THE Belgorod governor has said shelling and strikes by imperialist supported Ukrainian forces continued on Saturday night after two residents were killed and thousands of Russians, including many children, were displaced.
Vyacheslav Gladkov said on the Telegram channel that more than 4,000 people were relocated to temporary accommodation in the border region, which borders Ukraine to its south and west.
‘Overnight, it was quite restless,’ Gladkov said, adding that the Shebekino and Volokonovsky districts suffered ‘lots’ of damage from shelling during the night.
Gladkov said he has escorted about 600 children from the region’s Shebekino and Graivoron districts to Yaroslavl and Kaluga. ‘The children of Shebekino are very worried about their hometown,’ Gladkov said, adding: ‘I started leaving; they stopped me and with anxiety started asking questions.’
Shebekino, a town with a population of about 40,000 on the border, and other places in the southern Russian region, have repeatedly come under attacks over the past week, forcing at least 2,500 people to relocate so far. Also two people were killed and two injured Friday overnight in the village of Sobolevka as Ukraine continued with shelling and striking the region during Saturday, including attacks on Shebekino, Gladkov said.
On Friday, Russia’s Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Moscow has repelled an attempt by the ‘Ukrainian terrorist formations’ to break into the country’s south western borders.
The Ministry of Defence cited at least three attempts to cross the border into the country and said that 70 militiamen, five tanks, four armoured vehicles, seven pickup trucks, and one Kamaz truck were involved in the attack.
The ministry announced that it used air force and artillery to repel these attacks and killed more than 50 Ukrainian fighters.
Russia began what it described as a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, as part of a national security measure against the persisting eastern advance of the US-led NATO military alliance.
Moscow also said the military operation was aimed at defending the pro-Russia population in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Lugansk and Donetsk against persecution by Kiev, and also to ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine.
Since the start of the war, the US and its Western allies have been providing Kiev with military equipment worth tens of billions of dollars. Western weapons supplied to Kiev include advanced missile systems, armoured vehicles, tanks, and communication systems.
Russia has repeatedly warned against flooding Ukraine with weapons, insisting the massive shipments of armaments to Kiev will only prolong the conflict.
Meanwhile, the Chinese defence minister has warned that ‘NATO-like’ military alliances in the Asia-Pacific could undermine regional peace and stability and lead to conflict. Li Shangfu said during the Shangri-La Dialogue Security Summit in Singapore on Sunday that ‘inclusive cooperation’ does not allow disastrous world wars to repeat themselves.
‘In essence, attempts to push for NATO-like (alliances) in the Asia-Pacific is a way of kidnapping regional countries and exaggerating conflicts and confrontations, which will only plunge the Asia-Pacific into a whirlpool of disputes and conflicts,’ he told the two-day security conference, also attended by US Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin.
China rejected a request by the United States for a meeting between the two countries stating that: ‘Today’s Asia-Pacific needs open and inclusive cooperation, not buddying up into small cliques. We must not forget the severe disasters brought by the two world wars to peoples of all countries, and we must not allow such tragic history to repeat itself.’
The essence of the developing crisis is that the US, the UK and the EU bosses see no other way out of the death agony of their capitalist system than war against Russia and China and the workers of the world.
Workers in the UK, the US and the EU, will pay the cost of this war with massive wages, benefits and jobs cuts.
Already in the UK, tens of thousands of workers are going hungry as the bosses pour billions of pounds and dollars of military arms into the developing Ukraine war.
There is no doubt that the working class will be forced to pay the entire costs of any military actions against Russia and China.
Now is the time to force the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism. Join the WRP and the Young Socialists to organise the British socialist revolution.
