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Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine for the first time this week as NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of weaponizing the harsh northern winter.
Key points:
- NATO allies said the aid package included cash, power transmission equipment and more weapons
- Russia’s attacks on energy infrastructure have left millions of Ukrainians in the cold and dark
- The onset of winter creates new challenges for both parties
As sirens sounded, Ukrainians fled the streets for bomb shelters, although there were no immediate reports of major attacks further from the front.
The all-clear was later issued in the capital, Kiev, but officials said the threat had not necessarily been lifted.
“Last time, the Russians also disguised the attack as a training flight … let’s see,” said Vitaly Kim, governor of Mykolaiv Oblast in southern Ukraine.
NATO foreign ministers began a two-day meeting in Bucharest, looking for ways to keep millions of Ukrainian civilians safe and warm, as well as keep Kiev’s military afloat during the upcoming winter campaign.
“NATO will continue to stand up for Ukraine as long as necessary.” We will not give up,” said Stoltenberg.
He told reporters that Putin was “trying to use winter as a weapon of war” as Moscow’s forces were losing on the battlefield and that Western allies would step in to help.
Stoltenberg said the escalating attacks from Russia are a sign that Putin is failing in his war, especially as Russia loses ground around Kiev, Kharkiv and Kherson.
“It’s a sign that Russia is failing on the battlefield,” he said.
“They are attacking civilian cities because they are unable to conquer territory and avoid Ukraine slowly liberating more and more territory.”
“So yes, we can expect more attacks.” No one can say exactly how much, but President Putin and Russia have shown a willingness to inflict suffering to a level of brutality not seen in Europe since World War II.
U.S. and European officials, in a briefing ahead of the meeting on condition of anonymity, described aid packages including cash, power transmission equipment and more weapons to combat drones and replenish dwindling ammunition stocks.
“It will be a terrible winter for Ukraine, so we are working to strengthen our support to make it resilient,” said a senior European diplomat.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned NATO on Tuesday not to provide Ukraine with Patriot missile defense systems and called the alliance a “criminal entity.”
“If, like [NATO Secretary-General Jens] Stoltenberg hinted that NATO should supply Ukrainian fanatics with Patriot systems along with NATO personnel, they would immediately become a legitimate target of our armed forces,” Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
It was not clear from his message whether he was referring to Patriot systems, Ukrainian forces or NATO personnel being targeted.
Accumulating damage
Russia has launched missile attacks on Ukraine’s electricity transmission and heating infrastructure roughly every week since October, in what Kiev and its allies say is a deliberate campaign to harm civilians.
Moscow says that harming civilians is not its goal, but that their suffering will only end if Kiev accepts its demands.
Although Kiev says it shoots down most of the incoming missiles, the damage accumulates and the impact grows stronger with each strike.
The worst attack so far was last Wednesday, leaving millions of Ukrainians in the cold and dark.
President Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainians at the beginning of this week to expect another one soon, which will be at least as damaging.
There are no political talks about ending the war.
Moscow has annexed Ukrainian territory it says it will never give up; Ukraine says it will fight until it regains all occupied land.
Snow fell in Kiev and temperatures hovered around zero as millions of people in and around the capital struggled to heat their homes.
After a week of trying to restore power since the latest attacks, national grid operator Ukrenergo said the system was still producing 30 percent of the energy needed.
Near the front line in the eastern city of Siversk, Viktor Sjabro, 68, and his wife Lyudmila, 61, have been living underground since the electricity was cut in April when Russian airstrikes devastated their hometown.
With no water or gas, the couple hopes to install a wood-burning stove.
In the city of Kherson, which has lacked electricity and heat since Russian forces left it earlier this month, regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said 24 percent of customers now had power, including partial power in the city center.
A new phase
Along the front lines in eastern Ukraine, the onset of winter ushers in a new phase of conflict with intense trench warfare along heavily fortified positions, posing new challenges for both sides after months of Russian withdrawal.
With Russian forces retreating in the northeast and retreating across the Dnieper River in the south, the front line on land is only about half the length it was a few months ago.
This will make it difficult for Ukrainian forces to find weakly defended areas to attempt new breakthroughs.
Both sides would have to keep troops supplied and healthy in cold, wet trenches during the first long winter of the war, a greater challenge for the Russians as an invading force with longer and more vulnerable supply lines.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said late Monday that Russian forces were heavily shelling towns on the west bank of the Dnieper River, including Kherson.
Russia continued heavy shelling of the key targets of Bakhmut and Avdiyevka in Donetsk province, and in the north it bombarded the areas around the cities of Kupyansk and Liman, both of which were recently recaptured by Kiev, the Ukrainian military said.
Ukrainian forces damaged a railway bridge north of the Russian-occupied southern city of Melitopol that was crucial for supplying Russian forces dug in there.
Reuters could not independently verify reports from the battlefield.
Russia launched what it calls a “special military operation” on February 24, claiming its aim is to demilitarize its neighbor and protect Russian-speaking people. Ukraine and Western nations dismissed it as a baseless pretext for the invasion.
Reuters
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