Ukraine hit by missile strikes as Zelenskiy makes demands

Bloomberg

A barrage of missile attacks targeted Kyiv and other locations across Ukraine, hitting civilians and critical infrastructure in what authorities called the broadest such assault since Russia invaded the country in February.
At least one person was killed as residential buildings were struck in Kyiv, with strikes cutting the power supply to roughly half of the capital’s residents, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram. Power facilities were hit elsewhere, including cities in western and central Ukraine far from the front lines, such as Lviv and Rivne, authorities said.
The attack came hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy demanded that Russian troops make a complete withdrawal before peace talks can take place. Ukraine’s air-defense forces said that around 100 missiles were launched, exceeding the number from Oct. 10, when a broad missile attack hit Ukrainian settlements across the country and leveled infrastructure.
“Russian missiles are killing people and ruining infrastructure across Ukraine right now,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a Twitter post. Kyiv won’t respond to demands to accept Russian “ultimatums,” he said.
Russian missiles were launched from the Black Sea, a site in Rostov in Russian territory and the Caspain Sea, far to the east of Ukraine’s border, air defense spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said in televised comments. Areas of northern and central Ukraine were hit the hardest, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian president’s deputy chief of staff, said on Telegram.
The strikes came hours after Zelenskiy laid out his demand that Russia clear out of Ukrainian territory— and a week after Russian forces retreated from southern city of Kherson, the first and only regional capital captured by Kremlin troops in the weeks after the February 24 invasion.
“If Russia says that it wants to end this war, or so it says, it must prove it with deeds,” Zelenskiy said in an address to Group of 20 leaders meeting in Bali. Ukrainian forces have spent the week returning the previously occupied portions of the Kherson region on the west bank of the Dnipro River to Kyiv’s control.

Russia’s Lavrov stays in
seat at G-20 for Zelenskiy
speech
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stayed in the room during a virtual address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to a Group of 20 summit, before firing back with a litany of often-made but unsubstantiated accusations, people familiar with the matter said.
The speeches were a prominent fixture of the first session of the G-20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia, that began Tuesday, and signaled how tensions and fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are hanging over the bloc.
Zelenskiy, in his address, appealed for support from what he called G-19 nations — a pointed reference to the group without Russia. While the number of people in the room varies during sessions, it was virtually full for Zelenskiy, with Lavrov among the audience, the people said.
Lavrov, attending in place of President Vladimir Putin, then took his turn to speak, but said he had also to respond to Zelenskiy. He repeated Putin’s argument justifying the February 24 invasion that Russia was fighting neo-Nazis in Ukraine, people said, even as the Kremlin has repeatedly failed to show evidence for its claims.