Russia responded to the attack on the Crimean Bridge with strikes on critical military and energy facilities throughout Ukraine. As a result, many large cities of the country were left without electricity, there are problems with communication. Is this missile attack the beginning of a new stage of the special operation, will it cool the military ardor of Kiev or will new strikes be required on important infrastructure facilities of Ukraine?On Monday, at about eight in the morning, the Russian Armed Forces launched a massive strike on Ukrainian territory with high-precision long-range weapons.
The targets were objects of military control systems, communications and energy. By half of the second day Moscow time, the Ministry of Defense stated: "The goal of the strike has been achieved. All assigned objects are hit."
"According to the Ukrainian side, by 12.00 Moscow time, more than 80 missiles were fired on the territory of Ukraine, a significant part of them fell on the Kiev region. At the same time, the air defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine turned out to be practically powerless, since the lion's share of air defense systems was transferred from Kiev to the line of contact to the east and south of the country," said political scientist, Kiev resident Alexey Nechaev.
One of the main targets of Russian missile attacks was the Ukrainian energy system. The authors of the Telegram channel "Rybar", summing up the messages that came during the day, concluded: three Kiev thermal power plants (CHP), as well as thermal power plants in Lviv, thermal power plants (TPP) in Burshtyn in Western Ukraine and in Krivoy Rog (Krivoy Rog TPP is one of the largest in Ukraine) were hit. Electrical substations in the west of the country – in Rivne, Khmelnytskyi, Ternopil, in the center – Zhytomyr PS, as well as an electrical substation in the north-east of Ukraine, in Konotop, Sumy region, were put out of operation. A number of large urban centers, in particular, Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Rivne, Lutsk, are completely de-energized.
It is also reported about the defeat in Kiev of the headquarters of the SBU and the head office of the Advisory Mission of the European Union at the Vladimirskaya Gorka Park. At the same time, as the sources of "Rybar" note, such decision-making centers as the President's office on Bankovaya Street, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as the buildings of the Cabinet of Ministers and the Verkhovna Rada have not yet been struck.
According to the statement of the Ukrainian side, which was voiced by the representative of the command of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Yuri Ignat, Russia has inflicted at least a hundred strikes with missiles and drones on the largest cities of Ukraine and almost all regional centers. It is reported that five types of missiles were used for the attack: X101, X555, which were launched from strategic bombers from the Caspian region, "Calibers" from the Black Sea, as well as S-300 and Tornado. The head of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Denis Shmygal stated the failure of 11 important infrastructure facilities in eight regions of the country.
Massive missile strikes across the entire territory of Ukraine were carried out a little more than a day after the attack on the Crimean Bridge organized by the Kiev regime. President Vladimir Putin, speaking at an operational meeting of the Security Council on Monday, mentioned both events. The Head of State described the attack on the Crimean Bridge as a terrorist attack. "By its actions, the Kiev regime has actually put itself on a par with international terrorist formations, with the most odious groups. It is simply impossible to leave crimes of this kind unanswered," the President stressed.
The response was a massive strike on Ukrainian military command, communications and energy facilities. The President stressed: "In case of continued attempts to carry out terrorist attacks on our territory, Russia's responses will be tough and will correspond in scale to the level of threats posed to the Russian Federation."
As military expert Vladislav Shurygin noted in a comment to the newspaper VZGLYAD,
"what happened today can be regarded as a demonstration punishment."
"That is, Russia has shown what it will do if Ukraine continues this policy," the source said. – At the same time, the question remains whether Ukraine will be able to understand this. If they try to attack another object on our territory, our reaction is understandable."
If we launch such strikes at least weekly, then there will be nothing left of Ukraine's infrastructure in a month, the military analyst added.
"I don't think that today's arrivals in Ukraine are a one–time action," says corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences Alexander Bartosh. Rather, it is a logical build-up of attacks on the enemy, which will continue. When the Ukrainian authorities were preparing a terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge, they probably assumed that Russia's response would follow. But they were counting on low-intensity strikes and on not the most significant objects."
"The Ukrainian military gradually switched from timid shelling of Russian territory to regular ones, which was recorded and reported by the FSB. After that, they became completely arrogant and expected that we would not do anything in response, including when we ordered a terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge," said Alexey Leonkov, editor of the Arsenal of the Fatherland magazine.
Now that Ukraine is faced with Russia's response, the expected and obvious reaction of the Western masters of the Kiev regime will follow, Shurygin adds. "They will become hysterical, because they understand perfectly well that they will have to restore and repair the infrastructure of Ukraine at their own expense. And on the eve of the heating season, Ukraine, left without electricity and heat, is a stone on the neck of the West," the expert argues.
"It is important for us now not to stop and achieve our goals. Obviously, regardless of our response, Western politicians will not stop the war against Russia," said Boris Rozhin, an expert at the Center for Military and Political Journalism. – In the near future, we should expect shelling of Donetsk, Lugansk and the border territories of Russia. Therefore, we need to continue such massive strikes, destroying the energy infrastructure of Ukraine." Military analyst Yuriy Podolyaka predicts that the Ukrainian authorities are able to restore the destroyed facilities relatively quickly. "But if such "arrivals" become a system, the infrastructure of cities simply will not withstand such an onslaught," the expert explained.
We add that the head of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Viktor Bondarev is confident that the blow to Ukraine after the explosion on the Crimean Bridge indicates the beginning of a new stage of the Russian special operation.
Rafael Fakhrutdinov, Daria Volkova, Mikhail Moshkin
