Ukraine Russia battle dwell: Moscow threatens to ‘melt’ Kyiv because it quadruples Kursk military

Ukraine’s air defence units took down 10 out of 14 drones that Russia launched overnight targeting its territory, Ukraine‘s air force said today.

Russia launched two Iskander M-ballistic missiles and one Kh-59 guided air missile targeting the southern region of Odesa, it said on the Telegram messaging app.

The guided missile was destroyed, the air force said.

It did not say what happened to the Iskander missiles or whether there was any damage as a result of the attack.

At least seven people were killed in four attacks involving Russian shelling on the south, southeast and east of Ukraine yesterday, regional Ukrainian governors said.

In the Zaporizhzhia region in southeast Ukraine, governor Ivan Fedorov said Russian shells struck an agricultural enterprise in the town of Huliaipole, killing three people.

“All the dead are employees of the enterprise,” M r Fedorov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

A missile attack in the suburbs of the Black Sea port city of Odesa killed a man, 66, and a woman, 62, and injured a 65-year-old woman, Oleh Kiper, the Odesa regional governor, said in a post on Telegram.

“A married couple died,” he said, adding that they were found during checks of residential and commercial buildings damaged earlier in the day and that Russian forces had used a prohibited cluster warhead.

Shelling killed a sixth person in the southern region of Kherson, governor Oleksandr Prokudin, said. “A 60-year-old man who suffered serious injuries this afternoon died in hospital,” Mr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.

In Kharkiv region, Russia struck the village of Pisky-Radkivski with the high-speed Tornado-S multiple rocket launch system, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram.

The body of a 72-year-old woman was retrieved from the rubble, and two civilians, a man and a woman, were taken to hospital, he added

Senior Russian security official and former president Dmitry Medvedev has said Russia could destroy Ukraine‘s capital Kyiv with non-nuclear weapons in response to the use of Western long-range missiles by Ukraine.

Medvedev said Moscow already had formal grounds to use nuclear weapons since Ukraine‘s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, but could instead use some of its new weapon technologies to reduce Kyiv to “a giant melted spot” when its patience runs out.

“Russia is showing patience. After all, it is obvious that a nuclear response is an extremely difficult decision with irreversible consequences,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

He added: “any patience comes to an end.”

“And then that’s it. A giant gray melted spot on the site of the mother city of Russia [Kyiv]. Holy s**t! It’s impossible, but it happened.”

Kyiv is sometimes referred to as the “mother city of Russia” because of its importance to Orthodox Christians in the region.

The British government has said they require the approval of both the US and France before allowing the full use of Storm Shadows by Ukrainian forces.

However, that is not absolutely correct, The Times reported, citing sources who said the missile risks being intercepted by Russian air defences or diverted off-course without US GPS technology.

Defence officials said the missiles do not fly straight to their target but are effectively “threaded through the eye of a needle” using GPS and terrain mapping data.

“You could absolutely fire it unilaterally, but it probably wouldn’t survive in the contested, electronically jammed environment that the Russians have,” a British defence source said.

“Russian electronic warfare has rendered GPS useless. They jam it. So it has to use another type of data set instead, which is American owned.”

This is classified, but it is likely related to the system’s ground-mapping capabilities.

Moscow knows that the West has made a decision on whether to allow Ukraine to attack Russia with long-range missiles and has informed Kyiv, the TASS news agency reported citing Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

Ryabkov did not clarify what the purported decision was, but said that since Moscow’s verbal warnings to the West against further escalation have not worked, Russia would need to switch to sending signals in different ways.

A split within president Joe Biden’s team regarding Ukraine’s use of British Storm Shadows deep into Russia has delayed a decision, sources in London have said.

Keir Starmer is under pressure in the UK to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles inside Russian territory even without US backing.

The Storm Shadow is a long-range, air-launched cruise missile developed in collaboration with France and Italy which relies on American GPS guidance systems to avoid being intercepted by Russian air defences.

According to insiders, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who held “Sherpa” talks with Tim Barrow, his opposite number before the White House meeting, is not in favour while Antony Blinken was edging towards authorisation, reported The Times.

“The problem is Sullivan, not Blinken,” a British defence source said. “All the way through it has been Sullivan.”

A political source acknowledged the differences within Washington, noting “it would be fair to say that Antony Blinken was leaning in that direction.”

There are indications that, while Mr Biden may not be ready to publicly approve the move, he is open to authorising the use of US intelligence and targeting systems alongside the Storm Shadow missiles.

Andrew Feinberg looks at how UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer could soon face a president with a drastically different view of Ukraine’s future as the new PM meets with US President Joe Biden in Washington, DC