Dinesh Dubey
Amid the high hopes for peace in the Middle East after a truce was brokered between Israel and Lebanon, the latest threat from President Vladimir Putin of Russia to strike “decision-making centres” in Kyiv with Russia’s new hypersonic ballistic missile “Oreshnik”, has brought in equal and opposite despair among the peace-loving people across the globe. Hours after Moscow pummelled Ukraine’s energy grid in an attack that left a million people without power. Russia fired more than 90 missiles and around 100 drones during the barrage. Putin called it a befitting “response” to Ukrainian strikes on his territory with Western missiles.
In over 1000-day war, longest since World War-II, has seen a sharp escalation in recent days, with both sides deploying new weapons in a bid to gain the upper hand before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
“We do not rule out the use of Oreshnik against the military, military-industrial or decision-making centres, including in Kyiv,” Putin told a press conference in the Kazakh capital Astana, referring to the hypersonic missile. Kyiv’s government district — an area of the capital where multiple government buildings are located — is protected with intense security, but fears for it have risen over the last week.
Russia last week tested its new Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine, and Putin boasted on Thursday that firing several of the weapons at once would have the equivalent force of a nuclear strike, or a “meteorite” hit. He earlier said the overnight barrage was a “response to continued attacks on our territory by (US) ATACMS missiles. Putin also claimed Russia knew how many long-range weapons were given to Kyiv and where they were located. The fresh strikes came as Ukrainians braced for a tough winter, with much of its energy infrastructure already damaged by almost three years of war, and as Russian troops advanced in eastern Ukraine.
Tensions have ratcheted up over the last few weeks as both sides look to secure an advantage on the battlefield ahead of Trump’s January inauguration. Putin suggested he had hopes for Trump’s second term, describing him as an “intelligent person”, capable of finding a “solution”, without specifying what he was referring to. The Russian leader spoke hours after the overnight barrage that left more than half a million people in Ukraine’s western Lviv region cut off from electricity. Another half million in the western Rivne region and in the northwestern Volyn region have also lost power.
Wars are fought in the high temperature arid zones of the Middle East or in the snow-clad Eastern Europe, tanks and missiles target market places or official buildings, the worst sufferers of the devastations are the innocent citizens of the warring nations. The impending danger of Ukrainians going to face the coldest winter with the meagre supply of food and relief material, it has been re-established that war is a problem unto itself, and except adding to the woes and miseries of the common people, it can never be the solution to any problem that humanity is facing today!
