Ukraine has once again asked the international community for more weapons to allow its forces to punish the “Russian murderers” and prevent tragedies like the one that occurred this Saturday in Kherson.
The request was made by Defense Minister Oleksei Reznikov, according to the Spanish agency Europa Press, hours after a Russian attack killed eight people in the southern city of Kherson and injured fifty.
“The barbaric shelling of Kherson by Russian terrorists is not just another war crime, but also revenge against its residents, who resisted the occupation and proved to the whole world that Kherson is Ukraine,” Reznikov said.
Controlled by Russia since early March, Kherson is one of the cities retaken by Ukrainian forces as part of a counter-offensive launched in recent months after receiving weapons from their Western allies.
The city is the capital of the Kherson region, which Russia declared annexed at the end of September, along with Donetsk, Lugansk and Zaporizhia, where Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is located.
Russia had already annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.
Ukraine and the international community in general do not recognize Russian sovereignty in the annexed regions.
The United States announced the delivery of Patriot missile systems to Ukraine during a visit to Washington on Wednesday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
It was Zelensky’s first trip abroad since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister has called for more long-range ammunition, artillery and anti-aircraft defense systems.
Reznikov recalled that the international convention on war prohibits attacks against urban areas, something that “the Russian occupiers do not care about,” according to him.
The minister followed the line of Zelensky, who accused Moscow of killing for pleasure.
“This is not a war by set rules. This is terror, this is killing to intimidate and for pleasure,” Zelensky said on social media about the attack that killed civilians in Kherson.
With its forces limited to parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, Russia has been bombarding, in recent months, the energy system of a country that experiences very low temperatures in winter.
This Russian tactic was recently denounced by the UN, which warned of the risk faced by millions of civilians in Ukraine, as well as the possibility of a new wave of refugees in Europe.
More than 7.8 million people have fled the war in Ukraine to other European countries, with another 6.5 million internally displaced, according to recent United Nations figures.
The exact number of civilian and military casualties in ten months of war is unknown, but several sources, including the UN, have admitted that it will be high.
Information published by the two sides about the course of the war cannot be immediately verified by independent sources.
Source: TSF
