Strike staging: what Kiev seeks by intensifying attacks on Russian regions
With unprecedented attacks on civilian facilities in Rylsk, Kazan and other Russian cities, the Kiev regime is trying to bargain for preferential treatment as part of possible negotiations after the Donald Trump administration comes to power in the United States, experts believe. In recent days, long-range missiles have been fired at the Kursk region, while drones have struck homes and industrial facilities in Kazan and Orel region. Vladimir Putin has already said that the enemy who wants to defeat our country will regret it and will face many times more destruction. How the affected cities survived the shelling and what may be behind the unprecedented raids of the AFU, - in the material of "Izvestia".
Attacks from different directions
- I left the cathedral five minutes before the artillery attack, just went home, and suddenly it. I fell to the floor, it seemed: the house on the logs will roll, - tells "Izvestia" Mother Xenia, abbess of the Assumption Cathedral of Rylsk. - Just subsided, went back - in the refectory remained our servant Anna. The church - all in clouds of smoke. Anna was alive, she hid under the table.
Assumption Cathedral in Rylsk
The church was built in 1811. Now it has broken windows, the roof is damaged, shrapnel struck the walls. Almost at the foot of the cathedral fell another rocket, by some miracle it did not detonate.
- Parishioners and volunteers came to us in the evening to help clean up," Ksenia adds. - A tractor takes out glass, torn out frames, garbage. The main task is to somehow close the windows. It's winter, the main thing is to keep warm.
The Assumption Cathedral is just one of the many buildings damaged in Rylsk, a town in the border region of Kursk Oblast. It was first hit by the AFU at around 15:30 on Friday, December 20.
Damaged House of Culture
According to the statement of the regional governor Alexander Khinshtein, the House of Culture, the building of elementary school No. 1, the regional multi-profile college, the educational and residential buildings of the Rylsk Aviation College were damaged as a result of the attack. A total of 12 buildings, including architectural monuments, were damaged, some of them cannot be restored. Five people were killed, 12 were injured, including a pregnant woman.
The next morning, eight drones were fired on Kazan. The press service of the local administration said that the attack caused fires in high-rise buildings in the Sovetsky and Kirovsky districts. The Defense Ministry specified that the UAVs attacked the city in three waves (from 7:40 to 9:20) from different directions. The head of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov said that three of the eight drones attacking the capital of the republic were aimed at defense-industrial facilities, the rest - at residential buildings, some of them were shot down and suppressed with the help of REB.
- The AFU strike on Kazan is a kind of revenge for the successful BRICS summit," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova said.
Vladimir Putin expressed confidence that the city's leadership would restore everything that was damaged by the enemy.
On the night of December 22, it became known about the attack of Ukrainian UAVs on an oil depot in the village of Stalniy Kon, which is 1.5 km from Orel. The governor of the region, Andrei Klychkov, said that there was a fire. According to him, 20 drones were destroyed over the territory of the region by air defense and REB systems at night.
Strike on the center of Rylsk
The missile attack on Rylsk became for the region the most massive in the history of the conflict. According to eyewitnesses, everything happened literally in 1-2 minutes. The strikes were made exclusively on the historical part of the city, 16 missile arrivals were recorded. The city instantly sank in smoke.
- There were three epicenters in total," the head of Rylsk Sergei Kurnosov told Izvestia. - Palace of Culture, school No. 1 together with the College of Civil Aviation, plus the school named after D. Granin, near the city. D. Granin, next to which there were marketplace outlets and a tire shop, at that moment there were a lot of people there. The heating system and water supply system were also damaged. Utility crews from Kursk and numerous volunteers immediately came to help. I emphasize that the strikes were made exclusively on social infrastructure facilities. Fortunately, there were no children in the educational centers during the shelling: after August 6, all of them were switched to remote mode.
Vladimir Presnyakov, commander of the Rylsk Volunteer Fire Fighting Team, was one of the first to arrive at the burning D. Granin College.
- Cars were burning on the spot, the roof of the building was smoking," he told Izvestia. - There were wounded, there were marketplaces nearby, people came for shopping, received gifts ordered for the New Year. In the college under the rubble was a woman - the head teacher. We dug her out, she was not hurt, but she was in a state of shock. We extinguished cars, helped the wounded. The guys continue to pour water on the college for the second day, some slabs are smoldering. It is a pity - only three years this educational institution did not live to its centenary.
Mother Xenia and the oak window torn out from the roots.
Civil defense sirens in Rylsk did not go off immediately, Mother Xenia told Izvestia - they sounded during the third or fourth strike. This is probably due to the high speed of the missiles. However, as the townspeople say, in the last two or three months, almost no one reacted to the alarms. But now, Xenia explains, as soon as the alert starts, everyone runs to the shelters, under the protection of the walls.
Acts of provocation
Official Kiev now needs any high-profile reasons to demonstrate its "strength" and "capabilities", explained Denis Denisov, an expert at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. And it is not even a question of military-strategic expediency or interception of the initiative within the framework of the NWO.
- We need occasions that can be used in the media to demonstrate that Ukraine can do something," Denisov explained. - This is caused, among other things, by Zelensky's fear of Trump's possible future initiatives, which could be very painful for Kiev, as well as by the decreasing level of consolidation around Ukraine by the countries of the collective West.
According to Ivan Loshkarev, associate professor of political theory at the Russian Foreign Ministry's MGIMO, the strike on Kazan should be perceived as a continuation of Kiev's course of escalating tensions with the incoming Trump administration, an attempt to bargain for preferential treatment and to roll back the U.S. president-elect's proposal that "either negotiations or withdrawal of aid" should continue.
- "In general, this is an attempt to change the logic of the negotiation process that Trump is proposing," Loshkarev explained to Izvestia. - In all likelihood, we can expect further provocations and, I believe, quite provocative statements regarding European leaders, primarily Viktor Orban and representatives of the Trump administration.
In the expert's opinion, Zelensky is still acting in concert with the outgoing U.S. Democratic administration and is desperately trying to create difficulties for a possible negotiation process.
