KYIV: Russia launched a record 188 drones at Ukraine overnight, Kyiv said Tuesday, amid growing international tensions after Russia fired a nuclear-capable missile that could reach European cities. The Kremlin declined on Tuesday to confirm that Ukrainian forces had again launched US-provided long-range ATACMS at Russia this week but blamed Washington for escalating the conflict nonetheless. Moscow and Kyiv have been ratcheting up their drone and missile broadsides, with Ukraine recently firing US long-range missiles at Russia and the Kremlin retaliating with an experimental hypersonic missile.

The barrage came as ambassadors from Ukraine and NATO’s 32 members were due to meet in Brussels over Russia’s firing last week of the intermediate-range missile on the city of Dnipro. "During the night attack, the enemy launched a record number of Shahed strike unmanned aerial vehicles and unidentified drones,” the air force said Tuesday, referring to Iranian-designed drones and putting the overall number fired at 188.

The air force said it had shot down 76 Russian drones in 17 regions, while another 95 were either lost from their radars or downed by electronic jamming defensive systems. It did not specify what happened to the remainder. Moscow also fired four Iskander-M ballistic missiles, the air force said. "Unfortunately, critical infrastructure facilities were hit, private and apartment buildings were damaged in several regions,” a statement said.

Explosions in Kyiv

AFP journalists heard explosions ring out over the capital, while Kyiv city officials said the air alert had lasted five hours and 10 Russian drones were shot down there. In the western Ternopil region, which is among those spared the worst of the fighting, authorities said drones had damaged a "critical infrastructure facility,” without elaborating. They said however that the attack had disrupted electricity in the city of Ternopil and surrounding towns, and that engineers were working to stabilize supplies.

Putin had said the new missile attack last week was in response to Ukraine firing weapons supplied by the United States and Britain into Russia. The Kremlin leader warned that Moscow felt it had the right to hit military facilities in countries that allow Ukraine to use their weapons against Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week called the strike "the latest bout of Russian madness” and appealed for updated air-defence systems to meet the new threat.

Kyiv says it hopes to get "concrete and meaningful outcomes” after calling the meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council. But diplomats and officials at NATO have played down expectations for any major results from the consultations on Tuesday afternoon at the alliance’s Brussels headquarters. The most that is expected is a reiteration of NATO’s earlier insistence that Moscow’s deployment of the new weaponry will not "deter NATO allies from supporting Ukraine”.

Russian forces advance

The meeting "provides an opportunity to discuss the current security situation in Ukraine and will include briefings from Ukrainian officials via video link,” a NATO official said. The Kremlin dismissed the meeting saying it was unlikely any significant decisions would be taken. On the battlefield, Ukraine’s fatigued troops are struggling to halt advances by Russian forces in the east of the country. Russia said Tuesday its troops had captured another village in the Kharkiv region, in an area where the front line had been relatively stable until recently.

The defense ministry said its units had "liberated” the settlement of Kopanky,” a village near the Ukrainian-held city of Kupiansk that was previously captured by Russian forces at the start of the 2022 offensive before being re-taken by Ukraine later that year. Moscow also on Tuesday confirmed it had detained a British man it captured fighting for Ukraine in Kyiv’s offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region. A court in the region said it had on Monday ordered James Scott Rhys Anderson be remanded in custody, alleging he had "participated in armed hostilities on the territory of the Kursk region”.

‘Genocidal activities’

Russia is carrying out "genocidal activities” by laying landmines on Ukraine’s territory, an official from Kyiv’s defense ministry told a landmine conference in Cambodia on Tuesday. Russian forces were planting landmines "in cities, farming households, public transport stations, remotely by means of artillery, helicopters, multiple rocket launch systems and drones”, said Oleksandr Riabtsev of Kyiv’s defense ministry. These "genocidal activities” had affected areas home to six million Ukrainians, he told a landmine conference in Cambodia’s Siem Reap.

Another Ukrainian defense official told the conference Kyiv will not fulfil a commitment to destroy a stockpile of around six million landmines left over from the Soviet Union because of Russia’s invasion. The commitment made in connection with the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention’s Oslo Action Plan is "currently not possible” due to Russia’s invasion, Yevhenii Kivshyk said. Arsenals and other sites where anti-personnel mines are stored "have been under constant air and missile strikes by the armed forces of the Russian Federation”, he said. "In addition, some of them are in the territories that are currently under occupation by the Russian armed forces,” Kivshyk said.

Therefore there was "no possibility whatsoever to conduct audit and verification of the anti-personnel mine stocks”. Ukraine is a signatory of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention and has committed to destroying its stockpile of landmines. But it has previously missed deadlines to destroy its stockpile. Last week Washington announced that it would send anti-personnel landmines to Kyiv to help its forces battle Russian troops, a decision immediately criticised by human rights campaigners. The United States and Russia are not signatories to the anti-landmine convention. Kivshyk made no mention of the US offer to Ukraine during his speech to the conference in Siem Reap. - AFP