Russian President visits Moscow’s ally Belarus

Kyiv, The Gulf Observer: Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare trip Monday to Moscow’s ally Belarus as his forces pursued their campaign to torment Ukraine from the air amid a broad battlefield stalemate almost 10 months into the war.

Putin’s visit came hours after Russia’s latest drone attack on Ukraine. Moscow has been targeting Ukraine’s power grid since October as part of a strategy to try to leave the country without heat and light during the bitterly cold winter.

The Russian leader’s brief trip to Minsk could herald more military support for the Kremlin’s war effort, after Belarus provided the Kremlin’s troops with a launching pad for the invasion of Ukraine last February.

Belarus is believed to have Soviet-era weapons stockpiles that could be useful for Moscow. Lukashenko, meanwhile, needs help with his country’s ailing economy. It was a rare trip to Minsk by Putin, who usually receives Lukashenko at the Kremlin.

Moscow has kept up its war effort despite Western sanctions and the supply of Western air defense systems to Ukrainian forces.

Sitting beside Lukashenko before their talks in the capital of Minsk, Putin emphasized the allies’ close military-technical ties. He said they include not only mutual supplies of equipment but also joint work in high-tech military industries.

In Ukraine, multiple explosive drones attacked the capital before dawn. The attack came three days after what Ukrainian officials described as one of Russia’s biggest assaults on Kyiv since the war started.

Russia launched 23 self-exploding drones over Kyiv while the city slept, but Ukrainian forces shot down 18 of them, the Kyiv city administration said on Telegram. No major casualties were reported from the attack, although the Ukrainian president’s office said the war killed at least three civilians and wounded 11 elsewhere in the country between Sunday and Monday.

Monday was St. Nicholas Day, an occasion that marks the start of the Christmas holidays in Ukraine and is when children typically receive their first gifts hidden under pillows.

“This is how Russians congratulated our children on the holiday,” Serhii Kruk, the head of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, wrote on Telegram, attaching photos of firefighters barely distinguished amid the flames of an infrastructure facility that was hit.

“In the night when everyone is waiting for a miracle, the terrorist country continues to terrorize the peaceful Ukrainian people,” said Ukraine’s human rights chief, Dmytro Lubinets.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the unrelenting daily barrages as “terror” and once again pleaded for Western countries to send sophisticated air defense systems as winter tightens its grip.