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Russia launches overnight attacks across Ukraine

[img]An apartment building damaged by Russian drones on May 26, 2024, in Vinnytsia Oblast. (State Emergency Service of Ukraine / Telegram) [/img]
Editor's Note: This is a developing story and is being updated.

Russian forces launched a large-scale aerial attack against Ukraine the night of May 26, causing explosions in multiple regions and injuring at least three people.

The Air Force announced an aerial alert throughout the country, including the far-western oblasts, in the early hours of May 26, citing the threat of Russian missiles, drones, Tu-95MS bombers, and later, Kinzhal ballistic missiles.

Russian forces attacked Vinnytsia Oblast in the early hours of May 25, hitting residential buildings and injuring three people, Governor Serhii Borzov reported.

The attack struck an apartment building, Borzov reported at 4:23 a.m. local time. Three people were injured and residents were evacuated from the building. The State Emergency Service said the attack targeted the town of Zhmerynka, and that several buildings sustained damage.

In Mykolaiv Oblast, Governor Vitalii Kim reported that Russian drones damaged the windows of a preschool building. He also said air defense units destroyed three drones over the region.

Explosions were heard in Khmelnytskyi Oblast at around 3:30 a.m. local time, according to a correspondent from the news outlet Suspilne. Shortly thereafter, explosions were reported in Zhytomyr and Kyiv oblasts.

Residents of Starokostiantyniv in Khmelnytskyi Oblast also reported power outages, according to Suspilne.

Poland announced that it had scrambled military jets in order to ensure the safety of Polish airspace amid Russia's attack against Ukraine.

The Air Force reported the morning of May 26 that over the course of the night, Ukrainian air defense units intercepted 31 Shahed drones and 12 Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles over Mykolaiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, Khmelnytskyi, Kirovohrad, Vinnytsia and Chernihiv oblasts.

Russia's massive aerial assault follows the deadly bombing of a busy shopping center in Kharkiv in the middle of the day on May 25. The attack killed at least 12 people and injured 43. Hours later, a second Russian attack injured 25 people.

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Op zondag 26 mei 2024 00:15 schreef oheng het volgende:

[..]
Ok, maar beeld je eensch het volgende in: je bent net in je museum stuk op een AT mijn gereden, daarna zijn je beentjes eraf geblazen door een AP mijn, je hoort het gezoem van meedere drones. En dan hoor je ook nog eens deze muziek,

Hoe kut is dat dan?

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Op zondag 26 mei 2024 12:39 schreef Ulx het volgende:
[ x ]

Jezus...

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Op zondag 26 mei 2024 15:52 schreef Ulx het volgende:
[ x ]


[ afbeelding ]


De IKEA zal er ook wel aangaan.

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Russia Plans New Offensive in Ukraine’s Northeast, Zelensky Says

Moscow is again amassing forces near the border, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. His comments came as officials said that a Russian strike had killed at least 14 people in Kharkiv.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Sunday that Moscow’s forces were massing for a new ground offensive on the northeast of his country, a day after a Russian missile strike on a hardware superstore in the city of Kharkiv killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens more, according to Ukrainian officials.

“Russia is the only source of aggression and constantly tries to expand the war,” Mr. Zelensky said in a speech delivered in Englishinside the ruins of a publishing house in Kharkiv that was destroyed last week in a Russian strike.

“Russia is preparing for offensive actions” around 60 miles northwest of Kharkiv, he said, adding that Moscow is gathering “another group of troops near our border.” Mr. Zelensky gave no further details about the potential attack.

Moscow surprised Ukraine on May 10 when its troops poured across the northeastern border, punching through Ukrainian defenses and seizing villages close to the frontier. That forced the government in Kyiv to rush in reinforcements in a bid to halt the Russian advance.

One target for an assault, based on Mr. Zelensky’s comments, could be the Sumy region in northeastern Ukraine, which has seen frequent cross-border fire but no ground attacks since Russian forces attempted to seize its main city, also called Sumy, at the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. They were later forced to withdraw after fierce fighting. Ukraine’s military has previously warned of another Russian border assault in the northeast.

The May incursion was the most significant in months of fighting, and military experts say that a key Russian objective was to expand the length of the battlefield, which already stretches hundreds of miles, and in that way force Ukraine to spread its troops more thinly. In doing so, Moscow apparently hoped to extend its existing advantage in terms of the size of its military, the experts say.

The war has ebbed and flowed since President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia launched the invasion, with Ukrainian forces now defending against Russian advances in the eastern region of Donetsk, in the northeast and in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia.

One immediate casualty has been Kharkiv, which has seen a sharp escalation in the ferocity of Russian aerial attacks this month, forcing many to flee. On Sunday, the death toll from the attack on the hardware superstore rose to 14, with another 43 people wounded, according to a social media post from Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the region’s military administration.

Fire fighters extinguished the flames at the superstore, the local authorities said, and 200 emergency workers were dealing with the aftermath of the attack, according to Mr. Syniehubov.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said the strike had been conducted to ensure maximum civilian casualties. “He can’t occupy Kharkiv, hence he tries to kill it,” Mr. Kuleba wrote on social media, referring to Mr. Putin.

The Telegram social media channel of the Russian Defense Ministry has made extensive comments about fighting in recent days but made no comment about the Kharkiv strike or about others reported by Ukrainian officials, in keeping with its general practice.

Mr. Kuleba called on Ukraine’s allies in NATO to supply his country with more Patriot missiles and other systems that can defend against missile strikes.

A multibillion-dollar military aid package was stalled for months in the U.S. Congress, leaving Ukraine short of ammunition and increasingly exposed to Russian missile and drone attacks. The package finally passed last month, but much of the hardware has yet to reach Ukraine.

In a sign of Kharkiv’s vulnerability, Mr. Syniehubov reported on a second strike on Saturday, which he said hit civilian commercial infrastructure in the center of the city just hours after the attack on the superstore. At least 25 people were wounded, including a 14-year-old boy who was hospitalized, according to the regional prosecutor’s office. There was no comment from the Russian authorities.

Russia also conducted attacks beyond the usual recent battlegrounds. Gov. Vitaliy Kim, head of the military administration in the Mykolaiv region of southern Ukraine, said that exploding drones had damaged a preschool building there, while the Ukrainian public broadcasting company Suspilne reported explosions in ​Khmelnytskyi, a central region.

In his speech from Kharkiv, Mr. Zelensky appealed to President Biden and President Xi Jinping of China to attend a peace summit on Ukraine in Switzerland next month. Kyiv has attempted to rally global support for a framework that would involve the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all of Ukraine’s territory and an end to attacks on Ukrainian soil.

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Russia is producing artillery shells around three times faster than Ukraine's Western allies and for about a quarter of the cost

Sky News visited a group of new recruits who were learning how to use an N-LAW anti-tank missile, first provided to the Ukrainian military by the UK.

Russia is producing artillery shells around three times faster than Ukraine's Western allies and for about a quarter of the cost, according to an analysis shared with Sky News.

The figures, produced by the management consulting firm Bain & Company, underline a major challenge faced by the Ukrainian armed forces as they rely on supplies of ammunition from the United States and Europe to battle Russia's full-scale invasion.

The war has been described from the start as a "battle of fires" because of the volume of artillery rounds used.

It prompted the US, the UK and other European allies to seek to ramp up production in their respective factories, but their ability to manufacture artillery rounds still lags behind Russia's despite a combined economic strength that far outmatches Moscow's.

As a result, Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline say for every one round they fire against Russian positions, the invading troops can launch around five shells back.

Battling against the odds, the Ukrainians say they have become skilled at trying to make every round count.

"Often, with just one, two or three shells, we can completely destroy a target," said Senior Lieutenant Kostiantin, an artillery battery commander with the 57th Brigade, which is fighting against a new Russian invasion into the Kharkiv region, in the northeast of Ukraine.

But the commander said Ukrainian troops still need more supplies.

"We have to keep holding the Russians back… and make every metre of land they try to take cost them hundreds of lives."

Shortages force defenders to pretend in training

The research on artillery rounds by Bain & Company, which drew on publicly available information, found that Russian factories were forecast to manufacture or refurbish about 4.5 million artillery shells this year compared with a combined production of about 1.3 million rounds across European nations and the US.

On cost, it said the average production cost per 155 mm shell - the type produced by NATO countries - was about $4,000 (�3,160) per unit, though it varied significantly between countries. This is compared with a reported Russian production cost of around $1,000 (�790) per 152 mm shell that the Russian armed forces use.

Artillery is only one of many munition shortfalls faced by Ukraine.

Sky News visited a group of new recruits in the east of the country who were learning how to use an N-LAW anti-tank missile, first provided to the Ukrainian military by the UK.

They said a shortage of supplies means they just pretend to fire the weapon in training and would only use it for real when in battle - and only then when there are any stocks.

"We have a lack of N-LAWs and we need more," said a soldier with the callsign "Bolt", who was giving the training to the new soldiers in a reconnaissance battalion of 5th Brigade.

Asked whether he had a message for the factory workers in the UK who assembled the weapon, Bolt said: "We'd like to thank our Western partners for their help. But, if possible, we would be very grateful if they could provide more NATO munitions."

Factories could win the war on frontlines

The importance of producing weapons and ammunition is why many experts say factory production lines - rather than the frontline - could be where the war in Ukraine is won.

Sky News visited a factory in Belfast in April where the N-LAW missile is assembled by Thales, a global defence company. The weapon is designed by the Swedish firm Saab.

The assembly takes place inside a large hall containing a mixture of machines grinding metal and desks where delicate work takes place on tiny but vital components.

Working hours on the production line at the time were only four days a week from 7am until 4pm, though they were believed to be increasing.

Thales manufactures its own weapons here as well, including Starstreak, a short-range, surface-to-air missile that can take out aircraft, and the Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM). Both of these systems are also used in Ukraine.

The key to ramping up production in UK

Philip McBride, the managing director of Thales Belfast, said N-LAW production capacity had doubled since the start of the year and there was scope to double it again.

Asked why the expansion only began then, when Russia's full-scale war erupted in February 2022, he explained it was because of a number of factors.

Firstly, the UK Ministry of Defence supplies Ukraine with N-LAWs, rather than Thales directly. The missiles initially given to the Ukrainian military were those that the British armed forces already had in their own stockpiles.

"They've granted that and then they go through their own procurement process, agree what their actual requirement is in the UK… and once they've decided that, then they'll place orders allowing us to ramp up," Mr McBride said.

Another factor is that it can take up to two years to source the parts that are required for the N-LAW.

However, asked if production at the factory would have been expanded sooner had the Ministry of Defence put in orders earlier, the managing director said: "The earlier an order comes, the sooner we can ramp up production."

A lot of work is going on at the plant to modernise the equipment and enable a further expansion of production lines.

The number of employees has also grown, with around 900 people now working at the site and at a second facility in Belfast, compared with just 500 a few years ago.