Ukraine on Wednesday said it had regained more territory from Russia in the south, while welcoming deliveries of western air defense systems that Kyiv said would usher in a “new era” following mass attacks from Moscow.
Russia has spent two days pounding Ukraine with rockets and damaging power plants across the country in attacks President Vladimir Putin said were in retaliation for a deadly blast on the Crimean bridge.
Russia’s security service FSB said on Wednesday it had arrested eight suspects over the blast that ripped through the road and rail bridge linking Crimea to Russia.
But it also claimed to have foiled two other attacks that Ukrainian special services allegedly wanted to carry out on Russian territory.
Putin has promised a “tough” response to any further attack on Russia and what Moscow considers its territory, including the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied attacking the bridge, a vital transport link but also a matter of pride for Putin, who personally inaugurated the structure in 2018.
Despite warnings from the Kremlin, Kyiv has vowed to retake the peninsula and four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine that Moscow says are now part of Russia.
Kyiv said on Wednesday it had retaken five more settlements in the southern Kherson region – one of the four areas Moscow annexed in late September – in the latest setback to Russia’s campaign.
– Putin “miscalculates” –
“The Ukrainian armed forces liberated five more settlements in the Beryslav district (in the Kherson region): Nowovasilivka, Nowogrygorivka, Nova Kamyanka, Tryfonivka, Chervone,” the presidency said in its daily report.
However, it added that Russian forces are fighting back and continue shelling Ukraine’s positions “along the entire line of contact.”
The Ukrainian army announced its counter-offensive in the south at the end of August.
Having regained almost complete control of the north-eastern Kharkiv region, Ukrainian forces recently claimed further gains on the eastern and southern fronts.
Amid mounting backlash since September, the Russian president announced the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists to join the fighting in Ukraine.
With the Crimean Bridge explosion, Russia also lost a key transport link for transporting military equipment for Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden said Tuesday he believes his Russian counterpart “misjudged” the situation in Ukraine and underestimated the ferocity of the Ukrainian resistance.
“I think … he thought he was going to be welcomed with open arms, that this was Mother Russia’s home in Kyiv and that that’s where he would be welcomed, and I think he just totally miscalculated,” Biden told CNN in a rare TV interview.
– mass graves discovered –
After two days of nationwide Russian strikes that particularly targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and left villages and towns without electricity and hot water, Ukraine said it had started receiving anti-aircraft systems from its western allies.
“A new era of air defense has begun in Ukraine,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Twitter, announcing the arrival of Germany’s Iris-Ts and the upcoming delivery of NASAMS from Washington.
“This is just the beginning,” Reznikov added, “and we need more… There is a moral imperative to protect the skies over Ukraine to save our people.”
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on the G7 coalition of wealthy nations to help Kyiv build an “air shield,” warning that Russia “still has room for further escalation.”
Ukrainian officials on Tuesday announced the recovery of the remains of dozens of civilians found in mass graves in two towns in the eastern Donetsk region that were recently recaptured by Moscow’s forces.
A forensic team clad in riot gear exhumed dozens of bodies in Lyman, a railroad junction retaken from Ukraine in early October, an AFP journalist saw.
“We have already found more than 50 bodies of soldiers and civilians. We have a long ditch – a mass grave – where we discovered bodies and body parts,” regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
Russian forces have been accused of numerous abuses in Ukraine – torture, rape, extrajudicial executions – Moscow claims, which has been repeatedly denied.
