KYIV: Russia launched a rush-hour barrage of missiles toward Ukraine on Thursday, the day after Kyiv secured Western pledges of dozens of modern battlefield tanks to try to push back the Russian invasion.
Moscow had reacted with fury to the German and American announcements, and has in the past responded to apparent Ukrainian successes with air strikes that have left millions without light, heat or water.
The Ukrainian military said it had shot down all 24 drones sent overnight by Russia, including 15 around the capital, with no damage reported.
But soon afterwards, air raid alarms sounded across Ukraine as people were heading to work, and senior officials said air defenses were shooting down incoming missiles.
In the capital, crowds of people took cover in underground metro stations, and a loud explosion was heard.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy producer, said it was conducting emergency power shutdowns in Kyiv, the surrounding region and also the regions of Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk because of the imminent danger.
Kyiv’s military administration said more than 15 missiles fired at Kyiv had been shot down, but urged people to remain on shelters.
“Missiles are flying inside the territory of Ukraine. At least two northwest through Mykolaiv region,” Vitaly Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, said on the Telegram messaging app.
An air force spokesman said impacts had been registered in the central Vinnytsia region.
Western analysts say the attacks on Ukraine’s cities are more an attempt to break morale than a strategic campaign.
Both sides are expected to mount new ground offensives come the spring, and Ukraine has been seeking hundreds of modern tanks in the hope of using them to break Russian defensive lines and recapture occupied territory in the south and east.
Both Ukraine and Russia have so far relied primarily on Soviet-era T-72 tanks.
“The key now is speed and volumes. Speed in training our forces, speed in supplying tanks to Ukraine. The numbers in tank support,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Wednesday.
“We have to form such a ‘tank fist’, such a ‘fist of freedom’.”
Drumbeat of requests
Maintaining Kyiv’s drumbeat of requests, Zelensky said he had spoken to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and asked for long-range missiles and aircraft.
Ukraine’s allies have already provided billions of dollars worth of military support, including sophisticated US missile systems that have helped turn the tide of the war in the last six months.
The United States has been wary of deploying the difficult-to-maintain Abrams but had to change tack to persuade Germany to send to Ukraine its more easily operated German-built Leopards.
Germany will send an initial company of 14 tanks from its stocks, which it said could be operational in three or four months, and approve shipments by allied European states with the aim of equipping two battalions — in the region of 100 tanks.
The Leopard is a system that any NATO member can service, and crews and mechanics can be trained together on a single model, Ukrainian military expert Viktor Kevlyuk told Espreso TV.
“If we have been brought into this club by providing us with these vehicles, I would say our prospects look good.”
US President Joe Biden said the 31 M1 Abrams tanks that Washington will provide posed “no offensive threat” to Russia.
But Sergei Nechayev, Russia’s ambassador to Germany, on Wednesday called Berlin’s decision “extremely dangerous,” saying that it “takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation.”
Since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, Russia has shifted its publicly stated goals from “denazifying” and “demilitarising” its neighbor to confronting a purportedly aggressive and expansionist US-led NATO alliance.
The Russian invasion has killed thousands of civilians, forced millions from their homes and reduced entire cities to rubble.
The heaviest fighting for now is around Bakhmut, a town in eastern Ukraine with a pre-war population of 70,000 that has seen some of the most brutal fighting of the war.
Ukraine’s military said Russia was attacking “with the aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region and regardless of its own casualties.”
The Russian-installed governor of Donetsk said on Wednesday that units of Russia’s Wagner contract militia were moving forward inside Bakhmut, with fighting on the outskirts and in neighborhoods recently held by Ukraine.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.
Russia launches wave of missiles at Ukraine after Kyiv secures tanks
https://arab.news/wnke9
Russia launches wave of missiles at Ukraine after Kyiv secures tanks
- In the capital, people sheltered in a metro station
- Overnight, the military said its anti-aircraft defenses had shot down all 24 drones sent by Russia
Ireland’s defense gaps exposed as EU presidency nears
- Militarily neutral Ireland is not a NATO member, yet its waters — seven times its landmass — account for around 16 percent of the EU’s total
THE CURRAGH: Sheep amble around steel fences skirting Ireland’s largest military base on a grassy plain west of Dublin, a bucolic scene masking an underfunded defense force struggling with outdated equipment.
Ireland’s threadbare military and its long-standing policy of neutrality are under heightened scrutiny as the country prepares to assume the rotating EU presidency from July.
“Ireland is the only EU country with no primary radar system, nor have we sonar or anti-drone detection equipment — let alone the ability to disable drones,” said former Irish special forces member Cathal Berry.
“We can’t even monitor the airspace over our capital city and main airport,” he said as he surveyed Ireland’s main military base at The Curragh.
Militarily neutral Ireland is not a NATO member, yet its waters — seven times its landmass — account for around 16 percent of the EU’s total.
Nearly three-quarters of transatlantic subsea cables run close to or beneath them.
But the Irish army numbers only a few thousand troops, is focused largely on UN peacekeeping missions and has neither a combat air force nor a sizeable navy.
Ireland’s annual defense spending of roughly €1.2 billion is the lowest in Europe at around 0.2 percent of the GDP, well below the EU average of 1.3.
“Neutrality itself is actually a fine policy. If you want to have it, it must be defended,” said retired Irish army colonel Dorcha Lee.
“That’s the whole point. Undefended neutrality is absolutely definitely not the way to go.”
Berry points to a long-standing “complacency” about defense in Ireland that has fueled a vacuum in debate over neutrality and military spending.
“If you wanted to squeeze the EU without any risk of NATO retaliation, Ireland is where you’d come,” he said, adding that also applied to US interests in Europe.
US tech giants like Google, Apple and Meta have their European headquarters in Ireland, supported by vast data centers that analysts say are vulnerable to cyberattacks.
European Council President Antonio Costa said he was still “confident” Ireland could protect EU summits during its presidency.
Defense Minister Helen McEntee has pledged that new counter-drone technology will be in place by then.
Speaking in front of a row of aging army vehicles at the Curragh military site, she also announced a broader increase in military spending, although the actual details remain unclear.
On Dec. 17, the Irish government said it plans to buy a military radar system from France at a reported cost of between €300 and €500 million (around $350-$585 million).
For Paul Murphy, a left-wing opposition member of parliament, “scaremongering over allegedly Russian drones with concrete evidence still unprovided” is
giving the government cover to steer Ireland away from neutrality toward NATO.
“But it’s more important than ever that we’re genuinely neutral in a world that is increasingly dangerous,” he told AFP.
Ireland has historically prioritized economic and social spending over defense investment, he said.
“Joining an arms race that Ireland cannot compete in would waste money that should be spent on real priorities like climate change,” he added.
Pro-neutrality sentiment still holds sway among the Irish public, with an Irish Times/Ipsos poll earlier this year finding 63 percent of voters remained in favor of it.
And very few voices in Ireland are calling to join NATO.
Left-winger Catherine Connolly, who won Ireland’s presidential election in October by a landslide, is seen as a pacifist.
“I will be a voice for peace, a voice that builds on our policy of neutrality,” she said in her victory speech.
