The British analysts made the assessment in their latest intelligence update on the war in Ukraine, published on social media on Tuesday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Russia’s aim: ‘widespread damage to Ukraine’s energy distribution network’
The UK Ministry of Defence wrote: “Since 10 October, Russia has maintained a heightened tempo of long-range strikes against targets across Ukraine.”
The British experts added that these attacks “have been conducted by cruise missiles, air defence missiles in a surface-to-surface role, and Iranian-provided Shahed-136 one way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles.”
According to the UK Ministry of Defence, "it is highly likely that a key objective of this strike campaign is to cause wide-spread damage to Ukraine’s energy distribution network.”
The British analysts observed that “as Russia has suffered battlefield setbacks since August, it has highly likely gained a greater willingness to strike civilian infrastructure in addition to Ukrainian military targets.”
68 Russian strikes over past 24 hours
Ukraine’s General Staff reported on Tuesday that over the past 24 hours, Russian forces “launched 10 missile strikes and 58 air strikes, and launched up to 60 MLRS attacks.”
In all, over 35 Ukrainian settlements came under attack, including the capital Kyiv, the southwestern port of Odesa, as well as settlements in the southern Mykolaiv and Kherson regions and the eastern Donetsk province, Ukraine’s general command said.
It added that the strikes were conducted using “cruise, aviation and anti-aircraft guided missiles.”
Moreover, “43 Iranian-made Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles were involved, 38 of which were shot down by Ukrainian soldiers,” Ukraine’s General Staff said.
Meanwhile, several EU foreign ministers called for fresh sanctions against Iran over its transfer of “kamikaze” drones to Russia, The Economist magazine reported on Tuesday.
It noted that Russia was believed to have launched 28 Iranian-made Shahed-136 UAVs against Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Monday, killing at least four people.
New strikes on Kyiv, Dnipro, Zhytomir
In the early hours of Tuesday, Russian rockets hit energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s eastern city of Dnipro, causing serious damage, and in the northern city of Zhytomyr, leaving the city without electricity, the Ukrainska Pravda website reported, citing Ukrainian officials.
Meanwhile, in the capital Kyiv, three Russian missiles hit a power supply facility, the kyivindepenent.com website reported.
The northeastern city of Kharkiv also came under Russian missile attack, as did the southern city of Mykolaiv, where a two-storey residential building was hit, with at least one person killed, Ukrainska Pravda reported.
“The threat of missile and air strikes, as well as the use of Shahed-136 attack UAVs from the territory of the republic of belarus, remains,” Ukraine’s General staff said on Tuesday.
108 Ukrainian women freed from Russian captivity
In other developments, 108 Ukrainian women were on Monday freed from Russian captivity in an exchange brokered by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, kyivindependent.com reported.
The group included 37 soldiers who had defended the Azovstal steel plant in the southern port of Mariupol, the website said.
Involving 11 officers, 85 privates and sergeants, as well as 12 civilians, it was the first exchange where all the released prisoners were women, according to kyivindependent.com.
Tuesday is day 237 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, UK Ministry of Defence, facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua, kyivindependent.com, pravda.com.ua, economist.com