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Russia launched a rush-hour barrage of missiles toward Ukraine on Thursday, the day after Kyiv secured Western pledges of dozens of modern battlefield tanks to try to push back the Russian invasion.
\nMoscow had reacted with fury to the German and American announcements, and has in the past responded to apparent Ukrainian successes with air strikes that have left millions without light, heat or water.
\nThe Ukrainian military said it had shot down all 24 drones sent overnight by Russia, including 15 around the capital, with no damage reported.
\nBut soon afterwards, air raid alarms sounded across Ukraine as people were heading to work, and senior officials said air defenses were shooting down incoming missiles.
\nIn the capital, crowds of people took cover in underground metro stations, and a loud explosion was heard.
\nDTEK, Ukraine\u2019s largest private energy producer, said it was conducting emergency power shutdowns in Kyiv, the surrounding region and also the regions of Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk because of the imminent danger.
\nKyiv\u2019s military administration said more than 15 missiles fired at Kyiv had been shot down, but urged people to remain on shelters.
\n\u201cMissiles are flying inside the territory of Ukraine. At least two northwest through Mykolaiv region,\u201d Vitaly Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, said on the Telegram messaging app.
\nAn air force spokesman said impacts had been registered in the central Vinnytsia region.
\nWestern analysts say the attacks on Ukraine\u2019s cities are more an attempt to break morale than a strategic campaign.
\nBoth sides are expected to mount new ground offensives come the spring, and Ukraine has been seeking hundreds of modern tanks in the hope of using them to break Russian defensive lines and recapture occupied territory in the south and east.
\nBoth Ukraine and Russia have so far relied primarily on Soviet-era T-72 tanks.
\n\u201cThe key now is speed and volumes. Speed in training our forces, speed in supplying tanks to Ukraine. The numbers in tank support,\u201d President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Wednesday.
\n\u201cWe have to form such a \u2018tank fist\u2019, such a \u2018fist of freedom\u2019.\u201d
\nDrumbeat of requests
\nMaintaining Kyiv\u2019s drumbeat of requests, Zelensky said he had spoken to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and asked for long-range missiles and aircraft.
\nUkraine\u2019s allies have already provided billions of dollars worth of military support, including sophisticated US missile systems that have helped turn the tide of the war in the last six months.
\nThe United States has been wary of deploying the difficult-to-maintain Abrams but had to change tack to persuade Germany to send to Ukraine its more easily operated German-built Leopards.
\nGermany will send an initial company of 14 tanks from its stocks, which it said could be operational in three or four months, and approve shipments by allied European states with the aim of equipping two battalions \u2014 in the region of 100 tanks.
\nThe Leopard is a system that any NATO member can service, and crews and mechanics can be trained together on a single model, Ukrainian military expert Viktor Kevlyuk told Espreso TV.
\n\u201cIf we have been brought into this club by providing us with these vehicles, I would say our prospects look good.\u201d
\nUS President Joe Biden said the 31 M1 Abrams tanks that Washington will provide posed \u201cno offensive threat\u201d to Russia.
\nBut Sergei Nechayev, Russia\u2019s ambassador to Germany, on Wednesday called Berlin\u2019s decision \u201cextremely dangerous,\u201d saying that it \u201ctakes the conflict to a new level of confrontation.\u201d
\nSince invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, Russia has shifted its publicly stated goals from \u201cdenazifying\u201d and \u201cdemilitarising\u201d its neighbor to confronting a purportedly aggressive and expansionist US-led NATO alliance.
\nThe Russian invasion has killed thousands of civilians, forced millions from their homes and reduced entire cities to rubble.
\nThe heaviest fighting for now is around Bakhmut, a town in eastern Ukraine with a pre-war population of 70,000 that has seen some of the most brutal fighting of the war.
\nUkraine\u2019s military said Russia was attacking \u201cwith the aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region and regardless of its own casualties.\u201d
\nThe Russian-installed governor of Donetsk said on Wednesday that units of Russia\u2019s Wagner contract militia were moving forward inside Bakhmut, with fighting on the outskirts and in neighborhoods recently held by Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia launched a rush-hour barrage of missiles toward Ukraine on Thursday, the day after Kyiv secured Western pledges of dozens of modern battlefield tanks to try to push back the Russian invasion. Moscow had reacted with fury to the German and American announcements, and has in the past responded to apparent Ukrainian successes with air […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184142"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184144,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184142\/revisions\/184144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}