Fallout from the Russian missile barrage spread over the weekend, leaving many Ukrainians without electricity or heating. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his Friday evening address that the city of Kharkiv is facing “communication problems” and blackouts, while in Kiev the heating is still being restored.
A senior Zelensky official, Mykhailo Podolyak, issued an upbeat note on the brutal fighting around the eastern town of Bakhmut. Kiev’s forces were “exceeding” their goal of reducing the Kremlin’s “capable personnel as much as possible” through “tiring battles”, Podolyak told Italian newspaper La Stampa.
Here is the latest news on the war and its ripple effects around the world.
Russia’s hypersonic missile attack on Ukraine highlights Western vulnerability: Russia fired half a dozen Kinzhal hypersonic missiles into Ukraine early Thursday, in a wave of wider strikes that left at least six people dead. Globally, advanced missiles have renewed alarm over the Kremlin’s sophisticated arsenal, highlighting that Putin has hard-to-intercept nuclear-capable weapons that the United States and its allies do not yet possess, the correspondents write. of the Post Robyn Dixon and David L. Stern.
“They are considered a priority category of weapons by most major countries,” said Sidharth Kaushal of the Royal United Services Institute think tank. “They’re useful for certain things, emphasizing air defenses, hitting high-value targets, but they’re also a very expensive ability to develop… It’s definitely not a miracle ability, but it’s an important ability.”