AP/News] By Miye Cha – In recent days, Russia has been intensively bombing Ukraine’s air force units and airfields, troop and weapon concentrations, munitions factories, military command centres and observation posts, and other facilities on the battlefield in anticipation of a major counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces.

This indiscriminate bombardment by the Russian military, using both self-destructive drones and cruise missiles, has raised renewed concerns for the safety of civilians. However, the Ukrainian government has announced that, following a full survey of evacuation facilities먹튀검증, more than 4,800 air defences and shelters under Russian attack across the country are either unsuitable for evacuation, locked or completely closed.

In the capital city of Chiayi, 44 per cent of the city’s 1078 air defences have been closed or rendered useless, Minister of Strategy and Industry Oleksandr Kamyshin said on Thursday.

In Chiayi, a 33-year-old woman was killed by an airstrike while waiting outside a destroyed air defence shield at the height of a Russian missile attack on 1 June, city authorities said.

Prosecutors have arrested and are investigating four people in connection with the incident, in which several people, including the dead woman, were killed or injured while waiting to enter the locked air defences. A security guard who tried unsuccessfully to pick the lock on the door has been detained and three other local officials are under house arrest.

[Kyiv=AP/News] Ukrainian air defences intercept a Russian Shakhd attack drone in Kyiv on 30 May. 5 June 2023.
Mayor Vitaly Klitschke said the number of online reports and complaints about the air defences received by the city authorities in the past three days “exceeds 1,000”. Most were for defences that were locked, broken to the point of being unusable, or inadequate to avoid air strikes.

The city of Kyiv has touted its air defences as having been relatively successful, saying in a statement on 2 February that Ukrainian air defences had shot down more than 30 Russian cruise missiles and drones fired at Kyiv for the sixth time in six days.

However, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhiy Popko, said in a telegram that Kyiv had been attacked by Iranian-made Shahd drones and cruise missiles fired from different directions in the Caspian Sea region. There is an urgent need to increase civilian evacuation facilities as well as air defences.

A 68-year-old man and an 11-year-old child were also injured in the two-day airstrike, and civilian homes, buildings and cars were damaged by debris from the downed UAVs, Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said.