Rat u Ukrajini

[djura.net]

 

Communal kitchens and heating centres are springing up as Kyiv runs out of power and heating

[djura.net]

cnn

 

A Russian general serving as deputy head of Russian military intelligence was shot and seriously wounded in Moscow on Friday.

 

An unknown attacker fired several shots at Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev in a residential building on Volokolamskoye Highway in Moscow and fled the scene, a Russian Investigative Committee spokesperson said in a statement.

 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the Ukrainian government of being behind the attempted murder of Alekseyev, without citing evidence.

 

Alekseyev has been transferred to a city hospital, the Investigative Committee statement said. He is in intensive care and in a serious condition following the shooting, according to Russian state media.

 

Alekseyev, 64, is the first deputy head of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate, the GRU. The Russian general was one of several GRU officials sanctioned by the United States in 2016 for wide-ranging malicious cyber activity directed at undermining US democratic processes.

 

He was also sanctioned by the European Union in January 2019 following a nerve agent attack in Salisbury, England, which the British government said was carried out by GRU agents to poison a former Russian spy. The EU sanctions describe Alekseyev as “responsible for the possession, transport and use in Salisbury… of the toxic nerve agent ‘Novichok’ by officers from the GRU,” along with sanctioned Russian military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov.

[Darko]

 

 

[djura.net]

cnn

 

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said Saturday: “The fact that Russia conducted two sets of strikes with over 400 projectiles within six days of the lapse of the energy strikes moratorium demonstrates the Kremlin’s determination to maximize the suffering of Ukrainian civilians and unwillingness to de-escalate the war or seriously advance the US-initiated peace negotiations.”

“Russian forces have also modified their drones and missiles to inflict more damage, including by equipping Shahed drones with mines and cluster munitions, and such measures have disproportionately affected civilian and energy infrastructure,” the institute added.

The consequences of Russian strikes are aggravated in many urban areas by reliance on centralized heating systems, a legacy of the Soviet era. Heat is generated at thermal or combined heat and power plants before being distributed, so if such facilities are targeted many residential blocks are impacted.