G7 to hold crisis talks on Moscow’s bombing blitz
Ukraine said Tuesday that at least 19 people were killed and more than 100 wounded as a result of Russian strikes across the country a day earlier.
“According to preliminary data, 19 people were killed and 105 more were injured,” Ukraine’s emergency services said on Facebook.
The emergency services previously reported a figure of 14 dead and 97 injured.
Mass retaliatory strikes hit Ukraine nationwide on Monday, after Moscow blamed Kyiv for a blast on a bridge connecting Russia to Crimea, a peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukraine said Russian forces had fired more than 80 missiles on cities across the country—including the capital Kyiv—damaging in particular energy facilities.
More than 300 localities were without power across the county following the attacks, the emergency services said.
The emergency services also said Russia on Tuesday morning carried out a strike on Zaporizhzhia, a Ukraine-controlled city in an eponymous region that Moscow claimed to have annexed.
They said 12 S-300 missiles were fired at “civilian” infrastructure, killing one person in the latest of a series of attacks on the city over the past week.
The United States and other G7 powers will hold crisis talks Tuesday on Russia’s recent bombing blitz across Ukraine, with Britain’s Liz Truss expected to insist they “must not waver one iota” in their support for Kyiv.
The meeting comes a day after Russian missiles rocked the Ukrainian capital for the first time in months, with President Volodymyr Zelensky warning Moscow that his country “cannot be intimidated.”
Russian forces rained more than 80 missiles on cities across Ukraine on Monday, according to Kyiv, in apparent retaliation for an explosion that damaged a key bridge linking the Crimean peninsula to Russia.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the strikes showed Moscow was “desperate” after a spate of embarrassing military setbacks, as Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of “severe” responses to any further attacks.
At an urgent meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on Monday – called to debate Moscow’s declared annexation of four partly occupied Ukrainian regions – Ukrainian ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya branded Russia a “terrorist state,” noting his own immediate family had come under attack on Monday.
“Unfortunately, you can hardly call for a stable and sane peace as long as an unstable and insane dictatorship exists in your vicinity,” he said, telling member states at least 14 civilians were killed and 97 wounded in the strikes.
Zelensky and G7 leaders are set to convene Tuesday to discuss the latest Russian attacks.
Truss’s office said the British prime minister, who succeeded Boris Johnson just over a month ago, would use the call “to urge fellow leaders to stay the course.”
“The overwhelming international support for Ukraine’s struggle stands in stark opposition to the isolation of Russia on the international stage,” she is expected to say.
“Nobody wants peace more than Ukraine. And for our part, we must not waver one iota in our resolve to help them win it.”
German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told reporters Monday that Chancellor Olaf Scholz had spoken with Zelensky and assured him “of the solidarity of Germany and the other G7 states”.
French President Emmanuel Macron met with his defence and foreign affairs ministers over the strikes, which he said signalled “a profound change in the nature of this war”.
US President Joe Biden condemned Monday’s attacks in stark terms, saying they “demonstrate the utter brutality” of Putin’s “illegal war.”
In a statement, the White House said Biden had spoken to Zelensky and had pledged to furnish Ukraine with “advanced air defence systems.”
Ahead of Monday’s General Assembly session, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the latest attacks as an “unacceptable escalation of the war,” his spokesman said.
Though Russian representative Vasily Nebenzya did not directly address the missile strikes at the session, he defended his country’s annexation of Ukrainian regions, saying the aim was “to protect our brothers and sisters in eastern Ukraine.”