Russia fires rockets at Ukraine and renews ‘dirty bomb’ claims


KYIV: Russia has targeted more than 40 villages around Ukraine over the past day, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday, killing at least two people and fueling terror that is forcing people to take shelter in bomb shelters. air every night.
Russian forces launched five rockets, 30 airstrikes and more than 100 multiple rocket launcher attacks at Ukrainian targets, the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff said.
The attacks come as fears grow that Russia, facing setbacks on the battlefield, is trying to detonate a so-called ‘dirty bomb’, a device that uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste in an attempt to sow terror or could go so far as to exploit its nuclear arsenal.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday monitored the country’s strategic nuclear forces exercises that involved multiple practice launches of ballistic and cruise missiles in a show of force.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Cheese fries that the exercise was intended to simulate a “massive nuclear strike” launched in retaliation for a nuclear attack on Russia. The Biden administration said it received advance notice of the annual drills.
Shoigu also called his Indian and Chinese counterparts on Wednesday to share Moscow’s concern over “possible Ukrainian provocations involving a dirty bomb”, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Shoigu first made the allegation during calls with British, French, Turkish and American officials. Britain, France and the United States dismissed his claim as “manifestly false”.
Ukrainian authorities have warned that Moscow could be preparing to use such a device in a false flag attack.
On Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called Russia’s unsubstantiated claims “absurd”.
“The Allies reject this patently false accusation, and Russia must not use false pretenses to further escalate the war,” Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
He stressed that the 30-nation military organization “will not be intimidated or deterred from supporting Ukraine’s right to self-defense for as long as it takes.”
Despite Western rejections of Russian claims, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that Moscow had information about “an ongoing preparation in Ukraine for such a terrorist attack”.
“We will continue to vigorously inform the world community of what we know to persuade them to take action to prevent such irresponsible action by the Kyiv regime,” Peskov told reporters.
More conventional forms of warfare continued in Ukraine on Wednesday.
A Ukrainian official reported that a Russian strike hit a gas station in the city of Dnipro, killing two people, including a pregnant woman. The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentin Reznichenkosaid four injured people have been hospitalized.
Mykolaiva southern port town near the frontline of the war, is among places where residents have lined up for rations of bread and preserves as food prices rise and incomes drop add to the war burdens of low-income households in Ukraine.
Missiles hit several buildings and neighborhoods in Mykolaiv on Tuesday, but it is still unclear whether there were any casualties, according to local authorities. Further strikes were reported early Wednesday.
The only food distribution point in Mykolaiv allows each person to receive free bread once every three days. Many have to walk long distances to collect essential foodstuffs for their families.
“I only eat bread and canned goods. It’s already almost winter and it’s terrifying,” said 70-year-old Anna Bilousova.
For Olena Motuzko, 74, getting food is a challenge because she has a disabled husband who she has to leave alone for hours.
Others try to survive by hiding at night.
A 73-year-old woman spends her days at home, cooking and washing, and every evening around 6 p.m. goes underground to a small makeshift dormitory in a basement with several members of her family. She’s been doing this every night since the war started in late February.
Valentyna, who has asked that her last name not be used for security reasons, leaves her house against her will but heads for the shelter in fear of the strikes which hit almost at night, describing the sound of the impending attacks as “very scary”.
“My nervous system can’t handle it,” she said, sitting in her makeshift bedroom.
In the shelter, she and her family members count the explosions they hear, then check their phones to find out where they hit.



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