More strikes have been reported across Ukraine, resulting in the death of four people.
This comes two days after dozens of long-range missiles invaded Ukraine in what was believed to be the most intense barrage since the start of the war.
Fears were heightened when one rocket landed outside Ukraine on Tuesday, November 15, 2022, killing two people in a village in Poland near the shared border.
Although President Volodymyr Zelensky was at first insistent that the rocket had been fired by Russia, Kyiv’s allies said it instead appeared to have been sent by Ukrainian air defences.
However, the head of the NATO military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, said Russia was ultimately to blame for starting the war in the first place.
Many missiles that were fired by Russia on Tuesday were intercepted but those that managed to hit infrastructure targets had the effect of further depleting Ukraine’s power reserves.
In recent weeks, Russia has looked to target key Ukrainian energy infrastructure, especially Ukraine’s power grid as winter approaches. According to the president’s office, four people have died as a result of a strike on residential buildings in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Meanwhile, missiles hit one of Ukraine’s largest cities, Dnipro, causing a fire at an industrial facility and 14 injuries.
It has been reported that the city’s Pivdenmash factory which produces missiles, among other products, has also been bombed.
Nearby, 70 shells were said to have landed around the city of Nikopol, damaging infrastructure and leaving thousands of homes without power and water. More infrastructure was targeted in the Odesa and Kharkiv regions, causing three injuries in each place.
Air defences swung into action in the capital, Kyiv, where military authorities reported that two cruise missiles and two Iranian-made drones had been shot down.
The head of the Lviv region disclosed that he did not yet have confirmation that air defenses had been operating there as well.
Responding to the strikes across the country, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, accused Russia of attempting a “strike in the back” and called the strikes on energy targets “naive tactics of cowardly losers” in a Telegram post.
“Ukraine has already withstood extremely difficult strikes by the enemy, which did not lead to results the Russian cowards hoped for,” Yermak wrote, urging Ukrainians not to ignore air raid sirens.
Russia has not issued any comments on the alleged attacks.
UN Extends Black Sea Grain Contract
In other developments, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres announced an extension of a four-month-old deal to ensure the safe delivery of export of grain, foodstuffs and fertilizers from Ukraine through the Black Sea just days before it was set to expire.
The agreement is said to have been extended for another 120 days.
Guterres revealed in a statement that the United Nations is also “fully committed” to removing obstacles that have impeded the export of food and fertilizer from Russia, which is one of two agreements struck between the two countries and Turkey in July.
The deals signed in Istanbul are aimed to help bring down prices of food and fertilizer and avoid a global food crisis.
However, there was no immediate confirmation of the agreement from Russia.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the extension of the grain deal a “key decision in the global fight against the food crisis.”
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