Russia Strikes Ukrainian President’s City As NATO Calls For Long-Range Missiles (Worthy News Focus)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent
KYIV/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Two days after a Russian missile strike killed four people and injured five in a hotel in Kryvyi Rih, the birthplace of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, another Russian attack hit Ukraine’s central city during official mourning.
At least nine civilians were injured, and some 230 cars were destroyed in the strike, said the Dnipropetrovsk oblast regional governor, Serhii Lysak. “When Kryvyi Rih is in mourning, the enemy attacks again,” Lysak said. “And once again, he aims at civilians.”
The attack came shortly after several NATO military alliance nations called for the lifting of restrictions on the use of weapons supplied by Western allies,
especially long-range missiles. In an official statement, NATO member states condemned this week’s “indiscriminate” heavy Russian strikes across Ukraine that left many without electricity.
The NATO chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said members reaffirmed their commitment to “stepping up their military aid to Ukraine … We must continue to provide Ukraine with the equipment and munitions it needs to defend itself against Russia’s invasion. This is vital for Ukraine’s ability to stay in the fight.”
Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, said that while Russia was using long-range weapons against Ukraine, allies should “let Ukraine fight with whatever it has, with whatever we have delivered them, and let’s deliver them more.”
Sikorski again proposed directly seizing Russia’s $320 billion assets in the West rather than just lending against the proceeds. “Let us confiscate the assets from the aggressor and give it to the victim of aggression.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said in a broadcast conversation with Sikorski that the biggest problem faced by Kyiv was its allies’ fear of escalation. “The war is always about a lot of hardware – money, weapons, resources – but the real problems are always here, in the heads … Most of our partners are afraid of discussing the future of Russia … This is something that is very upsetting because if we do not speak about the future of the source of threat, then we cannot build strategy,” he said.
EU APPEAL
In separate remarks on Thursday, he urged the European Union to expedite deliveries of promised air defense systems. “I conveyed a sense of urgency regarding the delivery of already pledged military aid, including air defense systems,” he said on social media platform X after he met with the EU foreign ministers in Brussels.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy echoed those sentiments earlier on Wednesday, saying: “We continue to insist that decisiveness now, removing restrictions on Ukraine for long-range strikes now, will help us end the war as quickly as possible in a just manner for Ukraine and the entire world.”
Ukraine’s president suggested that a lack of more air defense system enabled a Russian glide bomb strike on the eastern town of Kupyansk that resulted in deaths. “There was a strike – right in the city center; people were under the rubble. Unfortunately, there are fatalities.” The regional prosecutor’s office said the strike injured 14 people and damaged the city hall.
Yet on Thursday morning, Ukrainian air defense shot down more than 10 Russian drones during the third attack in four days on Kyiv, said Serhiy Popko, head of the Ukrainian capital’s military administration.
However, the Kyiv mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, said that this could not prevent an apartment and a children’s playground from being damaged.
Russian drone and missile launches against other parts of Ukraine, including Kharkiv, were reported, while Russian authorities in occupied Sevastopol reported an attack by Ukrainian drones.
Ukraine’s mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Monday’s attack by Russia on its energy infrastructure was intended to paralyze the operation of power facilities. “It is a deliberate decision by the Putin regime to threaten the world with nuclear catastrophe,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, added on the Telegram social media platform and messaging service.
RUSSIA SETBACKS
Yet Russia suffered setbacks, too, with Ukraine saying it captured some 100 settlements and took about 600 Russian soldiers in custody inside Russia.
Ukrainian military intelligence also claimed responsibility for an attack that left an oil depot burning in Russia’s Rostov region, saying the facility “is directly involved in the supply of the Russian occupation forces.”
In the first known Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Kirov region, three Ukrainian drones hit an oil depot, setting it on fire. The area is about 950 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of the Ukrainian border.
Ukraine said its anti-aircraft defenses destroyed a Russian Su-25 jet in the Donetsk region, where Russian bombardments reportedly killed six people on Wednesday.
While Russia claimed to have captured more settlements Thursday, Ukraine’s advance in the first such invasion since World War Two has frustrated Moscow.
Amid the military setbacks, Russia on Thursday arrested former deputy defense minister Pavel Popov on fraud charges, the latest arrest of high-ranking military officials.
Moscow has detained at least nine army officials in recent months amid its Ukraine offensive, in what some analysts have called “a purge of military figures seen as corrupt.”
COLOMBIANS HELD
Additionally, a Moscow court confirmed the detention of two Colombian citizens, named Alexander Ante and José Aron Medina Aranda, for allegedly fighting as “mercenaries” after they were apparently detained on their way back home to Venezuela, which has close ties with Russia.
Yet covering the armed conflict is getting more difficult for foreign media in Russia, with Moscow banning entry to Russia for 92 U.S. citizens, including journalists, lawyers, and the heads of what it called vital military-industrial firms over what it described as “Washington’s Russophobic stance.”
The Wall Street Journal newspaper, whose journalist Evan Gershkovich was freed this month in a prisoner exchange after 16 months in Russian detention, said the bans were “laughable” and part of attacks on the free press.
Yet, with youngsters now growing up in a wartorn nation, Ukraine’s first lady said her country’s children needed to be able to view themselves not as a generation of war victims but rather as “a generation of winners” as she visited a respite camp in the western city of Uzhhorod away from the frontlines.
Many of the children will return to frontline cities after spending a few weeks at the camp created by Voices of the Children charity as a break from the trauma they face over and over. “We need the war to end, infrastructure for education to be in place, and for parents to feel secure,” Olena Zelenska said.
“We would very much like these children to be able to physically go to school, see their teachers and peers, and interact together. But for now, it’s impossible.”
The area she visited is known for its extensive 150,000-strong ethnic Hungarian minority.
Neighboring Hungary has expressed concern that many have been called to serve in the army, with reports that several Hungarians have been killed and injured.