Putin's new air offensive kills at least 25 civilians in Ukraine

Announced and fulfilled. On Tuesday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that, according to information provided by his secret services, a “large-scale” Russian attack was coming. This arrived shortly after and caused at least 25 civilian deaths, while drones and missiles hit around twenty targets in a dozen regions. A town in the Chernihiv region suffered the worst loss, with 19 fatalities, including five children, when one of the missiles hit a five-story apartment block, according to local authorities.

All the information that kyiv's intelligence obtains and that, in part, provides citizens to protect themselves has once again proven insufficient to stop Moscow's destructive capacity.

The first Russian missile bombers took off before midnight. Drones were also detected towards different points on the Ukrainian map. The authorities were transmitting it to the citizens. The explosions began to be felt in kyiv shortly after three in the morning (one hour less in mainland Spain). A second wave arrived just two hours later.

The warnings of possible bombings came just hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin turned 74, as highlighted by Ukrainian authorities and local media. Everything pointed to a dangerous and tragic early morning, as it finally was in the capital and in 11 other regions of the country. In addition to the fatalities, there were around thirty injured, according to data provided by the Ukrainian authorities. The offensive was directed against civilian targets and energy infrastructure, kyiv denounced. According to Kremlin sources, the army targeted some military targets that the Ukrainians did not refer to.

The Ukrainian Air Force confirmed that 39 of the 48 Russian cruise missiles were shot down or neutralized, as were 117 of the 130 drones used in the attack. The impacts were recorded in up to 18 locations in different parts of the country.

Zelensky considered what happened “a gift” from the Russian army “for Putin's birthday,” this Wednesday. Priluki, in the Chernihiv region, mourned the death of 19 people in a residential building. The number of deaths in the town increased throughout the day as firefighters located the bodies trapped in the rubble with the help of an excavator. The rest of the deaths, up to a total of 25, were recorded in kyiv, Poltava and Denipropetrovsk, with two deaths in the three cases. The shells also hit the Kirovogad and Zaporizhia regions.

In the capital, the bombings caused two fatalities in the Darnytskyi district. Missiles also fell in the Podil district of kyiv. In the midst of a devastated panorama, dozens of firefighters had to interrupt their work this Wednesday in broad daylight when the alarms sounded again. The protocol requires them to move away from the place of impact until the alert passes. On many occasions, the Russians attack a second time on previously bombed points with the intention of causing casualties among civilians or emergency services.

Oleg, one of the firefighters, emphasizes that several companies had been affected by the attack. He doesn't offer many details, but he was referring to tool and gardening warehouses, “nothing military.” In any case, the authorities do not usually report when the objectives achieved are of this type.

Seconds before the alarms went off, a young man named Oleksandr and several of his colleagues recovered some boxes with various components from the computer equipment company where they worked in the midst of the destruction. He blows off the dust, cleans them by hand and places them back in the cardboard packaging. His company has not suffered major damage, he says.

But, around it, the damage is evident, with a ship still smoking whose interior has been completely destroyed and burned. Several hours later, firefighters, hose in hand, are working to stop flames and put out embers both on the ground and from fifteen meters above the ladder of one of the trucks. Next to them, vehicles destroyed by the shock wave. “Two missiles have fallen,” confirm one of the members of the emergency services and several firefighters.

About 200 meters away is the other impact, also in the same industrial area of ​​Podil, near the Dnieper River. The facilities of a nearby energy company have been barely saved and have resumed their activity since the first hour. One of the employees, Ludmila, 30 years old, recognizes that her work can almost never be done from home and describes what she is experiencing: "It is very difficult because I have to travel to work by public transport. There are constant air attack alerts. You have to look for shelter along the way and know where those shelters are located to be able to get to safety at any time."

Another of the places in kyiv attacked in the early hours of Wednesday was the Dovzhenko film studios. This is the third time in just a few months that these facilities have been bombed.

More than 12 hours after the attack began, alarms continued to sound due to the arrival of Russian projectiles while anti-aircraft defenses were activated over the sky as dusk fell.

In kyiv, some families, following the recommendations of the authorities and after almost five years of fierce invasion, had already headed to the shelters of the buildings or to the subway stations when Tuesday night arrived. They take cover and many spend the entire night underground. The problem, as was demonstrated throughout Wednesday, is that dawn breaks and the alarms continue to ring throughout the day.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement this Wednesday that its forces attacked a military installation in that district: "The target was a company [Avtokraz] that manufactures and stores special chassis for the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile launchers."

The Russian high command commented, as always and against graphic evidence, that it never attacks civilian targets. “Last night, the Russian armed forces launched a massive attack with precision land, sea and air weapons, as well as drones, against facilities of the military-industrial complex” in different regions, according to the aforementioned ministerial sources.

Moscow claimed to have hit facilities related to the Flamingo missile in all bombed regions, as well as “a transport ship carrying military and dual-use cargo for the Ukrainian armed forces.” He thus used the same unverified accusation with which he justified this week's attacks against at least three Turkish ships transporting food in Bulgarian and Romanian waters.