Zelensky accuses Kremlin of targeted terror against population

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of targeting terrorism against his country’s people following last week’s heavy air strikes.

Zelensky reported on social media on Sunday that the Russian military used nearly 1,100 drones, 890 guided bombs and 50 rockets and cruise missiles, including the medium-range ballistic missile Oreshnik, against Ukraine last week.

Zelensky said the weapons were “fired at targets of no military importance (energy facilities and residential buildings).”

Zelensky argued that Moscow deliberately expected the cold weather to make life as difficult as possible for ordinary Ukrainians. “This is a deliberate, cynical Russian terror against the people,” he wrote.

He explained his words with video clips of drone damage to civilian objects in Kiev and the surrounding area, as well as in the Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Odessa, Zaporizhzhya and Chernihiv regions. Images from the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where the Oreshnik missile was hit, were not shown.

The Kremlin portrays the ongoing bombardment of Ukraine as attacks solely on military targets, even though the destruction of power plants affects the civilian population.

Moscow recently leveled terrorism charges against Kiev, claiming that Ukraine launched a drone attack on one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences.

Zelensky vehemently denied this, and according to US media reports, the US foreign intelligence service, the CIA, concluded that Ukraine did not target Putin or one of his residences.

Putin ordered war against Ukraine nearly four years ago.