MOSCOW (Dispatches) -- Russia used a diesel submarine in the Black Sea to strike Ukrainian military targets with Kalibr cruise missiles, the first time Moscow has announced the use of its submarine fleet to hit its former Soviet neighbor.
The Russian defense ministry released a video showing a volley of Kalibr missiles emerging from the sea and soaring off into the horizon - to what the ministry said were Ukrainian military targets.
This is the first time Russia’s military has reported using submarine strikes against Ukrainian targets, Interfax news agency reported on Friday.
Ukraine acknowledged it was taking heavy losses in Russia’s assault in the east, but said Russia’s losses were even worse, as U.S. President Joe Biden called on Congress to send as much as $33 billion to help Kyiv withstand the attack.
The body of a journalist from U.S.-backed broadcaster Radio Liberty was found in rubble in the Ukrainian capital, killed in a Russian missile attack during a visit by the UN secretary-general.
President Volodymyr Zelensky praised Biden’s offer of help, which amounts to nearly 10 times the aid Washington has sent so far since the war began on Feb. 24.
Vyacheslav Volodin, who as the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament often voices the Kremlin’s views, said that Washington is trying to profit from the war by indebting future generations of Ukrainians.
“Lend-Lease is a commodity loan, and not cheap: many future generations of Ukrainian citizens will pay for all the ammunition, equipment, and food that the United States will supply,” Volodin said.
“Zelensky is driving the country into a debt pit,” he was quoted as saying.
Biden’s funding request includes over $20 billion for weapons, ammunition, and other military assistance, as well as $8.5 billion in direct economic assistance to the Ukrainian government and $3 billion in humanitarian aid.
Russia is now trying to fully capture two eastern provinces known as the Donbas.
Ukraine has acknowledged losing control of some towns and villages there since the assault began last week, but says Moscow’s gains have come at a massive cost.
“We have serious losses but the Russians’ losses are much much bigger...They have colossal losses,” presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said.
By pledging tens of billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine, Biden has dramatically increased U.S. involvement in the conflict. The United States and its allies are now sending heavy weapons including artillery, with what Washington says is an aim not just to repel Russia’s attack but to weaken its armed forces.
Russia has said the arrival of Western arms into Ukraine means it is now fighting a “proxy war” against NATO. President Vladimir Putin threatened unspecified retaliation this week, while his foreign minister warned of a threat of nuclear war.
Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had destroyed the production facilities of a rocket plant in Kiev with high precision long-range missiles.
The missiles hit the capital during a visit on Thursday by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov called it “an attack on the security of the Secretary-General and on world security”.
Zelensky’s office said Russia was pounding the entire front line in the eastern Donetsk region with rockets, artillery, mortar bombs and aircraft. The Ukrainian general staff said Russia was shelling positions along the line of contact to prevent the Ukrainians from regrouping.
Britain said fighting had been particularly heavy around the cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, the main part of the Donbas that Russia is still trying to capture, with an attempted advance south from Russian-held Izium towards Sloviansk.
The bloodiest fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe of the war have been in Mariupol, an eastern port reduced to a wasteland by two months of Russian bombardment and siege.
Ukraine says 100,000 civilians remain in the city, which is mostly occupied by Russia. Hundreds of civilians are holed up with last remaining defenders in underground bunkers beneath a huge steel works.
Zelensky’s office said an operation was planned on Friday to get civilians out of the plant, giving no details.