Russia hits Ukrainian railway infrastructure to weigh down the passage of Western weapons

Some neighbors observed the damage to a building after a Russian attack, this Monday in Kharkov. Felipe Dana (AP)

Russian troops have hit several train stations and railway infrastructure in five points in central and western Ukraine on Monday in what appears to be a coordinated attack to hinder the country's logistics and paralyze key infrastructure.

The bombardments, which have taken place within an hour, have killed at least five people and left more than 40 injured.

These attacks come a few hours after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited kyiv, where they met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

American politicians came and went by train via Poland, in a visit that the White House had tried to keep secret.

The Ukrainian military command has assured in a note published on social networks that the attack on railway infrastructure sought to "interrupt the supply of weapons" that its Western allies send to Ukraine.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov has claimed Moscow used "precision weapons" to destroy traction substations, which have knocked out power to some of the railway lines kyiv uses to transport foreign weapons and military equipment.

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President Zelensky has been insisting for weeks on his request for weapons from his allies, now to face the second phase of the Russian invasion, which has already been 61 days old and which now has as its main focus the area of ​​Donbas, in the east, and the southern flank of the country.

The United Kingdom announced on Monday that it will send Stormer armored vehicles to Ukraine.

The US also plans to send the Eastern country a new supply of artillery pieces, rockets and grenades.

A few days after a Russian military command announced a second phase in the invasion of Ukraine, with the focus on the Donbas region and the south of the country after the failure of its offensive against kyiv, the self-proclaimed authorities of the separatist region of Transnistria, in Moldova, have assured this Monday that a government building not recognized by the international community has been bombed with a hand grenade launcher in the capital of that region, Tiraspol.

Moscow pointed out that the new objective of this offensive was also to gain access to Transnistria (border region with southern Ukraine), a territory that has been trapped in the Cold War for years and where Russia (which does not recognize this territory as independent) has a group military of about 1,000 soldiers responsible for old ammunition depots of the USSR.

In recent weeks, the Ukrainian government has warned that Russia could also launch attacks from that territory, which declared itself independent in 1990 and which, after several unrecognized referendums, voted to join Russia, with which it has no border.

However, the Moldovan president, Maia Sandu, has assured that she has no information that an offensive against Ukraine is being prepared from Transnistria.

The governor of the Ukrainian region of Vinnitsia, in the south-west of the country, accused Russia on his Telegram channel of the attack in Transnistria, which he considered a "planned provocation".

Meanwhile, large fires have devastated oil deposits in the Russian city of Briansk on Monday, 160 kilometers from the border with Ukraine and a key center for the offensive in the neighboring country.

Images posted on social media showed plumes of smoke billowing from the facility.

Columns of smoke over an oil deposit, this Monday in Briansk (Russia). NATALYA KRUTOVA (NATALYA KRUTOVA VIA REUTERS)

Russian authorities have not clarified the cause of the fires and have said they are investigating the causes.

Russian state television reported two separate explosions, one at a civilian oil storage facility, part of a pipeline, and another at a military oil depot, in what some analysts believe may be an act of Ukrainian sabotage.

On other occasions, Moscow has accused kyiv of carrying out several attacks on border crossings and other facilities inside the country and on Monday it has assured that Ukraine has attacked Nejoteevka, the border crossing on the highway from Belgorod to Kharkov.

The United Kingdom has estimated this Monday that some 15,000 Russian soldiers have died in the offensive against Ukraine, launched by President Vladimir Putin on February 24.

The Russian Defense Ministry has acknowledged just over 1,300 deaths.

In Russia, it is punishable by up to 15 years in prison to spread unofficial information (that is, all data or denunciations that do not come from government sources, including death figures) or to call what the Kremlin calls a "military operation in Donbas" a war. ”.

This offensive seeks, according to Putin, to "denazify" Ukraine, a country ruled by a Jewish president, and to "liberate and protect" Russian-speaking people, despite the fact that inhabitants of cities such as Kharkov, the second largest in the country and with a majority Russophone, they are under constant fire.

This Monday,

New evacuation failure at the Azovstal steelworks

Some children with some Ukrainian soldiers, on Saturday at the Azovstal steel mill.

The attempt to evacuate civilians trapped in the siege of the steel plant in Mariupol has failed again this Monday.

Around a thousand civilians take refuge in the underground plants of the Azovstal steelworks, where strong Ukrainian soldiers and members of the Azov battalion have become, a brigade that was founded in 2014 with ties to organizations and members of the extreme right, which over time Over the years it has been losing most of its founding members and transforming itself into a group of special forces integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard. 

Azovstal has become the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in the city on the Sea of ​​Azov, razed almost to the ground and where satellite images have shown huge mass graves in recent days.

Mariupol has become one of the symbols of the horrors of Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Russia had announced plans for a ceasefire on Monday, but the Ukrainian government warned that Moscow had again broken its promises and that it could not guarantee the safety of humanitarian corridors.

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