28, March 2023
Russia says Ukraine using long-range US artillery 0
Moscow announced Tuesday it had for the first time downed a long-range rocket supplied to Ukraine by the United States, weapons Kyiv said were key to an anticipated counter-attack against Russian forces.
The statement from Russia’s defence ministry came a day after Ukraine said it received modern Leopard and Challenger battle tanks from Germany and the United Kingdom to push back Moscow’s army in east and southern Ukraine.
Fighting in recent months between Russian and Ukrainian forces has concentrated on the eastern city Bakhmut, and Kyiv says it is holding out in the Donetsk region urban hub to exhaust Russian forces and then more easily push them back.
“Air defence (forces) downed… a GLSDB guided rocket,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement, referring to ground-launched small diameter bombs produced by Boeing and the Saab Group.
These devices have a range of up to 150 kilometres (93 miles), which would threaten Russian positions and supply depots far behind the front lines.
The Pentagon announced last month it was providing Ukraine with the artillery as part of a $2.2 billion arms package.
“This gives them a longer-range capability… that will enable them to conduct operations in defence of their country and to take back their sovereign territory,” Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said at the time.
Ukraine had been asking the United States for munitions that can fly farther than the HIMARS rockets, which have an 80-kilometre range.
The West had been wary of supplying the weapons over concerns Kyiv could use them to target Russia.
HIMARS played an important role in Ukraine’s recapture of Kherson in the south last year but the GLSDB potentially gives Ukraine forces an ability to strike anywhere in the Russian-held parts of Ukraine.
‘Wear down’ Russian forces at Bakhmut
That could threaten key Russian supply lines, arms depots and air bases.
The Kremlin has consistently said the Western arms deliveries to Ukraine would ultimately not have any impact on the battlefield and only prolong the conflict and Ukrainians’ suffering.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky at the time tweeted his thanks to President Joe Biden for the new aid.
Source: AFP
14, April 2023
Russian strike kills six, including toddler, in eastern Ukraine 0
Russia shelled a block of flats in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk on Friday, killing six people including a toddler who was pulled out of the rubble but died in an ambulance on the way to hospital, police said.
Sloviansk lies in a part of the Donetsk region that is under Ukrainian control. It is close to territory controlled by Russia.
AFP journalists saw rescue workers digging for survivors on the top floor of a residential building and black smoke billowing from homes on fire across the street.
Authorities earlier said five people were killed but that there was possibly a child under the rubble of the building, a typical Soviet-era housing estate.
“The death toll in Sloviansk has risen to six,” Ukrainian police said on Twitter.
“A child died in an ambulance after being pulled out from the rubble.”
Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska said the child was a two-year-old boy and sent her condolences to the family during this “indescribable grief.”
The street below — including a playground — was covered in a layer of concrete dust and debris, including torn pages from school books and children’s drawings.
Shocked residents
“I live on the opposite side of the street and I was sleeping a little when I heard this huge boom and I ran out from my flat,” 59-year-old resident Larisa told AFP.
“I was really scared and in a state of shock,” she said, adding the impact of the shelling had broken her windows and sent shards of glass flying throughout her home.
“I heard a woman screaming, ‘there’s a child here, there’s a child here.’ She was screaming so much.”
At another impact site in a residential neighbourhood, an elderly woman in a purple cardigan — dazed from the blasts — was gathering blown-off shards of metal from the ground outside a shop.
A resident nearby, who declined to give her name, told AFP journalists the strikes had blown out her windows and dislodged her front door from its frame.
“Usually when this happens we immediately take cover in the bathroom,” she said.
“No one from our side of the building was injured but maybe someone here was,” she added, pointing to a pool of blood next to another entrance of her building.
Sloviansk is 45 kilometres (27 miles) north-west of Bakhmut — the current epicentre of fighting.
Source: AFP