Kyiv launched one of the biggest drone attacks on Russia since the full-scale war began, targeting power plants and an oil refinery on Saturday night, while Moscow’s forces made further advances towards a key town in eastern Ukraine, officials said on Sunday.
Russian missile strikes on Kharkiv injured more than 40 people, including five children, prompting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to renew calls on allies to allow Kyiv to fire western-supplied missiles deeper into enemy territory.
The fighting comes at a critical juncture in the 2½-year conflict, with Russia pressing an offensive in eastern Ukraine while trying to expel Ukrainian forces that broke through its western border in a surprise incursion on August 6th.
Russia last week pounded Ukraine with its heaviest air strikes of the war, hitting energy facilities, part of a campaign of drone and missile barrages that have killed thousands of civilians and troops since the conflict began in February 2022.
Ukraine, with a rapidly expanding domestic drone industry, has stepped up its own attacks on Russian energy, military and transport infrastructure. It is also pressing the US and other allies for permission to use more powerful western-supplied weapons to inflict greater damage inside Russia and impair Moscow’s abilities to attack Ukraine.
“All necessary forces for the rescue operation have been brought in,” Mr Zelenskiy said on his Telegram channel in response to the Kharkiv attack that officials said involved at least 10 missiles and struck locations including a shopping mall. “And all the necessary forces of the world must be brought in to stop this terror.”
Earlier Russian officials said air defence units had destroyed 158 drones launched by Ukraine overnight, and that debris caused fires at a Moscow oil refinery and at the Konakovo power station in the neighbouring Tver region.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports of drone attacks against Russia or from the battlefield in Ukraine, and Kyiv has yet to comment. Russia rarely discloses the full extent of damage inflicted by Ukraine's air attacks.
Kyiv’s allies are wary of how Russian president Vladimir Putin would respond should their weapons be used against targets far inside Russian territory. Russia’s TASS state news cited deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying that Moscow would change its nuclear doctrine in response to the west’s actions over the conflict in Ukraine. He did not specify what the changes would entail.
Russia’s existing nuclear doctrine, set out in a decree by Mr Putin in 2020, says it may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.
In eastern Ukraine, where the heaviest fighting of the war is concentrated, Russian forces continued to advance towards Pokrovsk, which is a vital military hub and transport link to towns and cities further north.
Ukraine had hoped that its surprise incursion into Russia's Kursk region launched last month would force Russia to redeploy troops and take the pressure off besieged forces in the east, but so far it does not appear to have had the desired effect.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its forces had captured two more settlements in Donetsk region and were “continuing to advance deep into the enemy defences”.
– Reuters
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