Moscow launches more than 30 missiles on kyiv; Russia denounces two deaths in attack from Ukraine

For more than 15 months it has been a fateful routine in Ukraine: bursts of Russian rockets hit and cause destruction and death. The siege of Moscow was repeated this Friday, June 2, but the targets of the war are now making their way to other territories.

In the last few hours, kyiv’s anti-aircraft defenses were activated again when a total of 36 missiles and drones were sent by Russian troops against the Ukrainian capital.

The city was attacked simultaneously from different directions by Iranian-made Shahed drones, followed by a volley of cruise missiles from the Caspian region, said Serhii Popko, head of Kiev’s military administration.

All the projectiles, 15 missiles and 21 drones, were intercepted and shot down, according to the head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

There were no fatalities, but in the midst of falling debris from the missiles downed on cars and homes, two people were injured: a 68-year-old man and an 11-year-old boy.

“The occupiers are not stopping their attempts to terrorize the Ukrainian capital with drones and missiles,” the air force of the attacked country said in a statement.

This assault, the 19th against the Ukrainian capital in a month, occurred a day after the attacks against the city caused the death of three people, including a 9-year-old girl.

Faced with reports that the victims could not take refuge because the shelter they were going to was closed, the authorities opened investigations and President Volodimir Zelenski announced that local officials who cannot provide protection to citizens will be prosecuted.

The president also assured that he ordered a full audit of all bomb shelters in kyiv and in the rest of the country.

Moscow concentrates its fury on kyiv, counterproductive strategy?

The waves of attacks against the capital have multiplied since the beginning of May after months of relative calm while the aggressions of the Moscow Army were concentrated in other regions throughout the country, with special attention in the greater region of Donbass, in the east, and in the south, where besieged Kherson and Zaporizhia meet.

In May alone, Vladimir Putin’s army launched 17 attacks on the city. All in an attempt by Moscow to stifle kyiv’s air defenses fortified with Western military equipment. An action that would be counterproductive for the invaders, underlines the Institute for the Study of War.

The Kremlin aims to “downgrade Ukraine’s counteroffensive capabilities, but Russia’s prioritization of Kiev is likely to further limit its campaign’s ability to significantly curb Ukraine’s potential counteroffensive actions,” the Kremlin-based military think tank said. Washington, at a time when a large-scale response is expected from the Army of the invaded nation to recover territories seized by the Russians.

Both senior military commanders and Putin’s government deny attacking civilians or committing war crimes, as UN investigations have found, but his forces continue to devastate entire cities and repeatedly attack residential areas.

From defense to indirect confrontation?: Russia denounces Ukrainian attacks against its territory

As Putin’s army tightens its siege against his neighboring country, there are also reports of cross-border incursions rocking Russian regions on the border with Ukraine and putting the Kremlin on alert.

This Friday, the governor of the Belgorod region, in southwestern Russia, Vyacheslav Gladkov, He said two people were killed and two wounded after a shelling hit a road in the town of Maslova Pristan, some 15 kilometers from the Kharkiv region in northern Ukraine.

The fragments of the projectiles reached the vehicles that were transported through the place, he described. “Two women were traveling in one of them. They died on the spot from their injuries,” he said. Gladkov.

Meanwhile, in Russia’s Bryansk region north of Belgorod, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said four houses were damaged in the ramming, while the head of the neighboring Kursk region said some buildings were hit by a nighttime plane strike. unmanned.

Likewise, the Russian authorities denounced that two long-range drones hit energy infrastructure.

In recent days, Moscow officials have charged alleged pro-Ukrainian attackers to launch intensified assaults from the north of the invaded country. And on Thursday, the Defense Ministry said its forces repelled three cross-border attacks by what it said were “terrorist formations” from kyiv in the Belgorod region.

For more than a year the war has been concentrated in the territory of Ukraine where its forces constantly repel the attacks of the invaders by land, sea and air.

But more and more assaults are hitting Russian territory, denounces Moscow, while Volodimir Zelenski’s Army rejects accusations that his men are behind the attacks in border regions.

Two Russian militias and opposed to Vladimir Putin: the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) and the Russian Freedom Legion, they have claimed responsibility for the assaults in the area.

And this June 2, the Russian Freedom Legion Clashes with Moscow troops outside a Belgorod village, inside Russia’s western border, were claimed.

“We have active fighting on the outskirts of the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka (in the Belgorod region). Unfortunately, there are wounded legionnaires, but freedom is won with blood,” the group formed during the ongoing war said in a statement. ensures combat on the Ukrainian side.

However, the Russian militia blamed the deaths on the Moscow military, posting images of what it said was one of its tanks in the Russian village of Novaya Tavolzhanka and soldiers taking refuge behind a wall during a firefight.

“Near Tavolzhanka, the enemy destroyed a car with civilians, mistaking it for a vehicle of our group. At least two civilians were killed, and this is a direct consequence of the unprofessionalism of Putin’s army,” he said.

Although kyiv has denied any role in the recent cross-border incursions, the largest on Russian soil since the invasion of Ukraine began, Military experts indicate that the operations in Belgorod would have been coordinated with the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

A possible Ukrainian strategy to disperse the invading forces and force them to divert their positions inside the Ukrainian territory towards the Russian region before the announced counteroffensive begins.

“One of our tactical objectives is to attract Russian troops from other parts of the Ukrainian front (…) That is one objective, the other is to show the Russians that a different country is possible, that an armed group has appeared that is ready to fight for freedom. We want people to join us,” Alexei Baranovsky, spokesman for the political wing of Russia’s Freedom Legion, said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday June 1.

Although the two organizations that fight against Putin’s Army are made up of anti-Kremlin Russians ranging from liberals and anarchists to neo-Nazis, analysts also explain that they act with the collaboration of Kiev and that they are controlled by Ukrainian intelligence.

In fact, after an incursion into the region on May 22, a report by ‘The New York Times’, which cited senior Ukrainian commanders, He indicated that although no soldiers from the invaded country had entered Russian territory, the Kiev Army did play an auxiliary role, protecting the border with the region in the event of a Russian counterattack.

A possible indirect confrontation by the Ukrainian forces, while they support the Russian volunteers and refrain from entering the territory of the neighboring country.

With Reuters, AP and local media