explosions on the Kerch Bridge<\/a> connecting Russia to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by the Kremlin in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOn Wednesday the Kremlin said eight people had been detained over the attack on the bridge. Russia\u2019s security forces named a senior figure from Ukraine as being behind them,\u00a0a claim dismissed in Kyiv as \u201cnonsense\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Half of the drones and missiles fired into Ukraine\u2019s cities on Monday and Tuesday were shot down but dozens hit their targets, killing 20 people and highlighting the weakness of the country\u2019s air defence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday, Ukraine\u2019s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, conceded that the strikes had badly affected the country\u2019s electricity network as he appealed to citizens and businesses to reduce their electricity consumption during peak hours to avoid blackouts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He called for people to reduce power consumption from 5pm to 10pm across Ukraine by 25% in order to stabilise the power system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said: \u201cWe are grateful to all Ukrainians who deliberately reduced electricity consumption yesterday and the night before yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe total saving was 10%. We also thank the heads of regions, heads of communities, who took a responsible approach and cut power consumption in communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe minimum permissible indoor temperature this winter will be 16 degrees celsius, while the average temperature will be 18 degrees. This is a necessity and this is our contribution to the victory. After all, it depends on each of us how we will get through this winter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before a meeting of defence ministers in Brussels, the\u00a0Nato\u00a0secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said other Nato members were looking to provide more ground-to-air defences to protect against Russia\u2019s \u201cindiscriminate\u201d attacks across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe will address how to ramp up support for Ukraine and the top priority will be more air defence for Ukraine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Dutch defence minister, Kajsa Ollongren, wrote in a letter to parliament that her government would be donating \u20ac15m (\u00a313m) worth of air defences to Ukraine. \u201cThese attacks … can only be met with unrelenting support for Ukraine and its people,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Western sources suggested, however, that there was a shortage of equipment among allies to offer to Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The continued progress of Ukrainian forces in the Kherson region is nevertheless a major boost, although the government said the Russians were continuing to hammer the southern frontlines hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A senior Nato official claimed that Russia had depleted a significant proportion of its precision-guided ammunition in its invasion and that its industry could not produce a number of key types of ammunition and weapon systems due to western sanctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The official, quoted by Reuters, said he did not know how long it would take for Russia to mobilise the 300,000 troops Moscow is aiming for, and suggested it could take a few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kherson, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk are four regions that Putin recently announced to some fanfare had been annexed by Russia, a move condemned as illegal under international law. The fighting in those regions continues, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At least seven people were killed and eight injured in a Russian strike on a crowded market in the town of Avdiivka, the governor of the eastern Donetsk region said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine\u2019s army boasted of territorial gains near the strategically vital southern city of Kherson on Wednesday as Nato allies delivered new air defence systems in the wake of Russia\u2019s recent missile attacks across the country. After 48 hours of Ukrainian cities coming under heavy fire, the government in Kyiv could celebrate positive news from both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":26445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9747,8217,5304,11394,11023,8173,1904,11555,9331,6623,5262,12635,9387,12246,6193,7445,10339,5800,10427,9567,9127,6159,66,2264,1863,10321,8995,11111,10954,5252,8231,8230,9907,7601,9515,10454,1152,5342,10342,6194,10742,9833,6864,5254,12985,5340,4802,7964,1198,3174,5646,71,3457,5217,3852,5713,5655,11259,5818,10025,9178,5180,5555,6348,10885,694,3954,8964,594,8280],"class_list":["post-26444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ammunition","tag-army","tag-attack","tag-attacks","tag-avdiivka","tag-bridge","tag-brussels","tag-citizens","tag-city","tag-crimea","tag-cut","tag-delivery","tag-detained","tag-diplomatic","tag-donetsk","tag-drones","tag-dutch","tag-electricity","tag-epa","tag-explosions","tag-february","tag-fire","tag-germany","tag-government","tag-hammer","tag-illegal","tag-infrastructure","tag-injured","tag-international","tag-invasion","tag-iris-t","tag-iron-dome","tag-jens-stoltenberg","tag-kherson","tag-killed","tag-killing","tag-kremlin","tag-kyiv","tag-law","tag-luhansk","tag-market","tag-meeting","tag-ministers","tag-missile","tag-missiles","tag-moscow","tag-nato","tag-north","tag-parliament","tag-prime-minister","tag-priority","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-russians","tag-sanctions","tag-security","tag-shot","tag-strike","tag-temperature","tag-troops","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian","tag-us","tag-victory","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-will","tag-winter","tag-who","tag-zaporizhzhia"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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