Just a minute from the sound of the sirens to the roar of the explosions: yesterday morning the inhabitants of Kiev understood very quickly that this time the Russians were firing the new generation missiles to penetrate the anti-aircraft defenses. Generally, when Moscow uses drones and old cruise missiles, up to 10 minutes pass between the first alarm and the explosions, time that allows people to escape to shelters even in the middle of the night. But yesterday it wasn’t like that. The explosions caused over a dozen injuries in the central districts of Percherskyi, Solomianskyi, Holosiivskyi and Darnytskyi and damaged some historic buildings.
War at a distance
According to military spokesmen, the Russians fired two 3M22 Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles from bases in Crimea, which were designed in 2022, capable of reaching 11,000 kilometers per hour and 28,000 meters of altitude and have already been used two or three times in the past. The capital’s defenses appear to have managed to hit them as they fell, scattering the debris, which caused less serious consequences. Among the buildings destroyed also the Academy of Decorative Arts and Applied Arts.
Both President Zelensky and Foreign Minister Kuleba reacted by returning to call for the immediate sending of Western military aid. “There are no atrocities that the Russian bastards would not be ready to commit, including the use of ballistic missiles in the heart of a metropolis with several million inhabitants. We particularly need Patriot missiles capable of defeating enemy attacks”, specified Kuleba. The long-distance war between Russia and Ukraine has been growing in intensity for a couple of weeks. Kiev has been attacked at least three times in the last five days. Odessa and Mykolaiv are continually targeted. In the last week alone the Russians reportedly fired 700 bombs, 190 missiles of various types and 140 drones. Ukraine responds by targeting Russian refineries, as well as Belgorod, Crimea and Rostov in the south.
State of alarm
The Western allies are in a constant state of alarm. One hundred thousand soldiers immediately, highly trained and ready for action: NATO is accelerating the execution of the plans developed at the summits, first in Madrid in 2022 and then in Vilnius in 2023, to face a possible Russian attack. A few days ago the deputy commander of the Polish armed forces, Karol Dymanowski, publicly declared that “thousands of NATO soldiers are already deployed in Poland”. There are at least 100 thousand, Alliance sources informally confirm. They are part of the so-called “Response Force”, the rapid reaction nucleus which remained inactive for years, but which after the invasion of Ukraine became the most important pillar of the strategy now also shared by Finland and Sweden. In the space of a few months we went from 40 thousand to 100 thousand units. A few more months and the objective of 300 thousand men and women in uniform, deployed largely on the eastern flank of Europe, should be reached.
The hub of operations is now Poland, where the United States has installed an army corps command with the task of coordinating the movements of ground troops along the corridor from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Yesterday, in Brussels, there was it was a meeting to monitor the degree of border coverage: it was decided to further strengthen the protection of Bulgaria. Great attention, naturally, to the defense of airspace. The surveillance shifts have been strengthened and the network has no stretch marks.
The planned raids
The alert, therefore, is general, even if there is no anxiety. Of course, on Friday evening, the news of theMoscow attack caused great concern. But now frenzy and alarmism are useless. Instead, clarity is needed. For example: the massive bombings on Sunday and yesterday should not be interpreted as the first act of the Kremlin’s new script. The instigators of the massacre in Moscow are Ukrainians and therefore we will submerge Kiev with the most powerful missiles we have. In reality, our interlocutors point out, the Russians do not have enough ordnance and between one raid and another between 30 and 40 days pass. The weekend air raids on the capital appeared to be a response to the massacre claimed by ISIS, but they were planned well in advance, after a 4-5 week pause.
The USA maintains a key role, on a military and political-diplomatic level, recommending caution. Once again, Joe Biden wants to avoid direct confrontation. All the military moves underway along NATO’s eastern border should not be understood as preparations for a direct intervention on Ukrainian soil. The Biden administration will continue to support the Ukrainian resistance, sending weapons and ammunition, not soldiers. From this point of view, the carnage in the Russian theater has changed nothing.