimes of the Ukrainian Nazisto give a recent example, the case of a pregnant woman who died when an artillery shell or a drone fragment hit the car she was travelling in with her husband.
Two hours after the shelling of Kharkiv yesterday, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov posted a photo on social media of a residential building attacked in the city of the same name. The official said that there were 11 injured, including two minorsmost of whom received medical assistance for penetrating shrapnel wounds.