Moscow, May 9, (dpa/GNA) – The Russian Defence Ministry said on Tuesday, it had successfully countered Ukraine’s military resupply in its missile strikes the previous night.
Moscow fired 25 missiles at Ukraine on Monday, on the eve of Russian celebrations of the Soviet victory in World War II, though 23 were intercepted, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.
“The goal of the strike was achieved. All designated objects were hit,” Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in Moscow on Tuesday. Troops of the Ukrainian reserve and ammunition depots were shelled with high-precision weapons, he said.
Debris from the missiles caused damage in Kiev and the Dnipropetrovsk and Cherkasy regions, according to local officials.
It was initially unclear whether there had been any casualties.
On Tuesday, Russian soldiers who fought in the war on Ukraine joined in the military parade on Moscow’s Red Square.
The adviser to the Ukrainian President’s Office, Mykhailo Podolyak, referred to the events in Moscow as a “parade of killers.”
UN Secretary General António Guterres on Tuesday, expressed pessimism about the prospects for peace in Ukraine, saying “peace negotiations are unfortunately not possible at the moment. Both sides are convinced that they can win.”
Russia is “not ready at the moment to withdraw from the occupied territories,” he told Spanish newspaper El País.
“And I believe that Ukraine has the hope of taking them back.”
However, he described the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used as “very low.”
“The Chinese initiative was very important to emphasize, that nuclear escalation is unacceptable,” Guterres said.
He said that since it was not possible to start peace talks at the moment, the focus was on “holding a dialogue with both sides to solve concrete problems.”
Meanwhile, the Wagner Group of mercenaries said on Tuesday they still have not received the promised ammunition for the front in eastern Ukraine from the Russian Ministry of Defence.
In total, only half of the requested positions had been approved and then only a fraction of the amount of ammunition requested in each case, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin complained in a video posted on Telegram by his press service as Moscow marked Victory Day.
“The day of victory is the day of victory of our grandfathers. We have not yet earned this victory by a millimetre,” Prigozhin commented on the event.
The Wagner Group has been fighting in the area around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has become the focal point of the war in Ukraine. The city, which was home to around 70,000 people before the war, is now almost completely destroyed.
Earlier, the British Ministry of Defence reported that the Russsian-occupied Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine is struggling with water scarcity.
“On 28 April 2023, the head of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, announced that regional water supplies were dangerously low. Water scarcity has been a growing issue for Russian-occupied Donetsk since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine,” the ministry said in its daily report.
The Siverskyi Donets canal, which mainly supplies the region, is still largely in Ukrainian hands.
“Russian forces have likely been seeking to secure the canal to reduce water scarcity within Donetsk,” the ministry said.
However, London said the massive Russian artillery deployment in the battle for the city of Bakhmut has probably also damaged the canal running through the western town of Chassiv Yar and other regional water infrastructure.
The British Ministry of Defence has been publishing daily updates on the war since February 2022 when the Kremlin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moscow slams these as forming part of a disinformation campaign.
GNA