KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces showered Ukraine with more missiles and munition-carrying drones Tuesday after widespread strikes killed at least 19 people in an attack the U.N. human rights office described as “particularly shocking” and potential war crimes.
Air raid warnings extended throughout the country for a second straight morning as Ukrainian officials advised residents to conserve energy and stock up on water. Strikes in the capital and 12 other regions Monday caused widespread power outages and pierced the relative calm that had returned to Kyiv and many other cities far from the war’s front lines.
“It brings anger, not fear,” Kyiv resident Volodymyr Vasylenko, 67, said as crews worked to restore traffic lights and clear debris from the city’s streets. “We already got used to this. And we will keep fighting.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers by videoconference Tuesday. After the meeting, the G-7 leaders condemned this week’s blitz and said their countries “will stand firmly with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
Russia launched the widespread attacks in retaliation for a weekend explosion that damaged a bridge linking the country to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged the Ukrainian special services masterminded the Saturday attack on the Kerch Bridge.
Russia has has concentrated most of its firepower during the 7½-month war in eastern and southern Ukraine, and Ukrainian officials said the previous day’s diffuse strikes on power plants and civilian areas made no “practical military sense.”
However, Putin’s supporters had urged the Kremlin for weeks to take more drastic steps in Ukraine and actively criticized the Russian military for a series of embarrassing battlefield setbacks. Pro-Kremlin pundits lauded Monday’s attack as an appropriate and long-awaited response to Kyiv’s recently successful counteroffensives, and many of them argued that Moscow should keep up the intensity in order to win the war.
