US warns of possible aggressive Russian attacks on civilian targets
US intelligence agencies believe Russia will step up efforts to attack civilian infrastructure and government buildings in Ukraine as the war nears its seventh month and Ukraine prepares for Independence Day celebrations. Independence, the State Department and other US officials said.
The US government on Monday released an intelligence alert to ensure officials’ concerns about the threat reached a wide audience. The United States embassy in Kyiv issued a security warning and again urged US citizens to leave Ukraine.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has received information that Russia is intensifying efforts to launch attacks on civilian infrastructure and government facilities in Ukraine in the coming days,” the alert said.
Ukrainian and American officials have been equally concerned about the possibility of an intensification of Russian missile attacks, possibly planned to coincide with Ukraine’s Independence Day on Wednesday and in response to a string of attacks on Russian military targets in Crimea, Russia’s Black Sea peninsula, illegal in 2014 annexed.
Ukraine has also continued its campaign to isolate Russian troops in the south, saying on Monday that its forces used precision missiles to stop Russian repairs to a bridge key supply in the occupied Kherson region. on several previous occasions and the extent of the damage from the last hit was unclear.
Security measures are being tightened throughout Ukraine. The officers scatter through the streets. Large celebrations were banned and people were told to pay special attention to air raid sirens.
“We have to be aware that this week Russia could try to do something particularly evil, something particularly cruel,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his late-night address on Saturday, and there is another concern: that Russia could use the milestone to start show trials.
Videos have emerged showing iron cages being built on the stage of the Philharmonic Theater in Mariupol, a city occupied by the Russians. The fear is that while Ukraine celebrates decades of self-government, the Russians will try prisoners of war there as terrorists. “Our enemy is insidious,” the Ukrainian National Police said in a statement. “He can inflict painful blows on the days of the most important national holiday – the Independence Day of Ukraine.”
Mick Mulroy, a former C.O. officer and Pentagon official, said he expected Russia to strike targets in Kyiv, possibly using the killing of Daria Dugina in a car bomb outside Moscow on Saturday to capture the to justify attacks. Ms. Dugina, 29, was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, a political theorist who provided the intellectual framework for President Vladimir V Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The mood in Kyiv was mostly somber on Monday. The city has been on the mend since Russian forces withdrew from its outskirts just over a month after the war. The streets are full of people meeting with friends, going to work, or taking a walk. under the sun. But with the war still raging in the south and east of the country, the sense of normalcy is fragile.