Russia strikes Ukrainian energy and military facilities • FRANCE 24 English

for more on this story we can bring in our International Affairs editor Angela dley Angela uh why are we seeing this very significant attack from Russia overnight well the Russians say it's in retaliation for Ukrainian attacks uh recently on the oil refineries these quite significant attacks on infrastructure uh reaching right to the west to leiv which has been largely uh spared uh action in in this war achieve really two objectives one is the Russians are quite Keen to uh downgrade uh Ukraine's air defense capabilities to force them to use up uh their air defense capabilities and the other very important reason is this has a big impact psychologically this kind of targeting of infrastructure we all remember back in the winter of 2223 yeah I I understand why they did it then because of obviously going into winter you need heating Etc you need energy yeah and it it wears down a population uh if if if there is uh if there are power Cuts as there will be and the ukrainians have decided to set up a committee to deal with what this uh uh they call uh energy terrorism because it is a very effective psychological weapon if businesses and households cannot organize themselves properly because they're having uh cuts to their water supply power cuts it has a very very uh big impact on psychology and that is a very Major Tool uh in war that is one of the key reasons why it's being done don't forget of course that Putin is to some extent uh expecting uh a trump win and so holding his fire for somewhat somewhat in in the hope that if Trump gets in Trump has told the world that he will negotiate a quick end to this thing we will see what happens uh but it is nevertheless part of Putin's calculations now uh adir selinski today Victory Europe day has talked about Putin being the new Nazi and choosing this moment to inflict such a major attack on Ukraine he is the new Nazi no doubt we will hear the same tomorrow from Putin who maintains that uh this war is about rooting out Nazis from Ukraine tomorrow uh the Russians celebrate uh victory in Europe in the Nazi against the Nazi regime now we've been saying this for months that Ukraine remains is outnumbered on the battlefield the country of course has had difficulties in signing up new recruits now the parliament has just passed a law to allow convicts to fight yeah this is a new development uh convicts not those who have been convicted of uh what are deemed to be serious crimes such as rape and murder but that is another indication of their difficulty in recruiting already we saw recently the age of uh conscription was reduced uh from from 27 to 25 uh Ukraine has one soldier for every three the Russians have there are about three million uh young uh men of fighting age in Ukraine who could be fighting and aren't and they need about another 300,000 to be effective so they've been looking at what's going wrong because it's such a contrast remember back when that Invasion took place in February 2022 we had these cues of people volunteering to fight for Ukraine and on the other side uh a cue to get out of Russia and in some ways the situation has been slightly reversed they've been looking at why it's difficult to get people to join up now those most enthusiastic joined up right at the beginning there's been a lot of talk on social media about corrupt inept commanders about inadequate training about not enough time off for soldiers and so they are trying to combat things like that they have said to new recruits there will be more flexibility and they might be able to choose their battalions and even in some cases uh choose commanders but it's an indication of the big problem they're having with recruiting that isn't their only problem increasingly we are seeing military people suggesting that it is now now time to loosen some of the restrictions on Western Aid to Ukraine we saw David Cameron recently saying that the ukrainians can use the weapons supplied by Britain as they wish uh there is a feeling that this is the time to start releasing those reducing those restrictions meaning uh he left it open but it's widely considered to mean if they wish to Target Russia we have not put in any uh restrictions but that is never spoken out loud we'll see how things plan out thank you very much for that Angela Angela

Channel: FRANCE 24 English

Views: 41,244

Keywords: Civilians, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, attack, civilians, drones, electricity, energy, france 24, power, power cuts, putin, russia, ukraine, war, zelensky

Id: 3ikiUOqpWDc

Length: 4min 59sec (299 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2024