Kyiv, Ukraine
Reuters
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy continued his appeals to leaders of the Group of Seven nations on Tuesday for more air defence capabilities as the G7 vowed to support Kyiv for “as long as it takes.”
NATO said it was closely monitoring Russia’s nuclear forces following a string of Russian battlefield defeats in Ukraine and that the allies were also boosting security around key infrastructure after recent attacks on Baltic Sea gas pipelines.
Local residents stand next to their car, destroyed by the previous day’s Russian military strike, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in central Kyiv, Ukraine on 11th October. PICTURE: Reuters/Gleb Garanich
Russian missiles again hit Ukrainian cities but with less intensity than on Monday, when dozens of strikes killed 19 people, wounded more than 100 and knocked out power across the country in Moscow’s biggest aerial offensive since the start of its invasion on 24th February.
UKRAINE EXHUMES DOZENS OF BODIES IN TWO LIBERATED EASTERN TOWNS
Ukrainian authorities said on Tuesday they exhumed the bodies of dozens of people, including civilians and a one-year-old baby, to determine the cause of death following the retreat of Russian troops from two recently-liberated towns in the eastern Donetsk region.
“These are local civilians and our defenders, armed forces servicemen,” Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said as forensic workers in white suits moved around one of the sites at a cemetery in Lyman, retaken from Russian forces on 1st October.
He said the bodies of 55 people had been exhumed in the town, including civilians. The prosecutor general’s office said authorities had counted 110 trenches containing graves, including some for children, at the Nova Maslyakivka cemetery.
“The youngest is only one year old,” it said in a statement on its website. “She is buried next to the whole family.”
A doll rested against the foot of one cross marking a grave with the name Yelena Kisil, born on 18th October, 2019, alongside another cross marking the grave of Lyudmila Kisil, born on 27th March, 2021. Both died on 24th May, 2022, during the period when Russian forces were battling to seize Lyman.
Kyrylenko said that preliminary results on the 55 exhumed bodies indicated deaths resulted from “explosive and projectile injuries, bullet injuries”.
“We also don’t exclude torture, especially among the civilian victims,” he said. But only court medical experts would be able to tell for sure, he added.
Reuters could not independently determine the causes or timing of the deaths.
At a separate site about 20 kilometres to the west in the town of Sviatohirsk, the prosecutor general’s office said law enforcement officers had exhumed 34 bodies, some of which it said showed signs of violent death, including gunshot wounds, rib and skull fractures, and mine and explosive injuries.
“The burnt bodies of two citizens were also found in a car,” it said in the statement. “Their identities are being established.”
Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly accused Russian troops of committing atrocities in occupied territories, a charge Moscow denies.
Last month the bodies of 436 people were exhumed from a burial site in the northeastern town of Izium after it was liberated. Most appeared to have died violent deaths, local officials said.
– ZOHRA BENSEMRA, ABDELAZIZ and ELAINE MONAGHAN, Lyman, Ukraine/Reuters
More missile strikes killed at least one person in the south-eastern Ukrainian town of Zaporizhzhia and left part of the western city of Lviv without power, local officials said. Air raid sirens earlier wailed across Ukraine for a second day.
“When Ukraine receives a sufficient quantity of modern and effective air defence systems, the key element of Russia’s terror, rocket strikes, will cease to work,” Zelenskiy told G7 leaders at a virtual meeting where he again ruled out peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine on Tuesday received the first of four IRIS-T air defence systems Germany promised to supply, a German defence ministry source said.
The White House later said the United States was speeding up the shipment of sophisticated NASAMS air defenses to Ukraine. Washington has already provided more than $US16.8 billion worth of security aid to Ukraine during the war.
Zelenskiy’s government has mixed gratitude for such aid with continued pleas for more powerful weapons and faster deliveries.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on allies to swiftly disburse current commitments to Ukraine.
“Uncontrolled escalation”
The G7 – which groups the United States, Germany, France, Japan, Britain, Italy and Canada – pledged continued “financial, humanitarian, military, diplomatic and legal support…for as long as it takes” to Ukraine, it said in a statement.
It also condemned “indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilian populations” as war crimes and said Putin would be held to account for them.
Putin is a “rational actor who has miscalculated significantly,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a CNN interview.
Moscow, which calls its actions in Ukraine a “special military operation” to eliminate dangerous nationalists and protect Russian speakers, has accused the West of escalating and prolonging the conflict by supporting Kyiv.
“We warn and hope that they realise the danger of uncontrolled escalation in Washington and other Western capitals,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by RIA news agency on Tuesday.
Kyiv and its Western backers accuse Russia of an unprovoked land grab in Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow was open to talks with the West, a claim Washington dismissed as “posturing” because Russia has continued to strike Ukrainian cities.
In an interview on state television, Lavrov said Russia was willing to engage with the United States or with Turkey on ways to end the war, now in its eight month, but had yet to receive any serious proposal to negotiate.
Putin, under domestic pressure to ramp up the war as his forces have lost ground since early September, said he ordered Monday’s strikes as a response to a deadly explosion that damaged Russia’s bridge to annexed Crimea last weekend.
People shelter inside a subway station during a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 11th October. PICTURE: Reuters/Viacheslav Ratynskyi
Residents in the capital Kyiv took cover on Tuesday for a second day deep in the underground metro, where trains were still running.
Viktoriya Moshkivski, 35, and her family were among hundreds of people in the Zoloti Vorota station, near a park where a missile ripped a crater next to a playground on Monday.
“[Putin] thinks that if he scares the population, he can ask for concessions, but he is not scaring us. He is pissing us off,” she said as her sons, Timur, five, and Rinat, three, sat by her side on a sleeping bag, the younger playing with an action figure.
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More strikes
In recent weeks, Moscow has annexed new tracts of Ukraine, mobilised hundreds of thousands of Russians to fight and repeatedly threatened to use nuclear arms, stoking alarm in the West. A European diplomat said NATO was considering convening a virtual summit of the alliance to consider its response.
NATO has not noticed any change in Russia’s nuclear posture following the threats, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday.
Stoltenberg also said NATO allies would meet any attacks on critical infrastructure with a “united and determined response.”
It remains unclear who was behind explosions last month affecting Russian gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea. Moscow has denied any involvement and said the United States stands to benefit if it cannot transfer its gas to Europe.
The alliance will proceed with its annual nuclear preparedness exercise “Steadfast Noon” next week – in which NATO air forces practise the use of US nuclear bombs based in Europe with training flights – without live weapons.
– With reporting by Reuters bureaux
