Ukraine: Kyiv partially without water and electricity. Zelensky: ‘25 people killed today, including 5 children’

Ukraine is ablaze to mark the 74th birthday of Vladimir Putin, whilst the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is on a mission to Kyiv. The NATO Military Committee, chaired by Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, is in the Ukrainian capital on an official visit. The body, which assists and advises the Atlantic Council, the Defence Planning Committee and NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, has as its main role that of providing guidance and advice on military policy and strategy. The Committee was invited by the new Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Mykhailo Drapatyi.

The situation he witnessed first-hand is one of the most dramatic since the start of the conflict with Russia, as evidenced by the fact that, during the course of the day, Kyiv was partially without electricity and water: this was announced by the mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Vitali Klitschko, on his Telegram channel. “Due to problems with the electricity grid, the water pumping stations have suffered a partial power cut. There are disruptions to the water supply on the city’s right bank,” he wrote. The Ukrainian news outlet Telegraf reported on its Telegram channel that Kyiv had suffered a partial cut to electricity and water following an explosion.

Today, as a birthday ‘gift’ for Putin, the Russian army destroyed a residential building in Pryluky, in the Chernihiv region. It was an ordinary five-storey block of flats. ‘Today, work continued throughout the day to clear the rubble following the Russian missile strike on Pryluky. It was a Kh-101 missile, which struck a building directly. Tragically, 19 people were killed, including five young children. In total, the death toll from this massive attack on Ukraine stands at 25 people. One hundred people were injured.” This was the evening update from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on social media. ‘It is vital that leaders do not remain silent in the face of what has happened, because Russia intends to continue escalating the situation and killing people.’

According to a report on Telegram by the Ministry of Defence in Moscow, last night the Russian army, ‘struck, using precision-guided weapons and drones, Ukrainian military-industrial enterprises operating on behalf of the company Fire Point, which are involved in the production and storage of Flamingo cruise missiles and long- and medium-range drones in the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Kharkiv, as well as port infrastructure and shipyards in the Odessa region and vessels belonging to the Ukrainian armed forces’. The Russian Ministry of Defence has also published a video of an attack ‘carried out using Geran-type drones against a fuel depot in the seaport of Chornomorsk, in the Odessa region’.

The Russian Ministry of Defence also reported on Telegram that ‘last night, air defence forces intercepted and destroyed 311 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over the territories of the Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk, Tula, Oryol, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Smolensk, Tambov, Kaluga, Saratov, Samara, Penza, Rostov and Volgograd, in the Perm Territory, in the Republic of Crimea (annexed in 2014) and over the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov”. Meanwhile, Moscow’s shadow looms large over the arrest on espionage charges of the former head of the German secret service, August Hanning. Finally, the meeting of the foreign ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Turkmenistan is worth noting.