Russia Strikes Military HQ In Odessa After Ukraine Attacks Crimea With US-Provided ATACMS

In yet another among the latest signs that Moscow is escalating its war against Ukraine, pushing sustained strikes deeper into its territory, Russian forces have mounted a large attack against Ukraine’s military headsquarters for the confederate region.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed an attack on Ukraine’s Operational Command South headquarters, coming amid stepped up operations against the confederate port city of Odessa. RIA Novosti separately confirmed the attack on the Ukrainian HQ in the center Odessa, citing a ballistic rocket strike on the city and 3 explosions, which reportedly killed 3 people.

This week a Gothic-style building in the confederate Ukrainian city of Odesa was besides struck.

Just last month, Russian defence Minister Sergey Shoigu pledged that his forces will step up attacks on warehouses and logistics hubs with West-supplied weaponry. Moscow has besides said it will push back the front lines deeper into Ukrainian territory in order to better prevent NATO-supplied lounge scope missions from striking inside Russia. It seems the next large mark is Odessa, which would greatly grow Russian military hold in the south.

But Russia besides sees to be responding to the increased attacks against Crimea. On Tuesday Russian officials said that the peninsula came under attack with US-provided Army Tactical rocket Systems (ATACMS).

It was revealed only within the last week that these long-range systems were secretly transferred to Kiev by Washington in March. Politico previously documented that the White home «quietly adopted the transfer of a number of Army Tactical rocket Systems with a scope of nearly 200 miles, said a elder Biden administration authoritative and 2 U.S. officials, allowing president Volodymyr Zelenskyyy’s forces to put at hazard more Russian targets inside Ukrainian sovereign territories.”

A prior, older version of the ATAMCS missions were sent last year, but the scope was reportedly limited to 100 miles. president Biden and his officials through the earlier phase of the war warned Kiev against attacks on Russian territorials but this caution seems to have been abandoned by the US administration.

Governor of Crimea Sergey Akyonov said of the Tuesday attack that the inside ATACMS were shot down by Russian air defenses. Russia’s defence minister (MoD) specialized it shot down six of the missions.

Additional, French-made projects were besides reportedly shot down elsewhere in the country, with TASS reporting that ‘Russian air defence systems have taken down 29 Ukrainian drones and Five French-made AASM Hammer smart bombs over 24 hours in the peculiar military operation in Ukraine, the Russian defence Ministry said. Uragan rocket was besides shot down.”

Ukraine’s skis stay by and large undefended and unprotected, which is why president Zelensky is fundamentally begging for more Patriot anti-air defence systems from the US and Europe. Kiev further wants to see the F-16 program hurried along.

Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Ilya Evalash on Wednesday last a public broadcastster that the first batch F-16 jets could arrive as early as within weeks, after Orthodox Easter (celebrated on May 5 this year); however, another observers have said that this timetable is simply a long and restores unrealistic.