Air raid sirens continued to wail across Ukraine and in the capital Kyiv on Oct. 18 as loud blasts were also reported in several cities, along with major power disruptions in the Mykolaiv region.
Officials in Kyiv said at least two energy facilities in the central city of Dnipro had been badly damaged, presumably by Russian artillery fire.
The reports come one day after Russian forces carried out a massive wave of rocket and drone attacks across Ukraine, which left at least four people dead in the capital.
In addition to Kyiv, rocket and/or drone attacks were reported in the Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and Zhytomyr regions.
While Moscow says it’s using high-precision weapons to minimize civilian casualties, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the latest round of strikes highlights the “brutality” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to reporters on Oct. 17, Jean-Pierre said the White House “strongly condemns” the Russian strikes, and that the United States would continue to back Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”
“We will continue to impose costs on Russia,” she said, and “hold them accountable for its war crimes.”
Last week, the U.S. unveiled a fresh $725 million military-aid package to Ukraine, which, according to Defense Department officials, will include precision-guided artillery rounds and high-speed anti-radiation missiles.
The new aid package brings total U.S. military assistance to Kyiv to more than $17.5 billion since Feb. 24, when Russia initiated its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
The latest round of Russian strikes comes a week after a similar barrage of drone and missile attacks across Ukraine targeting what Moscow describes as “critical infrastructure.”
The first wave of strikes on Oct. 10 followed an explosion two days earlier that damaged a strategic bridge linking the Russian mainland to the Crimean Peninsula–an attack that Moscow has blamed on Ukrainian operatives.
On Oct. 18, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said an estimated 30 percent of Ukraine’s power stations had been destroyed since Oct. 10, leading to rolling blackouts throughout the country.
Blaming Iran
On the evening of Oct. 17, the Ukrainian military claimed to have successfully downed 37 Russian drones over the previous 24 hours. Ukrainian officials also assert that the latest attacks employed drones of Iranian manufacture–an assessment seemingly shared by the U.S. State Department.A spokesman for the U.S. State Department warned that if Iran were found to be supplying Russia with combat drones, that would constitute a breach of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231.
Adopted in 2015, that resolution provided the framework for a 2015 deal between Iran and six major powers—including the United States—that sought to curb Iran’s uranium-enrichment activities. Although the United States withdrew from the deal in 2018, Western diplomats say the resolution includes restrictions on the export of certain military technologies by Iran, including drones intended for combat.
Tehran, for its part, denies it is supplying Russia with combat drones, while Moscow has refrained from commenting on the issue.
Nevertheless, last month, Ukraine revoked the credentials of Iran’s ambassador to Kyiv amid allegations that Tehran was supplying Russia with advanced Shahed-type unmanned aerial vehicles.
Despite the latest escalations, Russia and Ukraine carried out a major prisoner swap on Oct. 17 of 218 detainees, including 108 Ukrainian women captured by Russian forces since the start of the conflict.
While there have been a handful of limited prisoner swaps in the past, the latest exchange was the largest to date.
Following the exchange, Zelenskyy called on the Ukrainian army to step up its efforts to take Russian prisoners, which, he asserted, would help secure the release of Ukrainian soldiers still held by Russia.
“I thank everyone involved in this success,” Zelenskyy said in a televised address. “I also thank all those who replenish our exchange fund, and who ensure the capture of enemies.”
‘Indivisible Parts of Russia’
The military situation in Ukraine has steadily escalated since Sept. 30, when Moscow formally incorporated four regions of the country–Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson–into the Russian Federation.The move followed referendums held in all four regions, in which a majority of residents voted to join Russia, according to Russian and pro-Russian sources.
Kyiv and its allies, for their part, say the step amounts to the unilateral “annexation” of the territories by Russia, and refuse to recognize the poll results.
Russian forces and their local allies currently hold about 60 percent of Donetsk and almost all of Luhansk, known together as the Russian-speaking Donbas region. They also control roughly 70 percent of the southern Zaporizhzhia region and almost all of neighboring Kherson.
On Oct. 18, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the four regions as “indivisible parts of Russia,” adding that Moscow would ensure their security as it would any other part of Russian territory.
