Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight against 24 March cut Moldova’s key energy link to Europe, President Maia Sandu has said.
“Russia’s strikes on civilian energy infrastructure in Ukraine are a war crime – and an attack on all of us. Alternative routes exist, but the situation remains unstable. Only Russia is responsible for this,” Sandu wrote on social network X.
Moldovan Foreign Minister Mihai Popsoi said the Isaccea-Vulcanesti power line, which connects the energy systems of Moldova and Romania, was affected.
Moldovan Prime Minister Alexandru Munteanu said that on the afternoon of 24 March, the government will meet to propose that the country declare a state of emergency in the energy sector for 60 days.
The AFU air force said earlier today that Russian troops attacked Ukraine overnight with 34 missiles and nearly 400 drones. According to the report, the air defence forces managed to neutralise 390 targets: 25 missiles and 365 drones of various types.
“The hit of six missiles and 27 strike UAVs at 22 locations, as well as the fall of downed (wreckage) UAVs at 10 locations was recorded. Information about three enemy missiles is being clarified,” the air force points out.
According to Ukrainian authorities, at least four people were killed in the attack and dozens more were wounded.
The Russian military regularly attacks Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure in all regions of Ukraine with various types of weapons – attack UAVs, missiles, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and MLRSs.
The Ukrainian authorities and international organisations qualify these strikes as war crimes by the Russian Federation and stress that they are purposeful.
Shelling of the population’s life-support systems and health care institutions in order to deprive people of electricity, heat, water supply, communications, medical care and other necessary conditions for life is a sign of genocidal actions During the large-scale war, Russia is committing against Ukrainian citizens all kinds of crimes that can fall under the definition of genocide, according to lawyers, genocide researchers and human rights activists. Namely:
Announcement of intentions to exterminate Ukrainians: the Russian president and representatives of the Russian authorities have repeatedly stated that Ukrainians as an ethnicity “do not exist”, that it is an “artificially created” nation, and those who do not think so “must be destroyed”, and Ukraine and Ukrainians should not exist in the future;
public calls for the destruction of Ukrainians;
targeted shelling of the population’s life-support systems and health care institutions in order to deprive people of electricity, heat, water supply, communications, medical care and other necessary conditions for life;
persecution and extermination of people with a pro-Ukrainian position in the occupied territories;
extermination of intellectuals: teachers, artists, people who are carriers of Ukrainian culture and educate others in it;
introduction in educational institutions in the occupied territories of a system of education and upbringing aimed at changing the identity of children;
deportation of children without parents to Russia in order to change their identity;
the removal and destruction of Ukrainian books from libraries, the looting of museums and the targeted theft of artefacts pointing to the ancient history of Ukrainians.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948.
The member states of the Convention , and there are 149 of them today, must prevent and punish acts of genocide in times of war and in times of peace.
The Convention defines genocide as acts carried out with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, religious or ethnic group as such.
Signs of genocide include: killing or causing serious bodily harm to members of a group; deliberately creating living conditions calculated to destroy a group; preventing childbearing and forcibly transferring children from one group to another; public incitement to commit such acts.
The Russian leadership denies that the Russian army during a full-scale war is conducting targeted attacks on the civilian infrastructure of Ukrainian towns and villages, killing civilians and destroying hospitals, schools, kindergartens, energy and water supply facilities.