Ukraine said more than 100 rockets were fired in attacks that hit residential buildings in the capital Kyiv and, elsewhere, in attacks on energy facilities that knocked out power. Even neighboring Moldova suffered blackouts after the strikes hit a power line. A defiant Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy shook his fist and declared: “We will survive everything.” The energy minister said it was the “most massive” bombing in the nearly nine-month Russian invasion. A view shows downtown Lviv without electricity after Russian missile attacks on Tuesday. (Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters) Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the retreat from Kherson, a southern city on the broad Dnipro River, since his troops withdrew in the face of a Ukrainian offensive. But the stunning scale of Tuesday’s strikes spoke volumes and hinted at anger in the Kremlin. By striking targets in the late afternoon, just before dusk, the Russian military forced rescuers to work in the dark and gave repair crews little time to assess the damage in daylight. At least a dozen districts reported strikes. As battlefield casualties mount, Russia in recent months has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid, apparently hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark. The attacks followed what were days of euphoria in Ukraine following one of its biggest military successes so far in the nearly nine-month Russian invasion – last week’s recapture of Kherson. Moscow said last week it was pulling its troops across the Dnipro River to easier-to-defend positions on the opposite bank, abandoning the only regional capital it has captured since its invasion in February. Putin had declared just six weeks ago that he would be Russian forever. But video images shot in the town of Oleshky, across from a collapsed bridge from Kherson, appeared to show Russian forces had abandoned bunkers there as well. Further east, Russian-based commanders said they were withdrawing civil servants from Nova Kakhovka on the riverbank next to a huge, strategic dam. Natalya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military, said Moscow appeared to be repositioning its artillery 15 to 20 kilometers away from the river to protect its weapons from Ukrainian counterattacks. Russia still had artillery capable of hitting Kherson from these new positions, but “we also have something to answer for,” he said.
“We will not allow Russia to wait”
Zelensky told world leaders that there would be no end to Ukraine’s military campaign to expel Russian troops from his country. “We will not allow Russia to wait it out, build up its forces and then start a new round of terror and global destabilization,” he said in a video address to a summit of G20 major economies in Indonesia. He referred to the group as the “G19”, excluding Russia. “I am convinced that now is the time when Russia’s destructive war must and can be stopped.” WATCHES | Zelenskyy addresses the “G19”:
Zelensky urges ‘G19’ to stand up to Russia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeatedly used the number 19 in his video speech to world leaders at the G20 summit in Bali, urging them to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Zelenskyy likened the recapture of Kherson to the Allied landings in France on D-Day in World War II, saying both were watershed moments on the road to eventual victory. There were no confirmed reports of Ukrainian troops crossing the river to pursue the Russians. But some analysts said Ukraine may try to exercise its battlefield advantage instead of taking a so-called “operational pause” after the advances of the past few days. “Ukraine has the initiative and the momentum and is dictating to the Russians where and when the next battle will be,” said Philip Ingram, a former senior British military intelligence officer.
Zelensky makes a peace proposal
In his speech, Zelensky outlined a peace proposal under which Russia would withdraw all its forces from Ukraine, release all prisoners and affirm Ukraine’s territorial integrity. It would indefinitely extend a program to safeguard Ukraine’s grain exports and extend it to the port of Mykolayiv, beyond the range of Russian weapons after the Kherson advance. The war was the focus of the summit, in which Western leaders denounced Moscow. Russia dismissed the criticism as unwarranted politicization. Firefighters work to put out a fire in a residential building in Kyiv that was hit by a Russian missile strike on Tuesday. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters) Western countries sought a summit statement condemning the war despite Russian opposition and a lack of unanimity. Diplomats released a 16-page draft that said: “Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed that it is causing enormous human suffering and exacerbating existing weaknesses in the global economy.”
Russian leadership unmoved
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, head of Russia’s delegation in Putin’s absence, accused the West of trying to politicize the statement. On Monday, Zelensky visited Kherson to celebrate the victory there, shaking hands with soldiers and waving to civilians. He said Ukraine has already gathered evidence of at least 400 war crimes committed by Russian troops during their eight-month occupation, including murders and kidnappings. The head of the UN Human Rights Office’s monitoring mission in Ukraine on Tuesday denounced a “terrible humanitarian situation” in the city. Speaking from Kyiv, Matilda Bogner said her teams were trying to travel to Kherson to try to verify allegations of nearly 80 cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions that have emerged in the region and “to understand if the scale is actually greater than what we have already documented”. Ukraine’s National Police chief Igor Klymenko said authorities are to begin investigating reports from residents of Kherson that Russian forces have set up at least three alleged torture sites in now-liberated areas of the greater Kherson region and that “our people can to have been held and tortured there.” The recapture of Kherson was one of Ukraine’s biggest successes in the nearly nine-month Russian invasion and dealt another stinging blow to the Kremlin. But large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine remain under Russian control and fighting continues. People receive humanitarian aid in central Kherson on Tuesday. (Efrem Lukatsky/The Associated Press)
