Kiev [Ukraine], January 12: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of targeted terror against the people of his country following heavy airstrikes during the past week.
Zelensky posted on social media on Sunday that within the past week the Russian military had used against Ukraine around 1,100 drones, 890 guided bombs and 50 rockets and cruise missiles, including the medium-range ballistic missile Oreshnik.
The weapons were fired "at targets that have no military significance: energy facilities and residential buildings," Zelensky said.
Moscow had deliberately waited for the frosty weather to make life as hard as possible for ordinary Ukrainians, Zelensky argued. "This is deliberate, cynical Russian terror against the people," he wrote. He illustrated his words with video clips of drone damage to civilian objects in Kiev and the surrounding area, as well as in the regions of Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Odessa, Zaporizhzhya and Chernihiv. Images from the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where the Oreshnik missile struck, were not shown.
The Kremlin portrays the ongoing bombardment of Ukraine as strikes against exclusively military targets, even though the destruction of power plants affects the civilian population.
Moscow has recently raised its own accusations of terror against Kiev, claiming that Ukraine allegedly launched a drone attack on one of the residences of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Zelensky vehemently denied this and the US foreign intelligence service, the CIA, concluded that Ukraine did not target Putin or one of his residences, according to US media reports.
Putin ordered the war against Ukraine nearly four years ago.
The Ukrainian military has carried out attacks in the Caspian Sea damaging three Russian oil platforms, the General Staff in Kiev reported on Telegram on Sunday.
The platforms, belonging to Russian oil giant Lukoil, are used to supply Russia's forces in Ukraine, the General Staff said.
Kiev gave no details of the type of attack, but claimed "direct hits," which makes the use of long-range drones plausible. The military's information could not be independently verified.
The Russian military generally does not provide information on damage from Ukrainian attacks.
Ukraine has repeatedly targeted oil and gas industry facilities in Russia to complicate supplies for occupying troops.
The complete power outage in the south-eastern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhya that was caused by heavy Russian drone attacks overnight has been largely resolved, the local energy supplier said on Sunday morning.
"As of 7 am (0500 GMT), the power supply in the Zaporizhzhya region - affecting 382,500 families and businesses - has been fully restored," Andriy Stasevskyi, director of Zaporizhzhiaoblenergo, said in a Telegram post by the company. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia launched 154 combat drones during the night.
Source: Qatar Tribune
