Explainer
Ukraine war briefing: US aid delays could force
Ukrainian troops to ‘retreat step by step’, Zelenskiy warns
President says if US support stops, ‘it means we
will go back’; Russia attack wave hits Ukrainian power plants, triggering
blackouts. What we know on day 766
Guardian
staff and agencies
Sat 30 Mar
2024 02.39 GMT
If
Ukraine does not get promised US military aid blocked by disputes in Congress,
its forces will have to retreat “in small steps”, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said.
“If there is no US support, it means that we have no air defence, no Patriot
missiles, no jammers for electronic warfare, no 155-millimetre artillery
rounds,” the Ukrainian president told the Washington Post. “It means we will go
back, retreat, step by step, in small steps. We are trying to find some way not
to retreat.”
Ukraine’s
air force said on Saturday that Russia fired four missiles into eastern Ukraine
overnight, as well as 12 Shahed drones across the country. Nine of the drones
were shot down in four regions, it said.
Huge
Russian missile and drone attacks hit thermal and hydro power plants in central
and western Ukraine the previous night, officials said on Friday, in a barrage
targeting the country’s damaged power infrastructure. The Kaniv hydropower
plant was among the targets along with the Dnister plant, located on the
Dnister River, flowing through neighbouring Moldova, Zelenskiy said. Moscow
“wants to repeat the environmental disaster in the Kherson region. But now not
only Ukraine but also Moldova is under threat”, he said on Telegram.
Ukraine
said it had imposed emergency blackouts on several regions after the Russian
attacks. National grid operator Ukrenergo said its dispatch centre was “forced
to apply emergency blackout schedules in the regions of Dnipropetrovsk,
Zaporizhzhia and Kirovograd until the evening.” Restrictions were already in
place in the cities of Kharkiv and Kryvyi Rih after a Russian strike last week.
The
Polish prime minister has said Europe is entering a “prewar” era, cautioning
that the continent is not ready and urging European countries to step up
defence investment. In an interview with European newspapers reported by the
BBC, Donald Tusk said: “I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a
concept from the past. It’s real and it started over two years ago.” His
comments came days after a Russian missile briefly breached Polish airspace
during an attack on Ukraine, prompting Warsaw to put its forces on heightened
readiness.
One
person was killed and two injured in the Russian city of Belgorod from a
Ukrainian drone attack, said the Belgorod region’s governor, Vyacheslav
Gladkov.
Russia’s
security services said they had arrested three people from “a central Asian
country” who were plotting an attack in the south of the country, Russian news
agencies reported. The trio “were planning to commit a terrorist act by blowing
up a device in a public place in the Stavropol region”, the federal security
service (FSB) said on Friday. Russian television showed images of several men
pinned to the ground by FSB agents.
Russia
is outgunning Ukrainian forces sixfold on the frontlines, causing losses of
troops and positions, Ukraine’s recently appointed commander-in-chief,
Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a rare interview published on Friday. He also said
Ukraine’s military would need to mobilise fewer people than initially expected
to fend off Russia’s invasion. Zelenskiy said in December that his military had
proposed mobilising up to 500,000 more Ukrainians into the armed forces as
Russia stepped up attacks along the 1,000-km (621-mile) frontline, but Syrsky
said in an interview with Ukrainian media published on Friday that the figure
had been “significantly reduced” after a review of resources.
Ukraine
received a $1.5bn (£1.2bn) tranche of funding under a World Bank programme,
said the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, helping it pay for its budget and
social spending amid the war.
Zelenskiy
pressed on with changes to officials close to him, dismissing two deputy heads
of his office and appointing a former top security official ambassador to
neighbouring Moldova. A presidential decree on Friday announced the dismissal
of Andriy Smyrnov, who was responsible for legal policy matters, and Oleksiy
Dniprov, who headed the office’s “apparatus”. Zelenskiy said he had appointed
Oleksiy Danilov, former head of Ukraine’s security and defence council, as
ambassador to Moldova.
Nato
member Romania said it had found fragments of what appeared to be a drone on a
farm near the Danube river and the border with Ukraine.
Zelenskiy
has declared his income for 2022 rose to 12.42m hryvnias ($316,000/£250,000)
from 3.7m hryvnias ($94,000) the previous year, with the increase attributable
to improved rent collection and the sale of some government bonds. Most of the
income of Zelenskiy and his family came from his salary, bank interest and rent
payable from his properties, the president’s website said. Zelenskiy has called
for public officials to disclose their incomes as part of efforts to increase
transparency.
Russian
prosecutors have asked the justice ministry to consider labelling Alla
Pugacheva, the queen of Soviet pop music, as a “foreign agent”, a move that
would officially designate Russia’s most famous star a foe of the Kremlin. Pugacheva has expressed disgust with the Ukraine war.
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