With increasingly precise and frequent counter-attacks following the arrival of Western weapons, Ukraine hopes to defend its positions in the east and recover territories in the south while waiting for more help, while Russia threatened this Sunday with the arrival of the “final judgment” if kyiv agrees to attack Crimea.
“Ukraine has resisted Russia’s brutal attacks. We have already managed to liberate part of the occupied territory after February 24. Little by little we will liberate other areas of our country that are currently under occupation,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech. .
This weekend, Ukrainian military sources revealed that they expect to soon receive two batteries of NASAMS anti-aircraft defense systems, for the handling of which the Ukrainian military is already being trained.
NASAMS are Norwegian-made anti-aircraft systems capable of hitting targets within a 25-kilometre radius.
Ukraine also receives US HIMARS and British M270 systems from its Western partners. Precisely the HIMARS, according to Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, have made it possible to change the course of the fighting in favor of kyiv.
In addition, by the end of 2022 kyiv expects the arrival of modern German IRIS-T anti-aircraft systems.
But none of this equipment can be used against Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, Russia warns.
“The consequences (of the eventual attack on the peninsula) are obvious. If something similar happens, the day of reckoning will soon come for all of them. It will be very fast and very hard,” former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, current vice president of the Council, said today. Security of the country.
In a speech, reported by the RIA Nóvosti agency, Medvedev assured that the objectives of the Russian military campaign, which began last February, “will be met.”
“You can be sure that the objectives of this operation will be fulfilled. They are related to the elimination … of the existing threats to our country,” he said.
Russian senator Andrei Klishas previously called for the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of all of Ukraine over threats by the Ukrainian authorities to attack Crimea.
“Threats (…) to attack Crimea or the port of Crimea prove that the whole of Ukraine must be denazified and demilitarized, because otherwise there will always be a threat to our territory, our citizens and our infrastructure,” Klishas wrote on Telegram.
Sources from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense did not previously rule out the possibility of using the HIMARS, which kyiv began receiving in June, to attack military targets in Crimea.
They may be hit, in particular, the sites of Russian Kalibr missiles, which are often fired from the peninsula, according to the Ukrainian military.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych also said the day before that the Crimean bridge, whose construction Russia completed in 2019, could become the target of an attack as soon as kyiv has such a “technical possibility.”
The Ukrainian army assured this Sunday that it still maintains control of two villages located in the eastern region of Lugansk, which the Russians claim to have taken completely, according to the head of the Regional Military Administration, Serhiy Gaidai, on his Facebook page.
“This (situation) is exactly what is driving the Russians crazy, as they were ordered to reach (and occupy) as far as the administrative borders of the Luhansk region (to control them),” Gaidai said.
At the same time, fighting continues in the neighboring Donetsk region, where the intensity of hostilities has gradually increased in recent days, according to kyiv and pro-Russian militias, who link the increased bombing of the region’s capital with the arrival of Western weapons to Ukraine.
According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the country’s troops managed to repel the assault actions of the enemy near Ivano-Darivka, as well as Russia’s attempt to advance towards Verkhniokamianka in the direction of Sloviansk, a strategic enclave in Donetsk. .
In the direction of the Sloviansk area, “the enemy used mortars, cannons and artillery rockets to open fire near settlements such as Dibrovne, Mykilske, Podolivka, Mazanivka, Adamivka, Chepil, Krasnopillia and Kurulka,” the military report said.
On Saturday, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Russian troops launched 22 unguided missile and MLRS attacks on the Donetsk region, leaving civilians dead and wounded and 49 buildings destroyed.
The Russians also continue to launch sporadic attacks in the southern regions over which they already have much control: Zaporizhia, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, and Kherson, where Ukrainian forces have carried out several counter-attacks in recent weeks.
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