Moscow's ambassador in London has said the UK is waging a proxy war against Russia, while predicting the “end of Ukraine” as Russian invading forces make deeper advances into the country.
In an interview with the BBC, Andrei Kelin said that Ukraine was still fighting, but stated that “the resistance is becoming weaker.”
Russian troops, he said, were gaining more ground every day and added: “The end of this phase will mean the end of Ukraine.” Russia is believed to control about 18% of Ukraine and has been making slow but steady gains over the past year.
Kelin also described the conflict as “a proxy war led by the UK government” which, by providing weapons, is “killing Russian soldiers and civilians”.
The comments came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed his call for Western countries to install air defense systems, after Russian missile attacks on the central city of Kryvyi Rih late on Saturday wounded 17 people, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine is losing its territory in the eastern Donbas region to Russia's invading forces, while suffering sustained bombing, but has yet to convince its Western allies to provide it with long-range missiles to attack Russian military targets.
In Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy's hometown, a police officer and a rescuer were among those injured in Russian attacks that damaged sites including an administrative building, a lodge and an educational facility, Ukraine's national police said online. social.
Regional governor Serhiy Lysak later said 15 apartment buildings, shops, a cafe, a church, offices, a bank branch and a gas pipeline had been damaged in the city.
In a social media post on Sunday, Zelenskyy said that in the past week Russia had used more than 20 missiles of different types, around 800 guided aerial bombs and more than 500 different attack drones against Ukraine. “Ukraine needs more air defense systems and long-range capabilities. I thank all the partners who understand this and support us,” he wrote in X.
His post was accompanied by a 47-second video showing numerous smashed cars, burning buildings and bombed houses in seven regions of Ukraine, described as the result of a week of Russian attacks.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said 110 drones were destroyed in a nighttime bombing raid against seven Russian regions. Many pointed to the Russian border region of Kursk, where 43 drones were reportedly shot down, but others appeared to go much further afield.
Gleb Nikitin, governor of Nizhny Novgorod, a city 250 kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow, wrote on Telegram that four fighters had been lightly wounded repelling a drone attack on an industrial zone and were later killed. He did not go into further details.
The Related Press news agency reported that social media images appeared to show air defenses working over the city of Dzerzhinsk in the Nizhny Novgorod region, near a factory that produces explosives.
In kyiv, authorities reported that about 10 drones were destroyed near the capital, with no known damage or injuries.
Visiting kyiv on Saturday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot pledged support for Ukraine's plan to end the war with Russia and told reporters he would work to secure other nations' backing for the proposals. .
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Outlining his “victory plan” this week, Zelenskyy called for an “immediate” invitation to join NATO to ensure Ukraine's security, but Western allies have given a cautious response. Moscow claimed the plan amounted to escalation, by “pushing NATO into direct conflict” with Russia.
Russia's ambassador to the UK spoke to the BBC after the opening of a public inquiry into the death of Daybreak Sturgess. He died in 2018 after coming into contact with the nerve agent Novichok, believed to be in a fragrance bottle discarded by Russian agents who had attempted to assassinate former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury a few months earlier.
The inquest into Sturgess's death became a public inquiry in 2021 and opened last Monday.
The UK government told the inquiry this week in a statement that it believed Russian President Vladimir Putin had authorized the Salisbury Novichok poisonings, which could have killed many people.
The Russian government has denied any involvement in the attempted murder of the Skripals and the poisoning of Sturgess and her partner, Charlie Rowley, who survived.
Asked in the BBC interview if he had any words for Sturgess's grieving family, the ambassador said: “I don't know. I have never met this family. I'm not involved in arguments with them or anything else. “If someone has died, of course that worries us.”
He also questioned the need for an investigation: “Why drag this story out so long?”
The Skripal poisonings are seen as a turning point in British perceptions of Russia, triggering what then-Prime Minister Theresa Might described as “the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history.”
More than 100 Russian diplomats working in 20 Western countries, suspected spies, were told to return to Moscow in a show of solidarity from Western allies.
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