Today's massive Russian attack on Ukraine is a typical reaction of Russia to any peace initiatives and negotiation processes. Fedir Venislavskyi, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense, and Intelligence, stated this in a comment to UNN.
I think it is obvious that this is a traditional mechanism of reaction of the Russians to any peace initiatives, to any peace talks. If you analyze all peace talks or all initiatives that came from us and our partners, then on the eve of such meetings, the Russians always demonstrated an escalation - both missile and drone attacks, and so on.
According to the people's deputy, such actions are a natural reaction of the aggressor state.
"This is a natural reaction of a terrorist state to any peace initiatives. It demonstrates that Russia wants to force Ukraine to actually accept the unacceptable conditions that it is trying to impose, in particular regarding the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Donbas, which is unacceptable for us," Fedir Venislavskyi emphasized.
Context
On the night of February 3, Russia launched a targeted attack on Ukraine's energy facilities, using over 70 missiles and 450 attack drones. The attack affected Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro, Odesa, and Vinnytsia regions, injuring nine people.
"The aftermath of the Russian strike in our regions is being eliminated. Again, there was a targeted strike specifically at energy facilities: the Russians used a significant amount of ballistic missiles in combination with other missiles - more than 70 and 450 attack drones," wrote President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy on social media.
In Kyiv, as a result of the Russian attack, more than 1,100 buildings are without heat, the most difficult situation is in the Darnytskyi and Dniprovskyi districts; in Kharkiv, 110,000 subscribers are without heating; in the Lozova district of Kharkiv region, more than 15,000 subscribers are without heating.
Recall
On January 30, reports began to emerge online that a temporary "energy truce" had begun between Ukraine and Russia, related to shelling of energy infrastructure during the war.
A key event was US President Donald Trump's statement on January 29 that he personally appealed to Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin with a request not to temporarily attack Ukraine's energy infrastructure during severe frosts.
"I personally asked Putin not to shoot at Kyiv and various cities for a week," the American leader said, adding that the Russian leader agreed to do so.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Donald Trump had asked Vladimir Putin to refrain from striking Kyiv for a week, allegedly until February 1.
Until February 3, the Russians refrained from large-scale attacks on Ukrainian energy. It can probably be assumed that the "energy truce" is over and Russia will continue to attack critical infrastructure facilities.
According to data from the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on the night of February 3, Russia launched a combined attack on Ukraine using 71 missiles of various types of air and ground basing and 450 attack UAVs.