KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian officials sought to allay public fears about Russia’s use of Iranian drones by claiming they had been lucky Monday to shoot them down, while the Kremlin’s statement of a possible “dirty bomb” attack added another ominous size to the situation. Entry in guerra. su 9th month.
Ukrainians are bracing for less electritown this winter following a sustained Russian blockade of their infrastructure in recent weeks. Citizens of the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv took cover Monday for water and supplies as Ukrainian forces massed near the Russian-occupied town of Kherson. .
Ukrainian forces shot down more than two-thirds of the roughly 330 Shahed drones Russia fired on Saturday, Ukrainian intelligence leader Kyrylo Budanov said Monday. three hundred Shaheds.
“Terror with the use of ‘Shaheds’ can last a long time,” he told the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper, adding: “Air defense is faced essentially, 70% is shot down. “
Russia and Iran deny Iranian-made drones were used, the triangular-shaped Shahed-136s have stabbed civilians in Kyiv and elsewhere.
“First of all, we have to be to counter drones,” U. S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday at a news conference in Zagreb with the Croatian leader. “It’s a harmful generation and you want to be stopped. “
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russia would likely use a large number of drones to try to penetrate “effective Ukrainian air defenses,” to upgrade Russian-made long-range precision weapons “that are scarce. “
This assessment came amid a stern warning from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to his British, French, Turkish and American counterparts over the weekend that Ukrainian forces were preparing a “provocation” involving a radioactive device, the so-called filthy bomb. Britain, France and the United States rejected the claim as “patently false. “
A filthy bomb uses explosives to disperse radioactive waste in order to sow terror. Such weapons have the devastating destruction of a nuclear explosion, but they can leave large spaces for radioactive contamination.
The Russian government doubled down on Shoigu’s warning on Monday.
Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian military’s radiological, chemical and biological covering forces, said Russian military assets are ready for imaginable radioactive contamination. He told reporters that a dirty bomb attack could contaminate thousands of square kilometers.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday: “This is not an unfounded suspicion, we have serious reasons for such things to simply be planned. “
Ukraine has dismissed Moscow’s claims as an attempt to divert attention from its own plans to detonate a dirty bomb. German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht on Monday called Russia’s claim that Ukraine could use a dirty bomb “outrageous. “
The White House responded Monday that the Russian allegations were false.
“That’s just not true. We know that’s not true,” said John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council. “In the past, Russians, on occasion, blamed others for things they planned to do. “
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has hinted that Moscow itself is the floor for the deployment of a radioactive device on Ukrainian soil.
The country’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Monday that he had suggested to the United Nations nuclear watchdog that it send an inspection team to the country without delay to refute Moscow’s claims. The International Atomic Energy Agency responded that it was preparing “safeguard visits” in the coming days.
The U. N. Security Council on Tuesday scheduled closed-door consultations at Russia’s request over what it claimed was Ukraine’s plans for a “dirty bomb. “
On Monday, on the battlefield, he said at least six civilians were killed and five others wounded by Russian shelling of several Ukrainian regions over the past 24 hours, adding Mykolaiv, where electrical installations were attacked, and eastern Donetsk, the city of Bakhmut. Region.
Later that day, the Ukrainian army reported that it had “expelled the enemy” from 3 villages in the eastern Luhansk region and one in Donetsk. Moscow did not comment on the claim.
Russian officials said Ukrainian troops fired rockets at the main Kakhovka hydroelectric plant in the Kherson region. Vladimir Rogov, a senior management official installed across Russia in the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, said the plant was not seriously damaged and proceeded to operate.
Russia and Ukraine accused each other of plotting to blow up the factory dam and flood the domain when Ukrainian forces introduced an offensive on Kherson, which they captured Russian troops early in the war.
Russia also accused Ukrainian forces of bombing a car with 3 civilians in the Kherson area, killing one.
Ukraine’s relentless artillery movements in Kherson have cut key crossings into the Dnieper, which runs through southern Ukraine, and left Russian troops in the West Bank without materials and vulnerable to encirclement. The region is one of 4 that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last time. month and subjected to Russian martial law last week.
Budanov, the head of Ukrainian intelligence, downplayed the hypothesis that Russian forces were an immediate departure from Kherson.
While Russian forces were helping tens of thousands of citizens evacuate, “at the same time, they are bringing in new army sets and city streets for defense,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Russian government got rid of the monuments of the leaders of the eighteenth-century Russian army Alexander Suvorov and Fyodor Ushakov de Kherson to save them from Ukrainian bombing.
On Saturday, the Russian-installed government told all Kherson citizens to leave “immediately” ahead of an expected advance by Ukrainian troops to retake the city, which lies in a key direction toward the Russian-occupied Black Sea peninsula in Crimea.
A ballot published Monday through Kyiv’s International Sociological Institute showed that 86% of Ukrainians on the ballot agreed that Ukraine’s armed struggle with Russia should continue. 10% believe that negotiations will begin with Russia even if Ukraine has to make concessions. The telephone survey of 1,000 adults in Ukraine was conducted from Friday to Sunday, he said.
Residents of Mykolaiv, northwest of Kherson, echoed the determination to keep fighting, even as the town is bombed almost every night and citizens have to queue all day to get food and water.
“Ukraine is doing the right thing. The Russians attacked us and they will have to be beaten for it,” said Mykola Kovalenko, 76, a resident of Mykolaiv.
Ahead of next winter, Kyiv and seven other Ukrainian regions predicted blackouts Monday as the government worked to repair damage to electrical installations caused by Russian bombing. Zelenskyy called on the local government for Ukrainians to heed the call to save energy.
“This is not the time to have windows and illuminated signs,” he said.
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