KYIV — Kyiv’s allies have increased military support for Ukraine this month, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, after the European Union pledged a new $39 billion loan for the country’s recovery.
“[Aid] accelerated in September…and we can feel the difference,” Zelenskiy said late on September 20.
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The EU loan — backed by revenues of frozen Russian assets — was announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who visited Kyiv on September 20.
Ahead of the trip, she said the EU will provide an additional $178 million to help Ukraine repair damaged energy infrastructure, expand renewable energy, and finance shelters.
However, Zelenskiy also pointed to U.S. resistance to allowing Kyiv to use Western-supplied weapons to strike deep inside Russia, saying it is a result of fears by the White House of potential escalations by the Kremlin.
“I think [U.S. President Joe] Biden is really getting information from his entourage today that there may be an escalation. But — and this is important — not everyone around him thinks so. And this is already an achievement in that not all of his entourage thinks so,” said Zelenskiy, who is traveling to the United States in the upcoming week to address the UN and meet with Biden and other U.S. leaders.
Experts have warned that the coming winter could be the hardest yet for Ukraine, as the country’s energy infrastructure is under significant pressure amid Russian strikes on its power plants, heating plants, and transmission networks.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on September 21 that it again struck Ukrainian energy facilities overnight using high-precision weapons and drones. The claim cannot be independently verified.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said Kyiv believes that Moscow is preparing to strike Ukrainian nuclear facilities before the onset of winter and he urged international watchdogs to establish “permanent enhanced missions” at the sites.
“Damage to those facilities creates a high risk of a nuclear incident with global consequences,” he wrote on X.
Late on September 21, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said explosions rang out in Kharkiv — Ukraine’s second-largest city — with a guided bomb hitting a high-rise residential building, injuring at least 12 people.
Ukrainian authorities said an earlier Russian attack killed three civilians in central Ukraine, as Ukrainian drone strikes forced Russia to evacuate residents of a border village.
A 12-year-old boy and two elderly women were killed in the city of Kryvyi Rih in the Dnipropetrovsk region in “a terrifying attack in the middle of the night, when the city slept,” regional Governor Serhiy Lysak wrote on Telegram.
He said three other people were wounded in the attack, which also destroyed two buildings and partially damaged 20 more.
Kryvyi Rih, a major steel-producing city, regularly comes under Russian air strikes.
Earlier, Ukrainian authorities reported that two people were killed and 15 others, including children, were wounded in Russian attacks in the northeastern Kharkiv region late on September 20.
Ukrainian air defenses shot down five Russian missiles and 11 drones on the night of September 21, according to a statement by the Ukrainian Air Force.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed on September 21 that 101 Ukrainian drones were intercepted overnight over various Russian regions.
The drone attacks forced Russian authorities to evacuate at least 1,200 people from the Tikhorets district in southwestern Krasnodar region, the regional governor said on September 21.
Veniamin Kondratyev said on Telegram that falling debris from a downed drone “caused a fire that spread to explosive objects.” Residents were evacuated but no casualties were reported, the governor added.
Kondratyev did not provide further details about the incident, but the Telegram channel Astra reported that falling debris caused a fire and explosion at a weapons depot.
In a statement on September 21, Ukraine’s military said it had struck a depot near the city of Tikhoretsk, labeling it one of Russia’s “three largest ammunition storage bases [and] one of the key ones in the logistics system of Russian troops.”
It also said Kyiv’s forces struck a key weapons arsenal near the settlement of Oktyabrskiy in Russia’s Tver region.
A highway was closed for two hours in the Tver region town of Toropets on the morning of September 21 to ensure the safety of traffic, Russian news agencies reported, citing a branch of the federal roads agency.
Ukraine, which has been defending itself against the full-scale Russian invasion since February 2022, has repeatedly attacked targets on Russian soil, including ammunition and fuel depots, to disrupt supplies for Moscow’s troops fighting in Ukraine.
Off the battlefield, Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on September 21 said the Kremlin will not take part in any follow-up to the June peace summit hosted by Switzerland, calling the process a “fraud” carried out by Ukraine and its Western backers.
More than 90 nations attended the summit in June, although Russia — which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — was not invited and China declined to attend. Some countries have suggested that Moscow be included in the next gathering.