KYIV, Ukraine
\nUkrainian authorities tried to dampen public fears over Russia\u2019s use of Iranian drones by claiming increasing success Monday in shooting them down, while the Kremlin\u2019s talk of a possible \u201cdirty bomb\u201d attack added another worrying dimension as the war enters its ninth month.
\nUkrainians are bracing for less electric power this winter following a sustained Russian barrage on their infrastructure in recent weeks. Citizens in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv lined up for water and essential supplies Monday as Ukrainian forces advanced on the nearby Russian-occupied city of Kherson.
\nUkraine\u2019s forces have shot down more than two-thirds of the approximately 330 Shahed drones that Russia has fired through Saturday, the head of Ukraine\u2019s intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov, said Monday. Budanov said Russia\u2019s military had ordered about 1,700 drones of different types and is rolling out a second batch of about 300 Shaheds.
\n\u201cTerror with the use of \u2018Shaheds\u2019 can actually last for a long time,\u201d he was quoted as saying in the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper, adding: \u201cAir defense is basically coping, 70 percent are shot down.\u201d
\nBoth Russia and Iran deny that Iranian-built drones have been used but the triangle-shaped Shahed-136s have rained down on civilians in Kyiv and elsewhere.
\n\u201cFirst of all, we have to be able to counter the drones,\u201d US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday at a press conference in Zagreb with Croatia\u2019s leader. \u201cIt is a dangerous technology and it must be stopped.\u201d
\nBritain\u2019s Ministry of Defense said Russia was likely to use a large number of drones to try to penetrate the \u201cincreasingly effective Ukrainian air defenses\u201d \u2014 to substitute for Russian-made long-range precision weapons \u201cwhich are becoming increasingly scarce.\u201d
\nThat assessment came on top of a stark warning by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to his British, French, Turkish and US counterparts over the weekend that Ukrainian forces were preparing a \u201cprovocation\u201d involving a radioactive device \u2014 a so-called dirty bomb. Britain, France, and the United States rejected that claim as \u201ctransparently false.\u201d
\nA dirty bomb uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste in an effort to sow terror. Such weapons don\u2019t have the devastating destruction of a nuclear explosion, but could expose broad areas to radioactive contamination.
\nRussian authorities on Monday doubled down on Shoigu\u2019s warning.
\nLt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian military\u2019s radiation, chemical and biological protection forces, said Russian military assets were on high readiness for possible radioactive contamination. He told reporters a dirty bomb blast could contaminate thousands of square kilometers.
\nRussian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday: \u201cIt\u2019s not an unfounded suspicion, we have serious reasons to believe that such things could be planned.\u201d
\nUkraine has rejected Moscow\u2019s claims as an attempt to distract attention from its own plans to detonate a dirty bomb. German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht on Monday dismissed as \u201coutrageous\u201d the Russian claim that Ukraine could use a dirty bomb.
\nThe White House on Monday again underscored that the Russian allegations were false.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s just not true. We know it\u2019s not true,\u201d John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said. \u201cIn the past, the Russians have, on occasion, blamed others for things that they were planning to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV, Ukraine Ukrainian authorities tried to dampen public fears over Russia\u2019s use of Iranian drones by claiming increasing success Monday in shooting them down, while the Kremlin\u2019s talk of a possible \u201cdirty bomb\u201d attack added another worrying dimension as the war enters its ninth month. Ukrainians are bracing for less electric power this winter following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291623,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-291599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n