\n Ukraine warned Friday that Moscow was ramping up attacks on railways in a bid to disrupt military supplies ahead of a fresh Russian offensive while Kyiv waits for new US weapon deliveries.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kyiv fears Russia is seeking to press its advantage on the battlefield ahead of symbolic May 9 Victory Day celebrations, as both sides continued to launch deadly cross-border strikes.\n<\/p>\n
\n A Ukrainian security source told AFP that Russia wanted to damage Ukrainian railway infrastructure to \"paralyse deliveries and movement of military cargo\" as Moscow prepares to advance.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"These are standard steps ahead of an offensive,\" the source added.\n<\/p>\n
\n Russian forces have a firepower and manpower advantage at the front lines, and Kyiv has warned that fighting will become increasingly difficult in the coming weeks.\n<\/p>\n
\n US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday announced a $6 billion military aid tranche, which is its largest ever for Ukraine and will include interceptors for both Patriot and NASAMS air defense systems.\n<\/p>\n
\n The package is the second this week, after President Joe Biden signed a much-delayed bill to provide a total $61 billion of new funding for Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Costly delays -\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he believed the Kremlin wants its army to capture the strategic heights of Chasiv Yar, a village in the eastern Donetsk region, before May 9, when Russia celebrates the Soviet Union's victory in World War II.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Friday, he said the months of delays to US aid had cost his forces.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"While we were waiting for a decision on the American support, the Russian army managed to seize the initiative on the battlefield,\" he told a video meeting of dozens of Ukraine's international supporters.\n<\/p>\n
\n Oleksandr Pertsovsky, head of passenger transport at state rail group Ukrzaliznytsia, confirmed that Russia had escalated its attacks on railway sites.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"They're hitting the stations indiscriminately. It's a very primitive way of doing it,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Three railway employees were killed and four wounded in a Russian missile attack on the eastern Donetsk region Thursday, the company said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ten civilians were also injured Thursday when Russian forces attacked railway facilities in Balakliya in the Kharkiv region.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Russian defence ministry said Friday that a strike on Udachne in the Donetsk region had targeted what it said were \"Western weapons and military equipment\" being transported by railway.\n<\/p>\n
\n It also said it had struck railway loading facilities at Balakliya.\n<\/p>\n
\n Those strikes represent just a small number of the attacks that have damaged trains or stations across Ukraine, including in more central regions like Cherkasy and Dnipro.\n<\/p>\n
\n One of the deadliest single strikes of the war was on a railway station in Kramatorsk in April 2022, which killed more than 60 people fleeing Russia's advancing troops.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Hospitals evacuated -\n<\/p>\n
\n On Friday afternoon, Kyiv officials said they were urgently evacuating two hospitals in the capital after reports of a possible imminent Russian attack.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"A video is being widely circulated in the online media, actually announcing an enemy attack on these medical facilities,\" the Kyiv city council said on social media.\n<\/p>\n
\n It said the video falsely claimed there were military personnel in the facilities, one of which is a children's hospital.\n<\/p>\n
\n Russia's forces have previously struck medical facilities close to the front lines during the war, now in its third year.\n<\/p>\n
\n In March 2022, Russia bombed a maternity hospital in the southern city of Mariupol, in what Kyiv and Western officials have called a war crime.\n<\/p>\n
\n Officials on both sides of the front lines said at least five people died on Friday from the latest wave of cross-border strikes.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukraine's interior ministry said two women, aged 77 and 69, were killed by Russian shelling on the town of Bilopillya in the northeastern Sumy region.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Russian governor of the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, said one person died in a Ukrainian shelling attack on Friday.\n<\/p>\n
\n In the Bryansk region, another Russian border area, a person injured a day earlier in a Ukrainian drone attack succumbed to her wounds, the governor said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Moscow-installed authorities also said one person was killed in an attack on the Lugansk region, one of the four Ukrainian regions that Russia claims to have annexed.\n<\/p>\n
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Ukraine warned Friday that Moscow was ramping up attacks on railways in a bid to disrupt military supplies ahead of a fresh Russian offensive while Kyiv waits for new US weapon deliveries. Kyiv fears Russia is seeking to press its advantage on the battlefield ahead of symbolic May 9 Victory Day celebrations, as both sides […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-131327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n