Russian missile strikes knock out water, power supplies in Ukraine
Russian forces have “almost certainly” deployed two MiG-31 jets in Belarus with what’s likely to be a Killjoy air-launched ballistic missile, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.
In its daily intelligence update, the MoD issued images which is said showed two MiG-31K Foxhound interceptor jets “almost certainly parked at Belarus’s Machulishchi Airfield on 17 October, with a large canister stored nearby within a protective earth berm.”
UK defence officials indicated that the canister was associated with the AS-24 Killjoy air-launched ballistic missile.
“(Russia) has likely carried out the deployment mainly to message to the West and to portray Belarus as increasingly complicit in the war,” it said on Twitter.
It comes amid warnings that Vladimir Putin is likely to continue the Ukraine war into the winter, hoping to weaken western support for Kyiv and “freeze Europe into surrender.
The remarks from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, come as some 270,000 homes in Kyiv are without electricity and 40 per cent are without water following “one of the most massive shellings” by Russia on Ukrainian territory.
