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Russia subjects Ukraine to a new massive bombardment after Zelensky's European tour

2023-02-10T12:51:08.024Z


The Ukrainian Army claims that two Russian Kalibr rockets fired would have crossed the airspace of Romania, a NATO country, but Bucharest denies it


The anti-aircraft alarms have sounded this Friday throughout Ukraine after 10 in the morning.

The country has experienced its fourteenth massive bombardment since Moscow began the offensive against the Ukrainian energy network last October.

Dozens of missiles have been fired from the Russian Black Sea Fleet and from occupied eastern Ukraine.

The bombings on Friday have come in different phases and in the early afternoon the alarms continued to sound throughout the country.

The attacks have occurred a day after the tour that the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, has carried out in the European Union and the United Kingdom to request greater military support from his Western allies.

The Russian offensive has caused a situation of diplomatic tension between Ukraine and its partners.

Valeri Zaluzhni, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, reported that two Russian missiles had crossed the airspace of Moldova and Romania, the latter a NATO member state, on Friday morning.

If true, it would be the first time Russia has invaded NATO airspace.

The two Kalibr cruise missiles, fired from the Russian Black Sea Fleet, were aimed at the western provinces of Ukraine.

But the Romanian authorities have denied the information provided by the Ukrainian commander-in-chief and have assured that his radars have not identified the Kalibr on his territory, although they have detected their passage through Moldova.

The Government of Moldova, which unlike Romania is not part of the EU or NATO,

Bucharest denies Zaluzhni

Bucharest has been emphatic in denying Zaluzhni: “The air surveillance system of the Romanian Air Force detected an air target launched from the Black Sea from a Russian Federation ship near the Crimean peninsula, most likely a cruise missile, which has passed through Ukraine and Moldova, and has re-entered Ukrainian airspace, without being intercepted, at any time, in Romanian airspace," the Defense Ministry said.

"The closest point of the target's trajectory to Romanian airspace was recorded by radar systems about 35 kilometers northeast of the border," he added.

The Romanian Ministry of Defense, moreover, only refers to the threat of one missile and not two, as reported by Zaluzhni.

The detection of the missile put the Romanian Air Force on alert, following NATO protocols: "All standard procedures have been activated, from the moment of detection of the launch of the target to the complete clarification of this situation."

The Romanian government has added that two planes from its air forces, under NATO supervision, "were redirected to the northern part of Romania to complement the reaction options."

Two Kalibr, Zaluzhni has reported, had crossed first Moldova and then Romania within 15 minutes.

The Kalibr are missiles, guided by satellite and with the ability to maneuver.

Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses shot down missiles this morning in the western provinces of Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv.


More information

Last hour of the war in Ukraine

The only incident to date on NATO territory occurred last November, when an S-300 missile from Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses fell in Poland, killing two people.

The S-300, fired from the border regions with Poland, was aimed at a Russian missile but missed its target and hit a Polish municipality.

On that occasion, Zelensky and the Ukrainian military high command also claimed that the missile that fell in Poland was Russian, but both the Warsaw government and NATO denied this and confirmed that it was a Ukrainian S-300.

This morning's shelling has destroyed several power production and supply centers in the east, center and west of Ukraine.

In kyiv, the capital, explosions have also been heard.

At least 20 Kalibr have been fired from the Black Sea.

The Ukrainian Air Force claims to have shot down 61 Kalibr, Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruisers from the night of February 9 to noon this Friday.

The shootdown rate of Russian cruise missiles by Ukrainian defenses is over 70%, according to kyiv.

In the case of the Shahed Iranian-made bomb drones, which were used on Thursday night, the interception rate is over 80%.

The spokesman of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Yuri Ignat,

Ukrainian military authorities have also reported that up to 35 S-300 missiles have been fired this Friday at the Kharkov and Zaporizhia provinces.

Russia has repurposed S-300 short-range anti-aircraft missiles into weapons to destroy ground targets, causing them to lose accuracy and cause severe civilian losses.

An electrical infrastructure in the city of Kharkov has been destroyed, causing widespread interruptions in power service.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Energy has reported that six provinces of the country have suffered power outages.

The most affected regions are Kharkov, Zaporizhia and Khmelnitskyi, the latter, in the center of the country.

Zelensky returned yesterday from his second trip out of Ukraine since the start of the invasion.

The Ukrainian president visited the United Kingdom on Wednesday, where he received positive signals from the British government to receive fighter jets.

Moscow has warned that it will retaliate harshly against the possible delivery of NATO country fighters to Ukraine.

Zelensky also visited Paris, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The Ukrainian president appeared before the European Parliament and with EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday.

Zelensky ended his European tour by meeting Polish President Andrzej Duda in Rzeszow, a town 70 kilometers from the border and where the airport is located where most of the Western allies' arms supplies for Ukraine arrive.



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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-02-10

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