Ukrainian chronicle: US-made HIMARS kill dozens at the civilian hospital in Novoaydar

Ruins of Novoaydar hospital.
Photo: Reuters

- On January 28, Ukrainian troops launched a deliberate strike using the US-made HIMARS on a civilian hospital in Novoaydar, the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday. As a result, 14 patients of the hospital and medical personnel were killed and 24 others injured. "The deliberate missile attack on a known active civilian medical facility is a grave war crime of the Kiev regime," - the Ministry of Defense stated.

The MoD stressed that all those involved in the planning and execution of the attack will be found and held accountable for the war crime of the Kiev regime.

- Russian Armed Forces inflicted a massive missile and UAV strike on Ukraine, in particular, against the transportation of weapons and ammunition to the front line, including those from NATO countries, the Russian Defense Ministry said. "As a result of the strike, the transportation of weapons and ammunition to combat areas, including those supplied by NATO countries, was disrupted," the ministry announced.

The strike also successfully targeted Ukraine's energy system facilities that ensured the functioning of enterprises of the military-industrial complex and the transport system of Ukraine, the ministry added.

- The Scholz government’s reversal of longstanding policy not to send weapons into an active warzone constitutes a dangerous development, ex-Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said. He served as Austria's Vice-Chancellor between 2017 and 2019, and is the former leader of the national-conservative Austrian Freedom Party.

“A large proportion of German citizens are truly appalled that the German government of Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz and the Greens’ Foreign Minister [Annalena] Baerbock has agreed to this delivery of weapons and tanks from Germany,” Strache told Sputnik’s German sister agency, SNA, on January 27. The politician pointed out that both Scholz’s Social Democrats and Baerbock’s Greens, who constitute two of the three parties in the "Traffic Light Coalition" government created after the 2021 election, had categorically rejected the sending of German weapons to active warzones before the vote.

Strache lamented that instead of forging a “broad front for a peace initiative and peace negotiations,” Berlin has now “positioned itself here as a supporter of the further escalation of the conflict, which many Germans consider ‘warmongering’ and as an extremely dangerous [development].”

- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) attempted to divert attention from the Russia’s data on certain munitions at Ukrainian nuclear power plants. This body intends to divert public attention away from the nuclear power plants located on the territory controlled by Ukraine and to shift maximum attention to Zaporozhye NPP, located at the Russian territory which has long been controlled by Russia, in order to artificially escalate the situation around ZNPP and to promote the false plan of IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi about its demilitarization exclusively by the Russian side.

The Russian side urged the IAEA Secretariat to scrutinize the information of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service about Ukraine's deployment of weapons at the nuclear power plants it controls.

- Kiev’s merchants are creating an “artificial” backlog by breaking UN-brokered regulations. Ukrainian businessmen are sabotaging the internationally brokered deal to unblock grain shipments from the country’s ports, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. The agreement – the Black Sea Grain Initiative – was signed in July last year to restore deliveries of wheat and other agricultural products interrupted by the Ukraine conflict.

In a statement on January 26, the UN said that more than 100 ships were in Turkish waters, including 32 vessels waiting for inspection by the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC), which is made up of representatives from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, and the UN.

The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that it could not confirm UN data about the number of ships and waiting times. According to Moscow, 64 vessels were docked at Ukrainian ports or waiting in inspection zones. “The order of inspections and passages is being managed by the Ukrainian side. Russian representatives cannot influence them in any way,” the statement read. The ministry accused Ukraine of creating “an artificial backlog” of freighters in Istanbul. The problem was “caused by Ukrainian merchants who are contracting vessels not in accordance with the rules and terms of registration, and without participating in the initiative,” the ministry said.

- Tens of thousands of Italians have signed a petition protesting Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s planned a war propaganda address at a traditional San Remo Music Festival. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini told reporters that the event “should remain the festival of Italian song and nothing else.” The petition, which blames the Ukrainian conflict on NATO and on Kiev’s “brutal repression” of Russian-speakers in Donbass, has gained around 33,000 signatures, Reuters reported. It calls on the organizers of the San Remo Music Festival – a Eurovision-style contest held every year since the 1950s – to withdraw their invitation to Zelensky, who is set to speak via video link on the final night of the contest on February 11, 2023.

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