Putin vows severe response to 'any more terrorist attacks' by Ukraine


  • English
  • Arabic

Vladimir Putin has warned Ukraine there will be a “harsh response” to more strikes such as the attack on the bridge linking Crimea and Russia.

Russia launched missile strikes on cities across Ukraine on Monday in response to what the Russian president called “a terrorist act”.

Speaking at the opening of a meeting of Russia's Security Council, Mr Putin said “a massive strike was carried out with long-range, high-precision air, sea and land-based weapons on Ukraine's energy, military command and communications facilities”.

Any further attacks would be met with a response that would “correspond to the level of threats posed”, he said.

Explosions rocked several cities across Ukraine on Monday.

The head of the Ukrainian military said Russian forces launched at least 75 missiles at Ukraine, with fatal strikes targeting the capital Kyiv, as well as cities in the south and west.

About 40 rockets were shot down by Ukraine's air defences, officials said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there were some dead and wounded, as he accused Russia of trying to wipe his country “off the face of the Earth”.

“The air raid sirens do not subside throughout Ukraine,” Mr Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app. “There are missiles hitting. Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded.”

The strikes, some of which featured Iran-made drones, were timed to inflict the greatest possible losses, the Ukrainian president said.

“They want panic and chaos, they want to destroy our energy system,” Mr Zelenskyy said in a video post that showed him outside his presidential office.

“The second target is people. Such a time and such targets were specially chosen to cause as much damage as possible.”

Moscow's Defence Ministry said it had hit “all designated targets” in the missile attack, which represented one of the largest co-ordinated Russian strikes on Ukraine since the first weeks of the war.

Leaders of the Group of Seven — an informal bloc of industrialised democracies, made up of the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK — will discuss the attacks on Tuesday.

They will take part in an emergency video conference that will also be joined by Mr Zelenskyy, sources said.

Mr Zelenskyy said he had spoken to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose country holds the current G7 presidency.

The Ukrainian leader also spoke to his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, to discuss air defence for Ukraine, with “the need for a tough” international response to the missile attacks.

Mr Putin, meanwhile, said forensic and other data, as well as operational information, indicated Saturday's explosion on the bridge linking Crimea was “a terrorist act”.

“A terrorist attack aimed at destroying Russia's critical civilian infrastructure,” he said. “It is obvious that the Ukrainian secret services ordered, organised and carried out the terrorist attack aimed at destroying Russia's critical civilian infrastructure.”

“A number of terrorist attacks and attempts at similar crimes have been committed against our country's electric power facilities and gas transportation infrastructure, including an attempt to undermine one of the sections of the TurkStream gas transmission system.

“All this is proved by objective data, including testimony by the detained perpetrators of these terrorist attacks themselves.

“If attempts to carry out terrorist attacks on our territory continue, Russia's responses will be harsh … No one should have any doubts about this.”

Orysia Lutsevych, a Ukraine military specialist at the Chatham House think tank, suggested that the bridge attack meant it was now a “real problem for the Russians to resupply their forces in the south”.

She also said that the bridge blast could be prelude to a broader attack on Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. “Ukraine could be planning to target Crimea in a serious way and they are preparing the military campaign in Crimea,” she told The National. “This could be part of the same preparation.”

Sam Cranny-Evans, of the Rusi think tank, said the damage to the bridge would have an impact on getting logistics into the key front-line positions in the Kherson region, but was “not the deciding factor” for the war’s outcome.

“The deciding factor is can Russia transform its army in the next five weeks with its current mobilisation and can they survive winter?”

The attack was a severe blow to the “credibility of Russian military and FSB intelligence services,” said former Brig Ben Barry, a military analyst at the IISS think tank.

“It will also be very unsettling to the Russian defenders of Crimea, especially those dependent on it as a supply route, including forces in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and to the local population and local pro-Russian politicians.”

He added that it was now likely that Ukraine would mount “more deep strikes” using special forces, drones and artillery in the coming months.

“We can also expect Ukrainians to mount probing attacks, which if they succeed, they'll exploit and continue to push the Russians back.”

MO
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECreators%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EMohammed%20Amer%2C%20Ramy%20Youssef%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EMohammed%20Amer%2C%20Teresa%20Ruiz%2C%20Omar%20Elba%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
ELIO

Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett

Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina

Rating: 4/5

Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
Lowest Test scores

26 - New Zealand v England at Auckland, March 1955

30 - South Africa v England at Port Elizabeth, Feb 1896

30 - South Africa v England at Birmingham, June 1924

35 - South Africa v England at Cape Town, April 1899

36 - South Africa v Australia at Melbourne, Feb. 1932

36 - Australia v England at Birmingham, May 1902

36 - India v Australia at Adelaide, Dec. 2020

38 - Ireland v England at Lord's, July 2019

42 - New Zealand v Australia in Wellington, March 1946

42 - Australia v England in Sydney, Feb. 1888

Defence review at a glance

• Increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 but given “turbulent times it may be necessary to go faster”

• Prioritise a shift towards working with AI and autonomous systems

• Invest in the resilience of military space systems.

• Number of active reserves should be increased by 20%

• More F-35 fighter jets required in the next decade

• New “hybrid Navy” with AUKUS submarines and autonomous vessels

Gender pay parity on track in the UAE

The UAE has a good record on gender pay parity, according to Mercer's Total Remuneration Study.

"In some of the lower levels of jobs women tend to be paid more than men, primarily because men are employed in blue collar jobs and women tend to be employed in white collar jobs which pay better," said Ted Raffoul, career products leader, Mena at Mercer. "I am yet to see a company in the UAE – particularly when you are looking at a blue chip multinationals or some of the bigger local companies – that actively discriminates when it comes to gender on pay."

Mr Raffoul said most gender issues are actually due to the cultural class, as the population is dominated by Asian and Arab cultures where men are generally expected to work and earn whereas women are meant to start a family.

"For that reason, we see a different gender gap. There are less women in senior roles because women tend to focus less on this but that’s not due to any companies having a policy penalising women for any reasons – it’s a cultural thing," he said.

As a result, Mr Raffoul said many companies in the UAE are coming up with benefit package programmes to help working mothers and the career development of women in general. 

From Zero

Artist: Linkin Park

Label: Warner Records

Number of tracks: 11

Rating: 4/5

Abu Dhabi traffic facts

Drivers in Abu Dhabi spend 10 per cent longer in congested conditions than they would on a free-flowing road

The highest volume of traffic on the roads is found between 7am and 8am on a Sunday.

Travelling before 7am on a Sunday could save up to four hours per year on a 30-minute commute.

The day was the least congestion in Abu Dhabi in 2019 was Tuesday, August 13.

The highest levels of traffic were found on Sunday, November 10.

Drivers in Abu Dhabi lost 41 hours spent in traffic jams in rush hour during 2019

 

Brief scoreline:

Manchester United 0

Manchester City 2

Bernardo Silva 54', Sane 66'

The biog

Family: wife, four children, 11 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren

Reads: Newspapers, historical, religious books and biographies

Education: High school in Thatta, a city now in Pakistan

Regrets: Not completing college in Karachi when universities were shut down following protests by freedom fighters for the British to quit India 

 

Happiness: Work on creative ideas, you will also need ideals to make people happy

Biography

Favourite drink: Must have karak chai and Chinese tea every day

Favourite non-Chinese food: Arabic sweets and Indian puri, small round bread of wheat flour

Favourite Chinese dish: Spicy boiled fish or anything cooked by her mother because of its flavour

Best vacation: Returning home to China

Music interests: Enjoys playing the zheng, a string musical instrument

Enjoys reading: Chinese novels, romantic comedies, reading up on business trends, government policy changes

Favourite book: Chairman Mao Zedong’s poems

Our family matters legal consultant

Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais

Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.

COMPANY PROFILE
Name: ARDH Collective
Based: Dubai
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Sector: Sustainability
Total funding: Self funded
Number of employees: 4
Updated: October 11, 2022, 6:07 AM`