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Russia targeted more than 40 villages around Ukraine over the past day, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, killing at least two people and sustaining the terror that forces people into air raid shelters each night.
Russian forces launched five rockets, 30 air strikes and more than 100 multiple-launch rocket system attacks on Ukrainian targets, the Ukrainian armed forces general staff said.
The attacks come as fears are growing that Russia, facing setbacks on the battlefield, might try to detonate a so called “dirty bomb,” a device that uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste in an effort to sow terror or could go as far as tapping its nuclear arsenal.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday monitored drills of the country’s strategic nuclear forces that involved multiple practice launches of ballistic and cruise missiles in a show of force.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin that the exercise was intended to simulate a “massive nuclear strike” launched in retaliation for a nuclear attack on Russia. The Biden administration said it received advance notice of the annual drills.
Shoigu on Wednesday also called his counterparts from India and China to share Moscow’s concern about “possible Ukrainian provocations involving a ‘dirty bomb,’” according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Shoigu first made that allegation in calls with British, French, Turkish and U.S. officials. Britain, France, and the United States rejected his claim as “transparently false.
