Russia shells Kherson and steps up broader assault on southern Ukraine.
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| On November 26, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of the "Ukrainian Food Initiative International Summit" in Kyiv. |
Russia shelled the city center of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Sunday, the latest in a string of attacks on the region from which it retreated last month.
A Ukrainian official said three people were wounded in the attack on Kherson, while regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said Russia had launched rocket, mortar and tank fire in the Kherson region over the past day. 54 attacks, resulting in three deaths and six injuries.
Meanwhile, in Russia, Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Sunday that one person was killed and eight were wounded by Ukrainian shelling of the region on Ukraine's northern border.
For weeks, Russia has been targeting Ukrainian infrastructure in an attempt to cut off water and power lines as winter looms in an effort to demoralize the Ukrainian people.
Rotating blackouts have hit much of Ukraine, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address on Saturday night that power had been restored to nearly 6 million Ukrainians. Crews have been working non-stop to stabilize the power grid to restore heat and water, he said.
The most difficult situation is in "Kyiv and the region, Vinnytsia and the region, Lviv and the region," he said. But the massive blackout also affected many other regions, including Dnipro and Dnipropetrovsk.
"We'll see what happens when we don't have enough air defenses," Oksana Markarova, Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, said on ABC News' "This Week."
Markalova said half of Ukraine's energy grid had been destroyed by Russian missiles. "We have to stop it. The only way is to increase air defenses all over Ukraine," she said.
U.S. officials say they plan to send a Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine to help shoot down an incoming Russian airstrike, but no official announcement has been made. Russia condemned the expected U.S. action, calling it provocative and escalating U.S. involvement in the conflict.
Nonetheless, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told VOA in an interview on Friday that the United States would provide additional security assistance to Ukraine.
Asked whether Washington would heed Russia's warnings not to deliver the advanced Patriot anti-aircraft missile, Kirby replied: "Russia is not going to tell the United States or any other country what kind of security assistance we provide to Ukraine."
The U.S. official said Washington "is in lockstep with the Ukrainian people, discussing their needs with them on an almost daily basis and making sure we can best meet those needs."
Zelensky thanked the European Union and the United States for their decision to provide defense, energy and financial support to Ukraine in the coming year. He added that more work needed to be done and urged "credible air defense shields" to protect the Ukrainian people from "the main form of Russian terror - missile terror".
The MoD said in an intelligence update on Saturday that "Russia's long-range strike operations against critical national infrastructure in Ukraine have increased in recent days."
"The strike wave mainly included air and sea-launched cruise missiles, but almost certainly also Iranian-supplied unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) launched from Russia's Krasnodar region," the ministry tweeted.
Ukraine has said restoring its pre-2014 border with Russia is the goal of its nearly 10-month war to defend Russia, including retaking the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014.
Markova acknowledged that "taking everything back is difficult," but added, "There was no option."
Russia last week announced the formation of a creative brigade to boost the morale of troops at the front and plans to send opera singers, actors, and circus performers to the front. However, in its latest intelligence update on Sunday, the MoD said that while "low morale almost certainly remains a significant weakness for much of Russia's military", soldiers' concerns lie elsewhere.
"Soldiers' concerns centered on very high casualty rates, poor leadership, pay issues, lack of equipment and ammunition, and unclear objectives of the war," the ministry said.
"It is unlikely that the creative team's efforts will fundamentally alleviate these concerns," the MoD report concludes.
(Information for this article comes from The Associated Press, AFP and Reuters. )
