Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Russia unleashed a series of attacks Monday on railway and fuel installations deep in Ukraine, far from the front line of Moscow’s new eastern offensive, as a Russian diplomat warned against provoking World War III and said the threat of nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated”.
Meanwhile, the United States has called for more weapons against Ukraine, saying aid from Western allies makes a difference in the two-month war.
“Russia is failing. Ukraine is succeeding, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said a day after he and the US Secretary of Defense made a bold visit to Kyiv to meet with President Vladimir Zelensky.
Blinken said Washington has approved the sale of $ 165 million worth of ammunition – ammunition outside the United States, mainly if not entirely for Soviet-era weapons – and will also provide more than $ 300 million in funding to buy more supplies. .
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin continued his comments, saying that while the US wants to see Ukraine remain a sovereign, democratic country, they also want to “see Russia weakened to the point where it cannot do things like invading Ukraine. “.
Austin’s comments on Russia’s weakening appear to be a change in the broader US strategic goals. Earlier, the US position was that US military aid was intended to help Ukraine win and protect Ukraine’s NATO neighbors from Russian threats.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said weapons supplied by Western countries “will be a legitimate target”, adding that Russian forces have already targeted weapons depots in western Ukraine.
“Everyone is reciting spells that we can never allow World War III,” Lavrov said in an extensive interview on Russian television. He accused Ukrainian leaders of provoking Russia by asking NATO to join the conflict.
By providing weapons, NATO forces are “adding fuel to the fire,” he said, according to a transcript on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
Regarding the possibility of a nuclear confrontation, Lavrov said: “I would not like to see these risks artificially inflated now, when the risks are quite significant.”
“The danger is serious,” he said. “It’s real. It shouldn’t be underestimated.”
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, its obvious goal was the swift conquest of Kyiv, the capital. But the Ukrainians, with the help of Western weapons, thwarted the push and forced President Vladimir Putin’s troops to withdraw.
Moscow now says its goal is to take over Donbass, a predominantly Russian-speaking industrial region in eastern Ukraine. While both sides say the campaign in the east is under way, Russia has not yet launched a full-scale ground offensive and has not made major breakthroughs.
On Monday, Russia concentrated its firepower elsewhere, with missiles and fighter jets striking far beyond the front lines in a bid to thwart Ukraine’s efforts to direct supplies to the battle.
Five stations in central and western Ukraine have been hit and one worker killed, said Alexander Kamishin, head of Ukraine’s state railway. The bombing involved a rocket attack near Lviv, a western city near the Polish border that was swollen by Ukrainians fleeing fighting elsewhere in the country.
Ukrainian authorities say at least five people have been killed in Russian strikes in the central Vinnytsia region.
Russia has also destroyed an oil refinery in Kremenchuk, central Ukraine, along with fuel depots there, said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov. In all, Russian warplanes destroyed 56 Ukrainian targets overnight, he said.
Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. general who served as NATO’s commander-in-chief from 2013 to 2016, said the latest strikes on fuel depots are part of a strategy to drain key Ukrainian military resources. Strikes on rail targets, on the other hand, are a newer tactic, he said.
“I think they are doing it for the legitimate reason of trying to block the flow of supplies to the front,” he said. “The illegal reason is that they know that people are trying to leave the country, and this is just another intimidating, terrorist tactic that will make them lack faith and confidence in traveling on rails.
Phillips P. O’Brien, a professor of strategic research at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, said the war was turning into a campaign of growing losses and gains on the battlefield.
“The two sides seem to be weakening each other every day,” he said. “So the question is what can you bring in, what’s new” and “what can you destroy on the other side.”
In Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova along the Ukrainian border, several explosions believed to have been caused by rocket-propelled grenades hit the Ministry of State Security. There were no immediate liability or reports of injuries. Transnistria is a strip of land with about 470,000 people and about 1,500 Russian troops based there.
The Moldovan Foreign Ministry said that “the purpose of today’s incident is to create pretexts to tighten the security situation in the Transnistrian region.” Earlier, the United States warned that Russia could launch attacks under a “false flag” against its own country to create a pretext for invading other nations.
Last week, Rustam Minekayev, a Russian military commander, said the Kremlin wanted full control of southern Ukraine, which he said would pave the way for Transnistria.
Approximately 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers, hiding in a steel plant in the strategic southern port city of Mariupol, are tying up Russian forces and apparently preventing them from adding to the offensive elsewhere in Donbass. Over the weekend, Russian forces launched new air strikes on the Azovstal plant to try to displace detainees.
About 1,000 civilians are also said to be sheltering at the steel plant, and the Russian military has promised to open a humanitarian corridor on Monday to leave.
Russia’s proposal has been met with skepticism from Ukraine. Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk told the Telegram news agency that Ukraine did not consider the route safe and added that Russia had violated agreements on similar evacuation routes before. She called on the United Nations to monitor the evacuation.
The city council and the mayor of Mariupol said a new mass grave had been discovered about 10km (6 miles) north of the city. Mayor Vadim Boychenko said authorities were trying to calculate the number of victims. This is at least the third new mass grave found in Russian-controlled areas near Mariupol in the last week.
Mariupol has been eradicated by bombing and fierce street fighting over the past two months. In addition to liberating Russian troops, the capture of the city will deprive Ukraine of a vital port and allow Moscow to build a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
In an evening video address, Zelensky said his country’s goal was to maintain resistance and “make the stay of the occupiers in our country even more intolerable” as Russia drains its resources.
A senior Ukrainian official has questioned the prospect of further talks between the two countries. The last sessions in Istanbul ended without a decision earlier this month.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview with the Associated Press that any talks other than those between Zelensky and Putin would bring little solution.
Britain has said it believes 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since Moscow launched its invasion. Defense Minister Ben Wallace said that 25% of Russian combat units sent to Ukraine “have become ineffective in the fight.”
Ukrainian authorities say about 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in mid-April.
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Associated Press journalists Juras Karmanau and John Gambrell of Lviv, Ukraine, and AP officials around the world.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war
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