President Putin continues playing hardball and sending tough signals in the face of Trump administration criticisms, and after on Monday the White House confirmed it is reversing course on its recent pause on weapons to Ukraine, as it will instead send more.
Russia overnight launched an unprecedented 728 Shahed drones as well as decoy drones, accompanied also by 13 cruise and ballistic missiles, Ukraine’s air force announced Wednesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described that the northwestern city of Lutsk, near the borders with Poland and Belarus, suffered the most intense attacks and damage, and ten other regions were also targeted.
Lutsk hosts military airfields frequently used by Ukrainian cargo planes and fighter jets, and has long been a region crucial to military logistics and a hub for foreign military.
Zelensky said that the Kremlin was “making a point” with this fresh attack, especially as it comes so closely on the heels of the Pentagon U-turn concerning weapons shipments to Kiev.
“This is a telling attack — and it comes precisely at a time when so many efforts have been made to achieve peace, to establish a ceasefire, and yet only Russia continues to rebuff them all,” he wrote on X.
“Our partners know how to apply pressure in a way that will force Russia to think about ending the war, not launching new strikes,” Zelensky added, and called for more Western anti-Moscow sanctions, particularly targeting its energy sector.
Russia’s Defense Ministry meanwhile later confirmed it launched “long-range” and “precision” strikes on Ukraine overnight Tuesday, seeking to take out military airfield infrastructure. The statement claimed that “all designated targets were destroyed.”
The bar on these massive drone swarm attacks keeps getting set higher, as earlier this month Russia sent a record over 500 UAVs. Never before has a single night’s assault reached this level of over 700 drones and missiles.
The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, pointed out on social media, “It is quite telling that Russia carried out this attack just as the United States publicly announced that it would supply us with weapons.”
The tempo of attacks is definitely and very noticeably increasing:
Geopolitical and war monitor blog Moon of Alabama observes of this trend:
That’s nearly 100 long range drones per day which target Kiev and other bigger cities. These are by the way no longer Iran made Shahed drones but a third generation development based on the original design. These drones are now bigger. They have new engines and fly faster and higher. Their load of explosives is now about 90 kilogram, double that of the original version. For each of these drones launched against Ukraine there is an additional decoy drone flying along. The decoys look similar but are not armed and much cheaper. They are to attract the air defenses while the real drones pass through.
Recent targets have been Ukrainian refineries, industrial objects and, during the last days, recruiting offices of the Ukrainian military.
These offices are in public buildings. Their addresses are naturally known as the whole mobilization process for additional soldiers is being run by them. The recruiters are hated by the population. Ukrainians are published the addresses of mobilization offices with requests to Russia to hit them.
If true that would suggest unprecedented domestic anger directed at the Zelensky government and its notoriously harsh recruitment tactics, which have for years seen young men get nabbed on the streets and forced into vans by recruitment officers.
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