The Russian Army assured this Saturday that it used for the first time during its offensive against Ukraine
Kinzhal hypersonic missiles,
capable of reaching a speed of at least five times the speed of sound, while advancing its siege with a strategy of attrition.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said the hypersonic missiles destroyed an underground warehouse of missiles and aviation ammunition of Ukrainian troops in the village of Delyatyn, a small community 380 miles west of the city. capital, Kyiv.
This technology, which Russia has had since 2018, has the ability to avoid anti-aircraft defenses and is launched from a fighter.
The hypersonic level reaches a speed of at least five times that of sound, at more than 3,700 miles per hour (more than 6,000 km/h), according to the newspaper El País.
A woman cries before starting to clean up the site where a shelling damaged residential buildings in kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 18, 2022. Rodrigo Abd / AP
Konashenkov also said Russian forces used the Bastion anti-ship missile system to attack Ukrainian military installations near the Black Sea port of Odessa.
Russia first used the weapon during its military campaign in Syria in 2016.
[130 people are rescued from the devastated theater in Mariupol and bombs hit an airport near Poland]
The news, which the NBC News network has not been able to verify, comes a day after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, asked to speak with Moscow to stop his invasion and
"restore territorial integrity and justice in Ukraine"
, in a video message posted late Friday on his official Telegram account.
Zelenskyy claimed that Russian forces are
blockading the largest cities
with the aim of
creating miserable conditions for Ukrainians
and that the Russians are preventing supplies from reaching cities in the center and southeast.
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"Meaningful peace and security negotiations for us and for Ukraine are the only chance for Russia to reduce the damage they have caused [by] their own mistakes," the president said.
Zelenskyy made his request as
fighting continues around Kiev.
The authorities also say that the port city of
Mariupol has lost its access to the Sea of Azov
and that Russian forces continue to bombard the city.
[Putin threatens Russians to "distinguish patriots from scum and traitors" whom he will "spit like bugs on the ground"]
Mariupol is the key trading port on the Sea of Azov, which is connected to the much larger Black Sea by a strait.
Zelenskyy said that more than 9,000 people were able to leave Mariupol on the last day.
Satellite images on Friday from Maxar Technologies showed a long line of cars leaving the city.
Fighting also continues in Mykolaiv and Kherson in the south;
in Izyum, in the east;
and in Volnovakha, in the southeast, according to the Ukrainian adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych.
For her part, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced on Saturday that both countries have agreed on
10 humanitarian corridors,
including one in Mariupol, several in the Kiev region and others in the Luhansk region.
The clashes continue a day after US President Joe Biden spoke with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to warn him that there will be consequences for China if the country decides to provide "material support" to Russia.
attrition strategy
The British Ministry of Defense believes that the Kremlin has been "surprised" by the resistance of the Ukrainian forces to its attack and that it is now pursuing a strategy that is likely to
increase the damage to civilians.
The UK said in an intelligence update on Saturday that Russia "is now pursuing a
strategy of attrition
".
"This is likely to involve the indiscriminate use of firepower [weapons], resulting in increased civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and
intensifying the humanitarian crisis
," the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said. United Kingdom.
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112 dead children
A total of 112 children have died in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, according to the country's attorney general's office.
The office also says that more than 140 children have been injured and according to the UN children's agency, more than 1.5 million children have fled the country.
Most have fled to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova and Romania.
Likewise, it is estimated that 6.5 million people have been displaced within Ukraine and that more than 3.2 million have fled the country.
With information from AP,
NBC News
, Efe and
El País.
