Ukraine regularly carries out drone attacks in territories controlled by Russia. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have foiled an “attack by 38 drones” during the night from Saturday to Sunday, which were “all” destroyed over Crimea. The previous night, the Russian National Guard had indicated that “the crash of a drone” was the “probable” cause of an incident which led to the evacuation of “around a hundred people” in a residential area of Saint -Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia, located approximately 1,000 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.
Information to remember
⇒ kyiv once again calls on its Western allies to deliver more ammunition
⇒ The death toll from the Russian strike against Odessa rises to 10 dead
⇒ Germany embarrassed by espionage affair linked to Ukraine
Death toll from Russian strike against Odessa rises to 10
A woman and an eight-month-old infant were found this Sunday, March 3, in the rubble of the building hit during the night from Friday to Saturday by a Russian drone in Odessa, bringing the death toll to ten, Ukrainian authorities said. . This attack on a nine-story building in this port city on the Black Sea caused the death of ten people, including that of a woman “found in the rubble and a baby found next to (this) woman “, lamented the governor of the Odessa region, Oleg Kiper.
Authorities had previously reported a death toll of eight. Ukrainian emergency services confirmed the death toll of ten, specifying that the baby was “eight months old”. The mother and baby “were found pressed together,” they wrote on Telegram. They also affirmed that work to “clear” the areas where this building partly collapsed was still “in progress”. However, the authorities did not report the number of injured, although emergency services had mentioned eight injured on Saturday evening.
“These attacks make no military sense […] This is terror, which aims exclusively to destroy lives, to intimidate,” denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday. “Today, Odessa and the region mourn the victims of the Russian attack,” also indicated Oleg Kiper in a separate message on Telegram, speaking of “great pain” for “all of Ukraine”.
Zelensky calls for even more ammunition
On Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky also again called on Kiev’s Western allies to deliver more, and more quickly, munitions – which Kiev is sorely lacking -, air defense systems and combat planes to repel the Russian army. “Delays in arms deliveries to Ukraine […] “unfortunately lead to such losses”, he stressed, referring to the deadly Russian strike on Odessa. “Ukraine is asking for nothing more than what is necessary to protect life”, underlined Volodymyr Zelensky, judging “impossible to understand” the “internal political games or the disputes (between Kiev’s) partner countries which limit (its) defense” against Russia.
After more than two years of war, the Ukrainian leader daily urges his Western allies to deliver military assistance more quickly. However, American aid is still blocked in Congress due to the opposition between Republicans and Democrats, and the Europeans, whose production capacities are limited, are slow to deliver the shells promised in recent months. Victory against Russia “depends on you”, Volodymyr Zelensky told his Western allies a few days ago.
Germany embarrassed by Ukraine-linked espionage case
Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised on Saturday a “very thorough” investigation after the broadcast from Russia of confidential exchanges between several German officers on arms deliveries to Ukraine, the contents of which were extremely embarrassing for Berlin.
The German Defense Ministry has confirmed that a secret air force conversation was illegally wiretapped. “According to our assessment, a conversation within the Air Force division was intercepted,” a spokeswoman told AFP. And, while not giving 100% validation, she made a pretty clear connection to the leaked conversation: “We are unable to say with certainty whether any changes have been made to the recorded or transcribed version that is circulating on social media,” she added.
The controversy emerged after the broadcast, Friday in Russia on social networks, of the recording of a conversation between high-ranking German officers by videoconference. The editor-in-chief of Russian state channel RT, Margarita Simonian, published the file lasting more than half an hour, presenting it as an exchange dated February 19. In this conversation, which AFP listened to, the participants speak in particular of the hypothesis of the delivery to Kiev of long-range Taurus missiles, of German manufacture, of what would be necessary to allow the Ukrainian forces to use them and their possible impact.