Ukraine’s parliament is expected to vote on a bill to impose economic sanctions on Iran. The news came hours after Russian forces launched the largest-ever attack by Iranian-made drones on Kiev, on the day the Ukrainian capital celebrated 1,541 years of its founding.
“A city of free and courageous people, Kyiv has become a symbol of Ukraine’s unbreakable spirit and the Kremlin’s failed imperial ambitions,” Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov wrote. “Kiev survived one of the largest Russian air strikes since the beginning of the war. They failed…”, he concluded. In the early hours of Sunday, Moscow launched an attack with dozens of Shahed drones launched from the Russian regions of Briansk and Krasnodar.
According to Ukrainian authorities, out of 59 unmanned attack aircraft launched, 58 were shot down by air defenses. The wreckage of the downed drones and the one that overtook the anti-aircraft guns caused two deaths and three injuries. On the same day, Dnipro authorities updated the list of victims of the bombing of a clinic in that city two days earlier: four people died and more than 30 were injured. The European Commission called these military actions “barbaric attacks”, according to Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Nabila Massrali.
“Tehran has become a key ally of Moscow in this war and is deliberately supplying weapons for attacks on civilian cities,” presidential adviser Mikhailo Podolyak said after the 14th attack on the capital this month. Kiev’s relations with Tehran, which has supplied Moscow with drones and other weapons, will deteriorate with the predictable approval by deputies of sanctions against Iran, following a proposal from President Zelensky’s office, following a National Security decision to that effect and Defense Council.
Podolyak said the sanctions would be imposed for 50 years, a symbolic number in response to the estimated number of drones attacking Kiev. More: Counsel made a thinly veiled threat: “I would like to remind the Tehran authorities of the basic laws of life, in particular the law of the boomerang. Do not be fooled by the illusion of geographical remoteness or a misunderstanding of Ukraine’s current priorities. Once released, Shahed will surely find his way to the manufacturer one day.”
A few days ago, Zelensky addressed Iranians and asked society if they wanted to be complicit in Russian terrorism. A spokesman for the foreign ministry hinted in response that the impeachment of the Ukrainian leader was an attempt to gain more military and financial support from the West by waging “anti-Iranian propaganda”.
On the Moscow side, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man who heads the forces of his Wagner Company, again criticized the military leaders. Now he has criticized the fact that he was allegedly silenced by the media. Censorship of information about him and his group will eventually provoke a violent response from the Russian people, he said. “The fact that senior officials are trying to silence everyone so that Wagner is not talked about will only boost people,” he said.
A few days ago, in an interview with Russian pro-Kremlin Konstantin Dolgov, Prigozhin acknowledged that Russia had not achieved any of the objectives of the campaign in Ukraine and praised the Ukrainian army. Dolgov will have been fired from the medium for which he published the interview, Telega.
Source: DN
