Kyiv, Ukraine –
Russia pounded Ukrainian towns with missiles, rockets and suicide drones, with a strike reportedly killing 25 people, as it moved on Friday to annex Ukrainian territory and bring it under the protection of Moscow’s nuclear umbrella despite international condemnation.
But even as it prepared to celebrate the incorporation of four occupied Ukrainian regions, the Kremlin was set to suffer another crushing defeat on the battlefield, with reports of the imminent Ukrainian encirclement of the eastern town of Lyman. Resuming it could pave the way for Ukraine to penetrate deep into one of the regions Russia is absorbing, a move widely condemned as illegal that opens a dangerous new phase in the seven-month war.
The salvoes of Russian strikes reported in Ukrainian cities together represented the heaviest barrage Russia had unleashed in weeks. They followed analysts’ warnings that Russian President Vladimir Putin risked drawing more from his dwindling stockpiles of precision weapons and stepping up attacks as part of a strategy to escalate the war to an extent that would shatter Western support for Ukraine.
The Kremlin preceded its annexation ceremonies scheduled for Friday with another warning to Ukraine that it should not fight to retake the four regions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would view a Ukrainian attack on the taken territory as an act of aggression against Russia itself.
The annexations are an attempt by Russia to freeze its gains, at least on paper, and to scare Ukraine and its Western supporters with the prospect of ever-escalating conflict unless they back down – which they show no sign of doing. The Kremlin paved the way for land grabs with “referendums,” sometimes at gunpoint, which Ukraine and Western powers have universally dismissed as rigged shams.
“It sounds quite pathetic. The Ukrainians are doing something, taking action in the real material world, while the Kremlin is building a kind of virtual reality, unable to respond in the real world,” said the former speechwriter of the Kremlin turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov.
“People understand that politics is now on the battlefield,” he added. “What is important is who advances and who retreats. In this sense, the Kremlin cannot offer anything comforting to the Russians.”
A Ukrainian counter-offensive deprived Moscow of control over the military battlefields. Its hold on the Luhansk region looks increasingly fragile as Ukrainian forces make inroads there, with the pincer assault on Lyman. Ukraine also still has a strong foothold in the neighboring region of Donetsk.
Luhansk and Donetsk – ravaged by fighting since separatists declared independence there in 2014 – form the wider Donbass region in eastern Ukraine that Putin has long vowed, but so far failed, to fully return Russian. Peskov said Donetsk and Luhansk will be integrated into Russia in their entirety on Friday.
All of Kherson and parts of Zaporizhzhia, two other regions being prepared for annexation, were newly occupied in the opening phase of the invasion. It is not clear whether the Kremlin will declare all, or only part, of this occupied territory as belonging to Russia. Peskov did not say in a Friday call with reporters.
In the capital of the Zaporizhzhia region, anti-aircraft missiles that Russia reused as ground-attack weapons rained down on people Friday waiting in cars to drive through Russian-occupied territory to can bring family members back across the front lines, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said.
The attorney general’s office said 25 people were killed and 50 injured. The strike left deep impact craters and sent shrapnel into the lined up vehicles of the aid convoy, killing their passengers. The neighboring buildings were demolished. Trash bags, blankets and, for one victim, a blood-soaked towel, were used to cover the bodies.
Russian-installed officials in Zaporizhzhia blamed Ukrainian forces for the strike, but offered no evidence.
Russian strikes were also reported in the city of Dnipro. Regional Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said at least one person was killed and five others injured.
The Ukrainian Air Force said the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Odessa were also targeted by Iranian-supplied suicide drones that Russia has increasingly deployed in recent weeks, apparently to avoid lose more pilots who do not have control of the Ukrainian skies.
Putin was due to deliver a major speech at the ceremony to bring Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia into Russia. The Kremlin planned for the region’s pro-Moscow administrators to sign annexation treaties in the ornate St. George Hall of the Moscow Palace that is Putin’s seat of power.
Putin also issued decrees recognizing the supposed independence of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, steps he had already taken in February for Lugansk and Donetsk and earlier for Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, called an emergency meeting of his National Security and Defense Council and denounced the latest Russian strikes.
“The enemy is raging and seeking revenge for our steadfastness and failures,” he posted on his Telegram channel. “You will certainly answer. For every Ukrainian life lost!”
The United States and its allies have pledged even more sanctions to Russia and billions of dollars in additional support for Ukraine as the Kremlin replicates the annexation playbook used for Crimea.
As Ukraine pledges to retake all occupied territory and Russia pledges to defend its gains, threatening to use nuclear weapons and mobilizing 300,000 additional troops despite protests, the two nations are on a increasingly escalating collision course.
This was underscored by the fighting for Lyman, a key node in Russian military operations in Donbass and a sought-after prize in the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in late August.
Russia-backed Donetsk separatist leader Denis Pushilin said the city was now “half surrounded” by Ukrainian forces. In comments reported by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, he called the setback “worrying news”.
“Ukrainian armed formations,” he said, “are trying to spoil our celebration.”