Russian missiles rained down in Ukraine on Friday, striking civilian infrastructure and stripping much of the country of power and heat. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said the “mass missile strike” across the country involved more than 100 rockets, as well as seven Shahed-type drones. Ukrainian forces destroyed 61 missiles, it added.
In the wake of the attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed for Russian and Belarusian athletes to be banned from competing in next year’s Paris Olympics. The Kremlin’s “targets were power plants and power transformers — that is, the basis of normal life of people,” he said of the latest strikes while on a call to 35 international sports and government ministers. “If the Olympic sports were killings and missile strikes, then you know which national team would occupy the first place.”
The government of Moldova, which shares a border with Ukraine and has opposed the Kremlin’s invasion amid power-grid cuts and other pressure from Russia, resigned Friday. Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita took office in 2021, a time when no one foresaw “so many crises caused by Russian aggression in Ukraine,” she said in her resignation announcement, according to the BBC.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
4. From our correspondents
Pentagon looks to restart top-secret programs in Ukraine: The Pentagon is urging Congress to resume funding two top-secret programs in Ukraine that were suspended before Russia’s invasion, U.S. officials told The Washington Post. If resumed, the programs could allow U.S. Special Operations troops to employ Ukrainian operatives to observe Russian military movements and counter disinformation, Wesley Morgan reports.
“When you suspend these things because the scale of the conflict changes, you lose access,” retired three-star general Mark Schwartz said, “and it means you lose information and intelligence about what’s actually going on in the conflict.”
*This story has not been edited by The Infallible staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.
