Punish the ukrainian people. zelle ski also tried to shore up more assistance as his country enters the cold winter months. will ripley is live in kyiv. i know you spoke with ukraine s defense machine minister about those attacks on infrastructure and also the next phase of the war. why does he say winter could be to ukrainian forces advantage? reporter: yeah, it s really interesting because the united states as you know, jim, has been saying that they expect the fighting to slow down, but that s not the message we got from the defense minister oleksii reznikov who we spoke with the southern city of odesa which was just hit yet again over the weekend by these kamikaze drones that explode on impact. they re made in iran, russia has been firing them, they fired 15 of them, ukraine shot down 10 but five were able to hit the power grid in odesa which had just been repaired after the missile strikes last week on monday that left the city in the dark for three days.
Connected and as much as it is possible to supply electricity. but now ukraine says its missiles hit the occupied di of melitopol, a russian news agency says the same happened in russian held eastern ukraine. while unconfirmed social media reports are describing widespread explosions across the crimea peninsula. our reporters are standing by, barbie nadeau is in rome but first i d like to go to sam kiley in kyiv. sam, what s the situation like there on the ground? we understand ukraine has been launching attacks on self-proclaimed donetsk and occupied melitopol. reporter: yeah, i mean, there is this is not a tit for tat response i don t think to what happened in odesa which was an attack against the energy infrastructure of ukraine. now, odesa was hit with 15 missiles, ten of which were shot down. importantly these are
Hour, we ve been seeing in the northeast part of the country a number of attacks around kharkiv. and the ukrainian forces there are likely trying to force the russians to send reinforcements intended for their offensive in the east to shore up those defenses and prevent the ukrainians from pushing further out. but as you noted, ukrainians have had a number of successes so far in the war and one of the most key was in mid march, it was around march 18 i believe when they finished it near that city of mykolaiv on the southern coast of ukraine. over the course of a few days, ukrainian forces pushed the russians back around 90 kilometers, it was the first major ukrainian counteroffensive in the war and pretty much ended russian efforts to drive down to the key city of odesa which was almost certainly a major russian goal at the start of the war. since then russian forces in
We could be doing, whether it s like the berlin air lift bringing in supplies and weapons or designating western ukraine as a humanitarian assistance zone all the way from west of kyiv all the way down south to odesa which would require nato troops to enforce that, but there s very few russian troops there on the ground. also, for a no-fly zone over russia, ukraine, over that humanitarian assistance zone and other things we can do also but we need to take the strategic s initiative, make russia and putin react to us instead of the opposite. general pitard, general zwack, a pleasure to speak with both of you tonight. thank you, john. director of chernobyl nuclear plant claims russian soldiers could have been exposed to radiation near the plant and tanks kicked up thick dust. we re going to speak about this with a nuclear expert and get his take, next.