Ukraine has been warned that it faces a bigger threat from Russian missile and drone attacks as the war-torn country prepares to mark 33 years of independence from the Soviet Union this weekend.
Saturday’s anniversary falls more than two weeks after Ukraine launched a surprise cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
In a statement posted online, the US Embassy in Kyiv said it assessed that in the coming days and nights “there is an increased risk of… Russian drone and missile attacks throughout Ukraine in connection with Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 24”.
The warning came after Ukraine’s top commander revealed that Russia had launched 9,600 missiles and 14,000 drones during strikes on the country since it launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Independence Day has taken on greater significance as Ukraine wages a desperate fight against Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Hundreds of thousands of its men are on the frontlines and millions of its women and children have sought asylum abroad.
The beleaguered nation has been trying to hit back by launching the biggest ground offensive against Russia since the Second World War, targeting Kursk and neighbouring regions.
A drone attack sparked a fire at a military facility in the Volgograd region of southern Russia on Wednesday, officials said, after Moscow came under one of the largest series of drone strikes since the invasion started.
Putin meanwhile this week staged his first visit to Chechnya in 13 years, in what Western analysts said was a bid to shift Russians’ focus away from the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk, which has seen thousands of soldiers in the Russian army including Chechens taken captive.
Putin has said Russia will deliver a “worthy response” to the incursion in time, but has also persisted with his own offensive in eastern Ukraine as he seeks to take full control of the Donetsk region.
According to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, the Putin regime “appears to have launched an intricate messaging campaign” aimed at justifying to ordinary Russians why it is not immediately expelling the Ukrainian forces.
“The Kremlin may be using this messaging campaign to afford itself time and space to respond to the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast after achieving its offensive objectives in eastern Ukraine,” it said.
Ukrainian officials say they want to carve out a “buffer zone” in Kursk to protect their border areas from Russian missile attack, in a potential precursor to trading land and prisoners of war as part of a broader peace deal to end the war.
