Ukraine-Russia conflict stay: Nato warplanes scrambled by Poland after Putin’s forces assault Ukrainian vitality grid | EUROtoday

Russian troops conducted strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, successfully hitting all designated targets, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

The ministry also said that Russian troops have taken control over the village of Ukrainka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.

The Kremlin has said that Russia’s focus on the new US sanctions on the oil sector was to minimise their impact but that nothing was ruled out in relation to a possible response from Moscow.

“We are carefully analysing the situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “The point is to take those measures that would minimise the consequences of these illegal measures and that would best serve the interests of our country, first of all, and our companies.”

When asked specifically about a possible Russian response to the US sanctions, Peskov said: “Nothing can be ruled out. Whatever is best in the interests of our country will be done.”

The US Treasury imposed wider sanctions on Russian oil on 10 January, targeting producers Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz, as well as 183 vessels that have shipped Russian oil.

Russia launched a massive aerial attack against Ukraine on Wednesday, forcing the country to introduce preventive power cuts, the Ukrainian energy minister said.

“The enemy continues to terrorize Ukrainians,” Herman Halushchenko wrote on Facebook, urging residents to stay in shelters during the air raid alerts and follow official updates.

Moscow launched more than 40 missiles, and at least 30 were shot down, said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, adding about 70 strike drones were involved in the attack. It remains unclear how many were intercepted.

The state energy company Ukrenergo reported emergency power outages in the Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kirovohrad regions.

The attack comes a day after the Russian Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of firing multiple Western-made missiles at Russia’s Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine, claiming in an online statement that the attack “will not go unanswered.”

Russia focused Ukraine’s gasoline infrastructure and different vitality services in its newest main air strike on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned.

He mentioned that Ukrainian air defence downed at the least 30 out of over 40 Russian missiles launched within the assaults.

Vladimir Putin will host his Iranian counterpart this week for the signing of a broad partnership pact between Moscow and Tehran, the Kremlin mentioned on Monday.

Ukraine and the West have accused Tehran of offering Moscow with tons of of exploding drones to be used on the battlefield in Ukraine and serving to launch their manufacturing in Russia.

The settlement on a “comprehensive strategic partnership” between the international locations will likely be signed throughout Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian’s go to to Moscow on Friday, the Kremlin mentioned.

It added that the leaders will talk about plans for increasing commerce and cooperation in transport, logistics and humanitarian spheres together with “acute issues on the regional and international agenda.”

Australia has summoned Russia’s ambassador to the nation over experiences {that a} Melbourne man was killed after being captured whereas preventing for Ukraine.

Reports of Mr Jenkins’s loss of life stay unverified.

Volodymyr Zelensky is visiting Warsaw at the moment, the Polish prime minister’s workplace mentioned, days after confirming a breakthrough in ties between the 2 nations over a Second World War dispute.

Ukraine and Poland have a historic dispute on wartime exhumations that has stood between the allies however that has not stopped Warsaw from being one in all Kyiv’s staunchest backers because the Russian invasion in 2022.

Ties between the neighbours have been strained for generations by the Volhynia killings that came about from 1943 to 1945.

Last week, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk hailed a “breakthrough” in ties, saying that Ukraine had decided to permit the primary exhumations of victims to happen.

Poland says greater than 100,000 Poles had been killed within the massacres by Ukrainian nationalists. Thousands of Ukrainians additionally died in reprisal killings.

Poland has lengthy demanded free entry for its specialists to websites the place the stays of these killed are believed to have been buried, in order that they are often exhumed for correct funerals.

Ukraine usually refers back to the Volhynia occasions as a part of a battle between Poland and Ukraine that affected each nations.

Ukraine has launched emergency energy cuts in six areas amid a “massive” Russian missile strike, its nationwide grid operator Ukrenergo mentioned in an announcement this morning.

The emergency energy outages have been carried out in Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kirovohrad oblasts as a result of large-scale missile assault, it mentioned.

Ukrainian vitality minister German Galushchenko mentioned “preventative measures” had been in pressure.

“The enemy continues to terrorise Ukrainians. The transmission system operator is implementing preventive restriction measures due to the large-scale attack,” he mentioned.