In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office on Friday, July 8, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a meeting with military officials during his visit the war-hit Dnipropetrovsk region. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)Russia Ukraine War Crisis: Russian forces launched shelling in Eatsern and Southern Ukraine, a regional governor said Saturday as the Ukrainian government urged people in Russian-occupied areas in the south to evacuate “by all possible means.” The governor of Luhansk, Serhyi Haidai, said the Russian forces managing to “raise true hell” in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland despite reports of them taking an operational pause, Reuters reported. He said Russia launched over 20 artillery, mortar and rocket strikes in the province overnight and its forces were pressing toward the border with neighboring Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy dismissed Kyiv’s ambassador to India, Germany, Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary on Saturday, Reuters reported quoting the presidential website. It was not immediately clear if the envoys would be handed new jobs.
US President Joe Biden signed a new weapons package worth up to $400 million for Ukraine on Friday, including four additional high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) and more ammunition. Zelenskyy on Twitter thanked Biden for the HIMARS and shells, which he said were priority needs.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy dismissed Kyiv's ambassador to Germany on Saturday as well as several other top foreign envoys, the presidential website said.
In a decree that gave no reason for the move, he announced the sacking of Ukraine's ambassadors to Germany, India, Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary.
It was not immediately clear if the envoys would be handed new jobs.
Zelenskiy has urged his diplomats to drum up international support and military aid for Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.
Kyiv's relations with Germany, which is heavily reliant on Russian energy supplies and also Europe's biggest economy, has been a particular sensitive matter. (Reuters)
Russia is unlikely to withdraw from a swathe of land across Ukraine's southern coast and will defeat Ukrainian forces in the whole of the eastern Donbas region, Russia's ambassador to London told Reuters.
Since the Feb. 24 invasion, Russian forces have taken control of a big chunk of territory across Ukraine's southern flank above Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Russia is slowly pushing Ukrainian forces out of two Russian-backed rebel regions of east Ukraine which it has recognised as independent states.
When asked how the conflict might end, Russian Ambassador Andrei Kelin said it was difficult to see Russian and Russian-backed forces withdrawing from the south of Ukraine, and that Ukraine's soldiers would be pushed back from all of Donbas. (Reuters)
*Ukrainian defenders battled to contain Russian forces along several fronts, officials said, as the United States urged China to align itself with the West in opposing the invasion following an ill-tempered G20 meeting.
* Russia is moving reserve forces from across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, British military intelligence said.
* Donetsk regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on the Telegram messaging service that a Russian missile had struck Druzhkivka, a town behind the front line, and reported shelling of other population centres.
* Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Telegram that Russian forces were "firing along the entire front line", though a subsequent Ukrainian counter-attack that hit weapons and ammunition stores had forced Moscow to halt its offensive.
* A missile strike on the northeastern city of Kharkiv wounded three civilians, its governor said, though Russia's main attacks appeared focused southeast of there in Luhansk and Donetsk.
* Russia's defence ministry said its forces hit two "bases of foreign mercenaries deployed near Kharkiv".
(Reuters)
Two weeks after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February, Kremlin-backed rebels assaulted a nursing home in the eastern region of Luhansk. Dozens of elderly and disabled patients, many of them bedridden, were trapped inside without water or electricity.
The March 11 assault set off a fire that spread throughout the facility, suffocating people who couldn't move. A small number of patients and staff escaped and fled into a nearby forest, finally getting assistance after walking for 5 kilometers (3 miles).
In a war awash in atrocities, the attack on the nursing home near the village of Stara Krasnyanka stood out for its cruelty. Ukrainian authorities placed the fault squarely on Russian forces, accusing them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack. (AP)
(Photos: AP)
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday he had discussed Russia's aggression in Ukraine during talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during which he also raised concerns over Beijing's alignment with Moscow.
Blinken made the comments at a news conference on the Indonesian's island of Bali after the talks with Wang that lasted a little over five hours. (Reuters)
Russian forces are managing to “raise true hell” in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland despite reports of them taking an operational pause, a regional governor said Saturday as the Ukrainian government urged people in Russian-occupied areas in the south to evacuate “by all possible means.” Deadly Russian shelling was reported in Ukraine's east and south.
The governor of Luhansk, Serhyi Haidai, said Russia launched over 20 artillery, mortar and rocket strikes in the province overnight and its forces were pressing toward the border with neighboring Donetsk.
“We are trying to contain the Russians' armed formations along the entire front line,” Haidai wrote on Telegram.
Last week, Russia captured the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk, the city of Lysychansk. Analysts predicted Moscow's troops likely would take time to rearm and regroup. (AP)
US President Joe Biden signed a new weapons package worth up to $400 million for Ukraine on Friday, including four additional high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) and more ammunition. Zelenskyy on Twitter thanked Biden for the HIMARS and shells, which he said were priority needs.
Commenting on the supply of weapons, the Russian embassy in Washington said the United States wanted to "prolong the conflict at all costs" and compensate for Ukrainian military losses.
The United States started providing the precision rocket weapon system to Ukraine last month after assurances it would not use them to hit targets in Russia. Kyiv has attributed battlefield successes to the HIMARS. (Reuters)
Two weeks after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin-backed rebels assaulted a nursing home in the eastern region of Luhansk. Dozens of elderly and disabled patients, many of them bedridden, were trapped inside without water or electricity. The March 11 assault set off a fire that spread throughout the facility, suffocating people who couldn't move.
In a war awash in atrocities, the attack on the nursing home near the village of Stara Krasnyanka stood out for its cruelty. And Ukrainian authorities placed the fault squarely on Russian forces, accusing them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack.
But a new United Nations report has found that Ukraine's armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnyanka, which is about 580 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. (AP)
Russia is moving reserve forces from across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, British military intelligence said on Saturday.
A large proportion of the new Russian infantry units are probably deploying with MT-LB armoured vehicles taken from long-term storage as their primary transport, Britain's Ministry of Defence tweeted in a regular bulletin. (Reuters)
He was like a skunk at the tropical resort party, shunned by many, though by no means all.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, attended a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of 20 industrialised nations in Bali on Friday, despite his country’s pariah status in Europe and elsewhere over its brutal war in Ukraine. His country’s invasion of its neighbor drove two central topics of discussion at the annual event: global disruptions of food and energy supplies.
President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had barely got started in Ukraine and dared the West to try to defeat it on the battlefield, while insisting that Moscow was still open to the idea of peace talks.
In a hawkish speech to parliamentary leaders more than four months into the war, Putin said the prospects for any negotiation would grow dimmer the longer the conflict dragged on.
“Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. What can you say, let them try,” he said. “We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it seems that everything is heading towards this.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went on a visit to areas at and near the war front, and said he spent the day visiting a hospital in Dnipro treating wounded soldiers and touring areas in the forward lines of defence in Dnipropetrovsk and Kriviy Rih regions.
➡️ Russia's ambassador to Britain told Reuters Russia is unlikely to withdraw from a swathe of land across Ukraine's southern coast and will defeat Ukrainian forces in the entire eastern Donbas region.
➡️ Western high-precision weapons are helping Ukraine slow down Russia's invasion, but it does not have enough of them and soldiers need time to adapt to using them, a top Ukrainian security official said.
➡️ Ukraine has not used advanced US-made high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) to strike Russian targets outside of Ukraine territory, a senior US defense official said, disputing Russian accusations.
➡️ Russia is likely concentrating its equipment in the direction of Siversk, about 8 km west of the current Russian front line, Britain's defence ministry said. Russian forces are likely pausing to replenish before undertaking new offensive operations in the Donetsk region, while Ukrainian troops were preparing to push back another assault. (Reuters)
A Ukrainian regional official warned Friday of deteriorating living conditions in a city captured by Russian forces two weeks ago, saying Sievierodonetsk is without water, power or a working sewage system while the bodies of the dead decompose in hot apartment buildings.
Gov. Serhiy Haidai said the Russians were unleashing indiscriminate artillery barrages as they try to secure their gains in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk province. Moscow this week claimed full control of Luhansk, but the governor and other Ukrainian officials said their troops retained a small part of the province. (AP)
Moscow's city replaced a street sign outside the British Embassy on Friday with one that read "Luhansk People's Republic Square", in honour of an east Ukrainian breakaway territory seized by Russian forces. Russia recognised the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics as independent entities shortly before sending troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, saying it was compelled to defend the Russian-speakers there against persecution.
Ukraine and Western countries say this is a baseless pretext for a war of aggression. Only Russia and its ally Syria recognise the two republics The British Embassy, which has not changed its address on its website, said on Friday it would continue to use the address on Smolenskaya Embankment that it had before the name change -- "Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya 10".
A Ukrainian regional official warned Friday of deteriorating living conditions in a city captured by Russian forces two weeks ago, saying Sievierodonetsk is without water, power or a working sewage system while the bodies of the dead decompose in hot apartment buildings. Gov. Serhiy Haidai said the the Russians were unleashing indiscriminate artillery barrages as they try to secure their gains in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk province.
Moscow this week claimed full control of Luhansk, but the governor and other Ukrainian officials said their troops retained a small part of the province. "Luhansk hasn’t been fully captured even though the Russians have engaged all their arsenal to achieve that goal,” Haidai told The Associated Press. “Fierce battles are going on in several villages on the region’s border.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on pressing global issues including the crisis in Ukraine and the situation in Afghanistan. The meeting took place on the sidelines of the G-20 foreign ministers' conclave in the Indonesian city of Bali. "Met FM Sergey Lavrov of Russia on the sidelines of the Bali #G20FMM. Discussed bilateral matters of mutual interest. Also exchanged views on contemporary regional and international issues including the Ukraine conflict and Afghanistan," Jaishankar tweeted.
Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi stayed away from a G20 reception in Indonesia in view of the international community's opposition to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a government spokesperson said on Friday. Hayashi is attending a gathering of G20 foreign ministers in Bali, while Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is also participating in the event. Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a “special military operation”. (Reuters)
Russian news agencies say jailed American basketball star Brittney Griner has pleaded guilty to drug possession and smuggling charges during her trial in Moscow.
The reports quoted Griner as pleading guilty to the charges at Thursday’s court hearing. They said that speaking through an interpreter, Griner said she had acted unintentionally because she was packing in haste.