Russia claims it deployed nuke-capable hypersonic missile
Russia unleashed nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles for the first time ever in combat, obliterating an ammunition depot in western Ukraine, its defense ministry said Saturday, as embattled President Volodymyr Zelensky made an urgent plea for “meaningful and fair” peace talks and the strategic port city of Mariupol was on the precipice of falling to the invaders.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the high-tech Kinzhal missiles, carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, destroyed a large underground ammunition warehouse Friday in the village of Delyatyn, near the western Ivano-Frankivs region of Ukraine.
US officials confirmed Saturday that hypersonic missiles were used, telling CNN they were tracked in real time as they headed toward the former Soviet nuclear base, which is about 380 miles from Kyiv and extends 150 feet below ground. No information on casualties, if any, was available.
“The speed of the Kinzhal puts it beyond the reach of any Ukrainian air defense system and the launch platforms can launch from ranges beyond the reach of Ukraine,” Dr. James Bosbotinis, a specialist in defence and international affairs, told the BBC.
“It’s also a warning to the west that Russia can of course, up the ante in Ukraine and the Kinzhal could also be deployed if the war escalated and drew in external powers,” he added.
The latest attack came as thousands of civilians attempted to flee Mariupol, which has been under bombardment for weeks, while Russian tanks entered the city center for the first time and cut off Ukranian forces from the Sea of Azov.
Zelensky, in a video posted overnight, accused the Kremlin of deliberately creating “a humanitarian catastrophe” and appealed again for a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to prevent more bloodshed.
He said Russia is trying to starve his country’s cities into submission, blockading the largest with the goal of creating such miserable conditions that Ukrainians will surrender, but warned that Russia would pay the ultimate price.
“The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine,” he said. “Otherwise, Russia’s costs will be so high that you will not be able to rise again for several generations.”
In other developments:
- The death toll from a rocket attack on the headquarters of a Ukranian marine unit in the southern city of Mykolaiv, rose to at least 40. An unknown number of troops and civilians were sleeping when the base was hit.
- Ukraine claimed it killed another Russian general, the fifth senior leader to fall since the invasion began Feb. 24. Lieutenant-General Andrey Mordvichev, was killed when armed forces destroyed a command post at an airfield in Kherson in southern Ukraine, officials said.
- Employees of the Belarus’s embassy reportedly left Ukraine, raising fears that the Russian ally, where a large portion of the invasion has been staged, will soon enter the fighting.
- UNICEF estimated that 1.5 million children are among the more than 3.3 million people who have fled Ukraine as refugees. Another 2 million are displaced inside the country. Ukraine said it has evacuated 190,000 civilians from frontline areas via humanitarian corridors.
- The U.N. human rights office said that at least 847 civilians, including 64 children, had been killed and 1,399 wounded in Ukraine as of Friday.
- Nearly 14,400 Russian personnel have been killed in Ukraine as of Saturday, according to The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Russia has put the figure at around 500.
Zelensky’s comments came in part as a response to a huge rally Putin held Friday in Moscow ostensibly held to support Russia’s forces, though reports said many who packed the Luzhini Stadium said they were “forced” to attend.
Zelensky pointed to the 200,000 people reportedly at the rally as roughly the same number of Russian troops taking part in the invasion.
“Picture for yourself that in that stadium in Moscow there are 14,000 dead bodies and tens of thousands more injured and maimed,” he said in the video shot outside the presidential office in the capital, Kyiv. “Those are the Russian costs throughout the invasion.”
He also repeated his call for direct talks with Putin.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered to host talks between the two leaders, a Turkish presidential spokesperson said Saturday.
Erdogan made the offer during a call with Putin on Thursday, during which Putin laid out a series of demands to be resolved before leadership-level negotiations could take place. Those included that Ukraine disarm, renounce any hopes for NATO membership and provide “mutual security agreements.”
Putin also demanded what Turkey referred to as “the most difficult issues:” the recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea and the two so-called independent republics in eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s top negotiator said that Moscow and Kyiv had brought their positions “as close as possible” on a proposal for Ukraine to become a neutral state in talks so far. But Mykhailo Podolyak, Ukraine’s chief negotiator in talks with Russia, said the talks could take weeks or longer. Ukraine, he added, will not give up any territory.
In a call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday, Putin charged that Ukraine was trying to “drag the negotiations by making a series of new, unrealistic proposals,” the Kremlin said.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed a Polish proposal for a peace-keeping mission. The plan, which Poland will formally propose at next week’s NATO summit, would likely mean Polish troops controlling western Ukraine, Lavrov said according to the Interfax news service.
Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday called on President Joe Biden — who will attend the NATO summit Thursday in Brussels — to visit Ukraine while he is in Europe.
“The shelling never stops”
Mariupol appeared about to fall after Russian troops entered the port city following weeks of relentless shelling. The fall of Mariupol would be a major advance for Russia, giving it a land link to the Crimean peninsula, which Russia took in 2014.
It was unclear if any humanitarian aid was reaching the city, where officials said 350,000 people were trapped with little or no food or water. The city council said that about 30,000 residents had managed to escape. It was unclear if any were able to get out Saturday through one of 10 humanitarian corridors set up around Ukrainian cities, including Mariupol and Kyiv.
“The shelling never stops and the shooting never stops,” said Dmytro Gurin, a Ukrainian MP whose parents are trapped there.
“People are out of food, and more importantly out of water,” continued Gurin, who described conditions in the city as “medieval” in an interview with the BBC. “And several of days ago, tanks started to shoot nine-story buildings, so people cannot get out. Everybody is sitting in their apartments and basements thinking whether they will die in the next hour.”
The city, which has no electricity or heat amid sub-zero temperatures, is now unrecognizable, Gurin added. “By estimate of the mayor’s office, 30% of buildings are totally destroyed and 50% are heavily damaged. My house is burned to the ground.”
Russia has used “brutal, savage techniques’’ in the way it has targeted civilians, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Saturday during a visit to NATO ally Bulgaria. He said Russia continues to make “incremental gains” in its campaign.
Another battle raged at the Azovstal steel plant outside of Mariupol, one of the biggest in Europe.
“We have lost this economic giant,” said Vadym Denysenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister. “In fact, one of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe is actually being destroyed.”
Meanwhile, the fates of hundreds of people, mostly women, children and the elderly, who had been hiding in the city theater bombed on Wednesday were still unknown.
New satellite photos showed an aerial view of the theater, with the word “children” in Russian clearly painted on the ground on both sides of the building.
Petro Andrushchenko, an adviser to the city’s mayor, said some people survived the blast and the bomb shelter had held. Emergency workers were scouring the rubble despite ongoing shelling. More than 130 people have been rescued from the theater, but there was no information about ongoing rescue efforts, or how many people had died.
As many as 1,300 were feared sheltering there when it was hit. Italy on Saturday offered to help rebuild the theater.
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there should be no way back from international isolation for Putin’s Russia. It would be a mistake to consider trade-offs, Johnson told members of his Conservative Party at a conference in Blackpool, England.
“There are some around the world, even in Western governments, who invoke what they call realpolitik and who say that we are better off making accommodations with tyranny,” Johnson said. “I believe they are profoundly wrong.”
“To try to renormalize relations with Putin after this, as we did in 2014, would be to make exactly the same mistake again,” he said.
With Post Wires
