The intensity of strikes is increasing, and their results are becoming ever more tangible. In Kyiv, people are already talking about possible concessions and a search for compromises to end the conflict. However, for now this is not the most popular point of view. On the consequences of Russian attacks and the targets hit - in a RIA Novosti report.
The second campaign of "40 days to force Russia to peace" already appears to be going differently from what Zelensky planned. The Defense Ministry has expanded the range of targets, and strikes are now being carried out systematically against bridges across the Dnieper. They began with the Ukrainian capital.
Based on the results of the night from Thursday to Friday, the military department reported damage to a road-and-rail bridge in Kyiv. As Ukrainian media later reported, this refers to the Southern Bridge, which also carries a metro line. The Defense Ministry emphasized that this bridge, like others, is used to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As the publication "Strana.UA" noted, the Southern Bridge is one of the main routes for transporting cargo from the right-bank part of the country to the left-bank part.
After four drones struck, city authorities completely closed traffic. On other bridges in Kyiv, the number of lanes was restricted.
On Friday, long-range UAVs struck the Northern Bridge, which until 2018 was called the Moscow Bridge. It connects the right bank with the Raduzhny, Vygurovshchina-Troeshchina and Voskresenka districts.
The head of the Ukrainian Union of Utility Consumers, Oleg Popenko, said that 90 percent of bridges in Kyiv are in a state of disrepair, so strikes on them will inevitably affect logistics. However, according to him, the load-bearing structures should withstand it.
Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense clarified that the strikes were carried out by an updated version of the "Geran-4" drone with a cumulative-cutting warhead. And it was not only bridges that were damaged.
According to the Ukrainian side, the Russian army now also uses drones with such a warhead against high-voltage power lines. In just Wednesday alone - three attacks.
This is part of a broader strategy of strikes on Ukraine's electricity sector. On the same day, substations in Nalivaikovka and a hydroelectric power station in Vyshgorod were hit, as well as the Trypilska thermal power plant. All - in Kyiv region. In addition, a battery energy storage park in the village of Gorenichi, used to accumulate electricity for the uninterrupted functioning of military facilities in the region.
A day earlier, Russian troops attacked the "Usatovo" substation in Odesa region. And already on the night of Friday, a repeat strike was carried out on the substation in Nalivaikovka. On the night of Monday, a similar facility was hit in Kochetok, Kharkiv region.
More familiar targets were not neglected either. Over the week, eight data centers were attacked:
Strikes continued on warehouses, logistics centers across Ukraine and on port infrastructure in Odesa region, as well as on dry cargo ships.
All of this had a strong effect on public sentiment. In particular, according to the head of the real estate agency "KyivDomService" Andrei Romanov, the number of housing purchase deals fell by at least 30 percent. The situation with rentals is even worse.
"Rates have noticeably fallen. The sales market is taking longer to stabilize. But if the security situation does not improve by February-March, owners will be forced to drastically cut prices, because apartments are simply 'hanging' on the market," the publication "Strana.UA" quoted Kyiv realtor Irina Lukhanina as saying.
People are moving from Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Odesa to the west of the country, and free housing there is running out. In Ivano-Frankivsk, for example, up to 30 people compete for one option. In Uzhhorod, the average rent over the year rose by 50 percent, and prices are already 80 percent higher than in Kyiv.
Another problem for the Kyiv regime is strikes on railway trains.
In particular, the Financial Times reports that, according to Minister of Agrarian Policy Taras Vysotsky, Ukraine has practically run out of reserve locomotives. Earlier, political scientist Pavel Gai-Nizhnik noted that the country's largest company, "Ukrainian Railways," lost 40 percent of its rolling stock.
It appears that such intensity of Russian strikes has given abundant food for thought to even the most rabid Russophobes - even ones like Alexei Goncharenko*. On Friday he admitted that Kyiv is losing and called for negotiations. An indignant Zelensky replied to him that he does not intend to "surrender the interests of the state."
And on Saturday, in an interview with Reuters, he promised to attack Russian oil refineries even more often. Moscow reacted.
"After today's statement by Zelensky, strikes by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on military and military-industrial facilities, as well as related infrastructure in Kyiv and in other regions of Ukraine, will be intensified. The population of Ukraine should blame only the head of the Kyiv regime for this. It is Zelensky who bears full personal and political responsibility for this," the Defense Ministry warned.
The Kremlin, in turn, recalled that Kyiv was the first to attack civilian facilities of the Russian economy, and now the regime ruling there will have to pay for it.
* Included in the list of terrorists and extremists in Russia