MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin has said 100 drones and 90 missiles were launched at Ukraine over the past two days “in response to strikes deep” inside Russia as he threatened to hit Kyiv with a new missile.
Putin was addressing a meeting of a security alliance of former Soviet countries in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, on Thursday after Ukraine said Russian missiles targeted its power infrastructure. He also addressed Russia’s use of the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile last week on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
Putin told the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit that Russia has begun serial production of the nuclear-capable weapon, and the Ministry of Defence was currently selecting more targets in Ukraine for strikes with the new missile.
Those targets could include “decision-making centres” in Kyiv in response to Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian territory with Western weapons, he added.
In the event of a massive use of the Oreshnik, the force of the strike “will be comparable to nuclear weapons”, he threatened.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Thursday that the country’s power infrastructure came “under massive enemy attack” prompting the national power grid’s operator to introduce emergency power cuts amid freezing temperatures.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack a “despicable escalation”, accusing Russia of using cluster munitions.
“In several regions, strikes with cluster munitions were recorded, and they targeted civilian infrastructure,” he said in a post on Telegram. “This is a very despicable escalation of Russian terrorist tactics.”
He said Ukraine needed more Western air defence systems “now” to protect against the Russian strikes.
“This is especially important in winter when we have to protect our infrastructure from targeted Russian attacks,” Zelenskyy added.
Cluster munitions have killed or wounded more than 1,000 people in Ukraine since Russia launched its all-out war in February 2022, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) said in its annual report in September.
They also pose a long-term risk since many fail to explode on impact, effectively acting as landmines that can explode years later, the CMC noted.
Russia and Ukraine are not among the 112 states that are party to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use, transfer, production and storage of cluster bombs.
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