| Warns of attack on the Volyn region from Belarus | Accuses Russian forces of bombing a school in Mariupol | Suspends pro-Russian political parties | Russia says it used Kinzhal hypersonic missiles for 2nd time in Ukraine
News Desk Report
KYIV: Ukraine sees a high risk of an attack on western Ukraine’s Volyn region being launched from Belarus, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office has said. The Russian invasion has mostly focused on northern, southern and eastern areas of Ukraine, though missiles last week also hit the Yavoriv military base, close to the Polish border.
It was not immediately clear whether Ukraine saw the threat of an attack on Volyn from Russian forces or the Belarusian military, which has so far not publicly committed troops to supporting Russia. Belarus has served as a staging post for Russian troops, missiles and aircraft, both before and after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, but it has not deployed its own forces in active battle.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday that his country had intercepted a missile fired at it two days ago from Ukraine, but that it would resist what he called attempts to draw it into the conflict across the border. Lukashenko said the missile was intercepted and destroyed by Belarus with Russian help over the Pripyat area, near the Ukrainian border.
The Kyiv government accused Russia last week of staging “false flag” air attacks on Belarus from Ukraine to provide an excuse for Moscow’s close ally, which has served as a staging post for Russian forces entering Ukraine, to join the conflict itself.
“I warned you that they would push us into this operation, into this war,” Lukashenko told Belarusian soldiers, according to the state news agency BelTA.
“There’s nothing for us to do there, and we haven’t been invited,” Lukashenko was quoted as saying. “I want to emphasise again … We are not going to become involved in this operation that Russia is conducting in Ukraine.”
Nevertheless, he suggested that Belarus’s patience was not unlimited. It was not clear how Ukraine would benefit from Belarus’s active participation in the war.
Moreover, Russia’s defence ministry says it attacked Ukraine with cruise missiles from ships in the Black and Caspian Seas, and with hypersonic missiles from Crimean airspace.
Russian defence ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday that the Kinzhal (Dagger) hypersonic missile hit a Ukrainian fuel depot in Kostiantynivka near the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv.
He added: “Kalibr cruise missiles were launched from the waters of the Black Sea against the Nizhyn plant that repairs Ukrainian armoured vehicles damaged in fighting.”
The attacks marked the second day in a row that Russia used the Kinzhal, a weapon capable of striking targets 2,000km (1,250 miles) away at 10 times the speed of sound.
Konashenkov added that another attack by air-launched missiles hit a facility in Ovruch in the northern Zhytomyr region where foreign fighters and Ukrainian special forces were based.
The previous day, the Russian military said the Kinzhal had been used for the first time in combat to destroy an ammunition depot in Diliatyn in the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine.
‘Kamikaze drones’
Russia prides itself on its advanced weaponry, and President Vladimir Putin said in December that Russia was the global leader in hypersonic missiles, whose speed, manoeuvrability and altitude make them difficult to track and intercept.
The Kinzhal missiles are part of an array of weapons unveiled in 2018. Russia first used the hypersonic missile during its military campaign in Syria in 2016.
Putin has called the Kinzhal missile “an ideal weapon” given its speed and ability to overcome air-defence systems.
“This is a missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads and is believed to be undetectable by western air defence systems,” said Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari, speaking from Moscow. “It is being called an unstoppable ballistic missile.”
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Putin announced an array of new hypersonic weapons in 2018 in one of his most bellicose speeches in years, saying they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a US-built missile shield.
The following year, he threatened to deploy hypersonic missiles on ships and submarines that could lurk outside US territorial waters if Washington moved to deploy intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe.
The US has actively pursued the development of hypersonic weapons – manoeuvering weapons that fly at speeds of at least Mach 5 – as a part of its conventional Prompt Global Strike programme since the early 2000s, according to a new congressional report.
These weapons could enable “responsive, long-range, strike options against distant, defended, and/or time-critical threats [such as road-mobile missiles] when other forces are unavailable, denied access, or not preferred”, said former Commander of US Strategic Command General John Hyten.
