Ukraine was targeted once again at night by Russian bombardments, killing at least three people, authorities said on Tuesday, adding that the strikes targeted several regions, including Lviv and Lutsk, major cities in the west.
Russia, on the other hand, is under the effect of the economic sanctions adopted since the invasion of its Ukrainian neighbor, confronted with the fall of the ruble and inflation which is picking up again, forcing the Central Bank to increase its key rate in an attempt to curb this trend.
After a new campaign of night strikes, a tactic used for months by Russia, Moscow said it had destroyed military industrial sites “key to the Kiev regime”.
“All the targeted sites have been affected”, assured as usual the Russian Ministry of Defense, in its daily press release.
Ukraine, for its part, said it had shot down 16 of the 28 missiles launched overnight by the Russian army.
Another missile, not intercepted by the anti-aircraft defense of kyiv, however killed three people on an industrial site in Lutsk, a large city in the West.
This site belongs to the Swedish giant SKF, a specialist in ball bearings, which has confirmed the death of three of its employees.
According to AFP journalists on site, another missile hit a kindergarten playground in Lviv.
“Sometimes you forget that there is a war going on,” Dan Kvit, a 17-year-old student, told AFP, suggesting that the inhabitants of the metropolis were not used to such strikes.
The Ukrainian presidency also reported an affected sports complex in the city of Dnipro (center).
After a year and a half of war, Russia still systematically denies being responsible for civilian victims in Ukraine and ensures that its strikes are surgical and only target legitimate targets, even when residential buildings are devastated.
France on Tuesday denounced “Russia’s cynicism and complete disregard for all the principles of international humanitarian law”, in a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On the front side, Ukraine on Monday claimed some gains in the east and south, around Bakhmout, small advances as part of its grueling counter-offensive launched two months ago to liberate these territories occupied by Russia.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian army is in difficulty further north, around Kupyansk, so much so that it could not “concentrate (its) forces on the offensive in the Bakhmout sector”, admitted on Monday the deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar.
Nevertheless, “Ukrainian troops continue to slow down the Russian offensive in the directions of Kupiansk and Lyman”, according to the spokesman of the army, Andriï Kovalev.
On the southern front, where Ukrainian soldiers have been searching for weak spots in Russian defense lines for weeks, made up of minefields, trenches and anti-tank booby traps, Maliar remained vague, citing progress nonetheless.
Moscow judged that the Ukrainian army was at the end of its resources, reaffirming that its counter-offensive to retake the occupied territories was a failure.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that “the resources of the Ukrainian army are almost exhausted”.
“Despite the West’s total aid to the armed forces of Ukraine, there is no result,” he again proclaimed.
He said the military campaign in Ukraine, launched almost a year and a half ago, had proved a “serious test” for the Russian army, but that Russia had managed to “significantly” increase its production armored vehicles.
Russia, which retreated to fortified defensive positions after a series of bitter military setbacks in 2022, says it prevented the incursion of a “group of Ukrainian saboteurs” into a border region.
Finally, on the economic level, in recent weeks it has seen its currency collapse, its foreign trade, in particular its sales of hydrocarbons, suffering the brunt of the restrictive measures adopted by the West.
After long procrastination, faced with the fall of the rouble, rising inflation and criticism from the Kremlin, the Russian Central Bank finally resolved on Tuesday to a surprise increase in its key interest rate from 8.5% to 12 %.
This measure is supposed to curb the rise in prices and the decline in the purchasing power of Russians, while the authorities must devote ever greater sums to the war waged against Ukraine.
The Central Bank has also warned that in the event of inflationary pressure, a further rate hike is still possible.
15/08/2023 15:57:08 – Lviv (Ukraine) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP