All over Ukraine, the flight alert went off this afternoon. Ukrainian authorities describe it as a wave of attacks. “There is an attack on the capital. Preliminary information indicates that two apartment blocks in the Pechersk district have been hit,” wrote Mayor Vitaly Klitschko on social media, as reported by the Reuters news agency. At least one person is said to have died. The district is located just north of the area where the president’s office is located, according to the British newspaper The Guardian. “Several rockets have been shot down over Kyiv by anti-aircraft batteries. Doctors and first responders are on the scene. More information will come in due course,” the mayor added. Hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a video speech to the G20 meeting in Bali, attacks against several cities in Ukraine are reported. There have also been rocket attacks in Lviv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhya, Kremenchuk, Odesa, Poltava and Zhytomyr. “There are explosions in Lviv,” writes mayor Andrij Sadovyj on social media and asks the city’s residents to remain in shelters. Kharkiv’s mayor Igor Terekhov also confirms the attacks against the city. Power stations must be one of the things that have been hit. This has forced the closure of the power grid. According to the government, the situation is critical in several places. Over seven million households will be completely without electricity. In the capital Kyiv, large parts of the city are blacked out. Smoke rises after a Russian rocket attack on a power station in Lviv, Ukraine, 15 November 2022. Photo: STRINGER / Reuters Topping the “record” from October President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a video update asks everyone to be prepared for even more attacks. – We are working hard. We will restore everything. We will survive, says the president. – Russia is not going to achieve anything with this bombardment, he added. The electricity also disappeared in parts of neighboring Moldova as a result of the Russian attacks on the Ukrainian power grid. Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu says the rockets and bombs hitting Ukraine also affect them. He asks Russia to stop the destruction immediately. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, around 100 rockets were fired at Ukrainian targets. – The attackers pass with that number from October 10, when they fired 84 rockets, a spokesman for the air force told Ukrainian television. Electricity was also knocked out during the rocket attack on Kyiv. Residents and firefighters stand outside the block of flats in the Petsjersk district that was hit by one of the rockets. Photo: SERGEI SUPINSKY / AFP Comes after Zelenskyj’s speech The rain of rockets came just hours after the Ukrainian president gave a video speech to the ongoing G20 meeting in Bali. “Russia responds to Zelensky’s powerful speech at the G20 meeting with another missile attack. Does anyone really believe that the Kremlin wants peace? They want obedience. But in the end, terrorists always lose,” the chief of staff of the administration of the President of Ukraine wrote on Twitter. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba addresses the leaders at the G20 meeting directly. “Russia is attacking peaceful Ukrainian cities with deadly rockets. Apartment blocks and energy supply are attacked. I look forward to a principled reaction to the G20 meeting. Stand on the side of the people, not the war criminals,” writes Kuleba in his English Twitter post. In his video speech to the G20 meeting, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked Russia to end the war. – I am convinced that now is the time when the Russian destructive war must and can be stopped. It will save thousands of lives, Zelenskyy said. He added that there are no “excuses for the nuclear blackmail” that the Russian leadership is engaged in. Chinese President Xi Jinping gives his opening speech at the G20 meeting in Bali. Photo: POOL / Reuters The G20 meeting will condemn the war Several of the participants at the G20 meeting condemn the massive Russian attack. According to American diplomats, the final declaration from the G20 meeting also sets up a condemnation of the war. – I think you will see that most of the G20 members will make it clear that they condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, that they see Russia’s war in Ukraine as the main source of unimaginable economic and humanitarian suffering in the world, says a senior American official to the German news agency DPA. Russia must be ready to accept the final declaration, even if the country is criticized. It is seen as a possible sign that Moscow can no longer rely on support from China. Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron are two of several world leaders who have had meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the side of the official meeting programme. They ask China to press for Russia to end the war in the neighboring country. In his speech to the meeting, Xi Jinping warned against using food and energy as weapons. It was interpreted as a poorly concealed criticism of Russia. At the same time, he reiterated Chinese opposition to the West’s sanctions policy. President Vladimir Putin himself is not present in Bali. He canceled last week. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is now Russia’s foremost representative and the one who must face the criticism. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meets the international press during the G20 meeting in Bali. President Vladimir Putin chose to stay at home. Photo: AP Asking Russia to pay for war damages At the same time as the Ukraine war dominates the discussions at the G20 meeting, the UN General Assembly last night adopted a resolution stating that Russia “must be held accountable for all violations of international law in or against Ukraine”. Although the resolutions adopted by the General Assembly are not legally binding, unlike the resolutions adopted by the Security Council, they have great symbolic weight. The General Assembly asks Russia to pay “compensation for the damage” that has been caused. And the assembly says a register must be created to document the Russian destruction. Latvia’s Foreign Minister Andrejs Pildegovičs said when he presented the draft resolution, which Norway helped draft, that Russia attacks civilian infrastructure knowingly and willfully. 94 of the UN’s 193 member states voted for the resolution. 73 countries abstained from voting, while 14 countries voted against, among them China, Iran and Cuba in addition to Russia. Follow the development in news’s News Centre:
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More than 100 rockets fired at Ukraine within a few hours – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
