The fighting in the east of Ukraine gets worse, and NATO and Poland say it’s unlikely that a missile came from Russia.
Kyiv/Przewodów, Poland/Brussels
Ukraine said it was being attacked hard in the east by Russian forces that were made stronger when troops from Kherson in the south were pulled out. NATO and Poland came to the conclusion that a missile that crashed in Poland was probably fired by Ukraine’s air defences and went in the wrong direction.
Officials said that the government in Kyiv was working on restoring power to the whole country on Wednesday. This came after Russia hit civilian infrastructure hard earlier in the week.
On Wednesday, NATO ambassadors met for emergency talks to figure out what to do about the explosion in Poland on Tuesday that killed two people at a grain facility near the border with Ukraine. This was the first time that the war had killed people on the territory of the Western Alliance.
Related: Asian stocks decline due to concern about the missile strike in Poland.
The Polish President Andrzej Duda said, “From what we and our allies know, it was an S-300 rocket made in the Soviet Union.” “It was an old rocket, and there is no evidence that it was launched by the Russian side.” “It’s very likely that the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defence fired it.”
Both Russia and Ukraine were using the old S-300 rocket.
Still, the head of NATO said that Russia, not Ukraine, was to blame for starting the war when it invaded Ukraine in February and fired dozens of missiles at Ukraine on Tuesday, setting off its defences.
In what Ukraine says was the most intense bombardment of the nine-month-long war, Russia fired a barrage of missiles at cities across Ukraine. The missiles were aimed at the country’s energy grid, which caused millions of people to lose power.
“Ukraine is not to blame. As long as it keeps fighting an illegal war against Ukraine, Russia is in charge,” Jens Stoltenberg, the head of NATO, told reporters in Brussels.
Stoltenberg also said that it was likely an air defence missile from Ukraine. Earlier, U.S. President Joe Biden had said that the path of the missile made it unlikely that it was launched from Russia. Russia said it wasn’t to blame.
Ukrainian media said on Wednesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, “I have no doubt that it wasn’t our missile.” He said that his conclusion was based on reports from the Ukrainian military, which he “cannot help but trust.”
On Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden disagreed with Zelenskiy’s claim that the missile was not made in Ukraine.
Biden told reporters at the White House when he got back from a trip to Asia, “That’s not the proof.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that the “chaos” surrounding the accusations that Russia was involved in the missile was “part of a systematic campaign by the West to hurt Russia.”
DONETSK FIGHTING
In the eastern Donetsk region, like in the towns of Pavlivka, Vuhledar, Maryianka, and Bakhmut, there was also a lot of fighting, a Ukrainian presidential adviser said in an online video.
Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhadnov said on YouTube that attacks on the towns of Avdiivka and Bilohorivka in Donetsk had been stopped by Ukrainian forces.
After a counterattack by the Ukrainians, Moscow’s troops left the southern city of Kherson last week. It was the only regional capital that Russia had taken since it invaded on February 24. This was the third major retreat by Russia during the war.
Arestovych said, “Some of these (Russian) troops have been moved from the Kherson region and will be used to “liberate” Donetsk and Luhansk in the eastern industrial region known as the Donbas.”
“The Kherson operation is becoming a time to get back together.” “They are getting ready to move back to Donetsk,” Zhdanov said.
Arestovych said that the Russian forces that had been moved had also gone on the offensive in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. He also said that the Russians may be planning to go on the offensive again in the northern city of Kharkiv, where they were pushed back by Ukraine earlier in the conflict.
Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top U.S. general, played down the chances of Ukraine getting an outright military victory in the near future. He warned that Russia still had a lot of fighting power in Ukraine, even though it had suffered a number of setbacks.
Related: All of Poland’s MPC members voted in favour of a 75 bps hike in March.
Investigators in the recently liberated Kherson region discovered 63 bodies with signs of torture after Russian forces left, Ukraine’s interior minister was quoted as saying early Thursday.
Interfax Ukraine reported that Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky said on national TV, “The search has just begun, so there will be a lot more dungeons and graves found.”
Wanting to get power back
Following the latest round of missile attacks on power plants, Zelenskiy stated late Wednesday that technicians had been working around the clock to restore power to homes.
“There are millions of customers in mind.” We are doing everything possible to get power back. “Both creating and giving,” Zelenskiy explained.
A UN source said Wednesday that there are reasons to be “cautiously optimistic” about the renewal of a Black Sea grains export agreement, which is set to end on Saturday unless there are objections.
The U.N.-backed agreement from July 22 allowed grain to be shipped again from some Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea. This led to about 10 million metric tonnes of grain being shipped and helped bring down food prices around the world.
