Toughened By War’s Scars, Kyiv Presses On While Russia Attacks; Defense Minister Reznikov Confirms Ukraine Will Receive Long-Range Missiles; RU Likely Lacks Resources to Increase the Scale of Offensive in Luhansk Oblast; RU Defence Chief Keeps Job Despite UKR Routs Thanks to Putin, LIVE UPDATES and MORE

By admin On Feb 22, 2023

Toughened by war’s scars, Kyiv presses on while Russia attacks:

As missiles streaked across Kyiv’s skies one mid-February morning, a group of high school pupils sat against a metro station’s walls, scribbling away in notebooks and focused on their teacher Olena’s instructions.

To avoid the lesson being disrupted by yet another Russian attack, she had quickly moved her class underground when the air-raid sirens sounded.

“We teach math, biology, chemistry – everything according to the usual schedule,” Olena, who declined to give her last name, told Reuters.

This and similar signs of calm resilience – be it the bars packed despite the threat of missile and drone attacks, or the guides who have adapted city tours to the dictates of war – have become increasingly commonplace in Ukraine’s capital.

Nearly a year after it began, Russia’s invasion has upended life but also rallied a nation.

In the days after the Feb. 24 assault, much of the city of around 3 million people sheltered indoors or underground as Ukraine’s army fought off Russian troops on land and in the skies.

Tens of thousands of others fled along clogged highways and swarmed onto train platforms.

“Those first days were the hardest,” said metro worker Tamara Chayalo, who helped transform the system into a sprawling network of shelters. “Everyone was worrying.”

She said she didn’t go home for three weeks.

Ukraine forced a Russian retreat, but the city has been back under fire since last autumn, when rockets began raining down on infrastructure and other civilian targets, part of what Kyiv says is a Kremlin campaign to break Ukrainians’ will. —>READ MORE HERE

Defense Minister Reznikov confirms Ukraine will receive long-range missiles:

Ukraine will receive long-range missiles capable of striking targets at a distance of 150-200 km (about 90-125 miles), but those may be not ATACMS missiles, Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov said in an interview with Ukrainian news outlet Babel on Feb. 20.

“Not that it actually will be ATACMS,” he explained.

“There are other long-range missiles. Yes, the orcs (Russian invaders) are now hiding 120-150 km away, and we need something to reach them, and we will get it.”

Reznikov added that Ukraine will get long-range missiles as soon as the first half of the current year.

“Yes. I can’t say any more,” the minister concluded.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has called long-range missiles one of Ukraine’s three main military priorities (alongside tanks and fighter jets) for which Ukraine’s allies haven’t reached an agreement. However, partner nations did agree on the supply of modern of Leopard, Challenger 2 and M1 Abrams tanks in January. —>READ MORE HERE

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