A Ukrainian soldier inspects a drone provided to one of the Ukrainian airborne brigades (Reuters)

The Ukrainian authorities announced that Russia launched a new missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and other cities on Thursday, which was confronted by Ukrainian air defenses that were placed on alert, while Russia announced that an oil storage warehouse in the Kursk region was attacked by a Ukrainian march.

Local Ukrainian authorities said, via the Telegram application, that explosions were heard in the capital, Kiev, in the Dnipro and Zaporizhya regions, as well as in Lviv near the Polish border.

Witnesses reported several explosions in different areas of Kiev, whose mayor, Vitali Klitschko, directed residents to stay in shelters. He said that the Ukrainian air defenses responded early today to a missile attack launched by Russia on the Ukrainian capital.

While the mayor of Lviv, Andrei Sadovy, spoke of hearing explosions in the city located in the west of the country near the border with Poland, and regional governor Ivan Fedorov said that a person was injured in an attack on an infrastructure facility in Zaporizhia. This is the ninth missile attack launched by Moscow already this February.

Infrastructure

On the Russian side, the governor of the Russian Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, said that a Ukrainian march carried out an attack today on an oil storage warehouse in the region, which led to a fire breaking out in the facility. He added that the attack did not result in any casualties.

Russia's energy infrastructure was subjected to drone attacks and fires over the course of last January, adding to the uncertainty in global oil and gas markets already affected by the conflict in the Middle East.

Russia and Ukraine are targeting energy infrastructure in strikes aimed at disrupting supply lines and logistical services, as each of them seeks to gain supremacy in a war that has been going on for nearly two years and has yet to show any sign of being close to the end.

Defense ministers of NATO member states discuss in Brussels long-term support for Ukraine (European)

NATO support

Today's attacks coincide with a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels to discuss long-term support for Ukraine, and to move forward with talks on spending 2% of GDP on defense.

Overshadowing the discussions at NATO headquarters were the statements of former US President Donald Trump, in which he said last Saturday during an election rally for his supporters that he would “encourage” Russia to do whatever it wants with NATO countries that do not spend enough on defense.

Before today's meeting in Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg praised the efforts made to meet the 2% of GDP commitment, and spoke of an "unprecedented 11% rise across European Allies and Canada" in defense spending.

With Trump calling into question the basic principle of NATO, which is that an attack on one ally is an attack on them all, some politicians also called on European countries to look for their own nuclear deterrent options.

Stoltenberg warned against such a move, highlighting that NATO's current nuclear deterrence is based on "agreed command actions" that include US nuclear weapons and other NATO allies providing transportation and logistics services.

NATO members have agreed since 2006 to spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense, but only a few have met that target, much to the frustration of the United States.

The new Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Army, Oleksandr Sirsky, admitted yesterday, Wednesday, that the situation on the battlefield was "very complex" in his first visit to the front, stressing that Kiev needed more fighters and weapons to confront the Russian invasion.

The difficulties that Ukraine faces in the war may increase because it does not receive additional US military aid of great importance to replenish its arsenal, due to the dispute between the Democratic administration and Republicans in Congress for months over this issue.

For his part, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned yesterday that the Ukrainian army was running out of ammunition in light of Republicans obstructing a huge aid package requested by President Joe Biden's administration.

Source: Agencies