A residential house burns after a Russian military strike, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in the town of Bakhmut, Ukraine July 28, 2022. (Press service of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration/Handout via Reuters)Russia Ukraine War News Live Updates: Several Russian missiles hit the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv as Ukraine stepped up their offensive to take back the southern city of Kherson which is currently under the control of the Kremlin’s troops. Air raid sirens blared as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed parliament alongside visiting Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, as Ukraine marked its Day of Ukrainian Statehood with a public holiday for the first time on Thursday, reported the news agency Reuters.
More than 10 Russian missiles also hit the city of Chernihiv about 120 km northeast of Kyiv, regional Governor Vyacheslav Chausov told Ukrainian TV. Like Kyiv, Chernihiv had not been targeted for weeks.
Meanwhile, as the fighting rages, international efforts continued to try to reopen Ukrainian ports and allow exports of grain and other commodities. Russia and Ukraine struck a deal last week to unblock grain exports from Black Sea ports, but UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said “crucial” details for the safe passage of vessels were still being worked out. Griffiths was hopeful the first shipment of grain from a Ukrainian Black Sea port could take place as early as Friday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Yuri Borisov, the new CEO of the Russian State Space Corporation "Roscosmos", at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, July 26, 2022. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
US-based think tank Institute of War, in their daily briefing on the Russia-Ukraine war, said that the Russian forces in Donetsk are likely to seek to capitalise on recent marginal territorial gains around Bakhmut and may deprioritise their efforts to take Siversk.
Other notable points include:
Air raid sirens blared in Kyiv as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed parliament alongside visiting Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, as Ukraine marked its Day of Ukrainian Statehood with a public holiday for the first time on Thursday.
"It doesn't matter with what Russia threatens us; whether it's air-raid sirens or something else, what is important is that we make other countries fall in love with our Ukrainian firmness," Zelenskyy said. (Reuters)
Ukraine stepped up its drive to retake Russian-controlled southern Ukraine by trying to bomb and isolate Russian troops in hard-to-resupply areas. Ukraine said on Thursday its planes had struck five Russian strongholds around the southern city of Kherson and another nearby city.
The Kherson region, which borders Russian-annexed Crimea, fell to Russian forces soon after they began what Moscow calls "a special military operation". Ukraine describes Russia's actions as an imperial-style war of conquest.
Ukraine says it has retaken some small settlements on the region's northern edge in recent weeks as it tries to push Russian forces back, a potential prelude to what Kyiv has billed as a major counter-offensive to retake the south. (Reuters)
Moscow bombed Kyiv's outskirts for the first time in weeks as Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two dragged on with no end in sight.
Fifteen people were injured when missiles hit military installations in Vyshhorod district on the edge of the Ukrainian capital on Thursday, Kyiv regional Governor Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram.
Air raid sirens blared as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed parliament alongside visiting Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, as Ukraine marked its Day of Ukrainian Statehood with a public holiday for the first time on Thursday.
"It doesn't matter with what Russia threatens us; whether it's air-raid sirens or something else, what is important is that we make other countries fall in love with our Ukrainian firmness," Zelenskyy said.
The attack shattered the sense of normalcy that has returned to life in Kyiv since Russian forces abandoned attempts to capture the city in the first weeks of the war, in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. (Reuters)
Ukraine stepped up its drive to retake the Russian-controlled south of the country by trying to bomb and isolate Russian troops in hard-to-resupply areas, but said it saw evidence that Moscow was redeploying its forces to defend the territory.
Five people were killed and 25 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a flight school in the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi, the regional governor said.
Russian-backed separatists in east Ukraine's Donetsk said four civilians had been killed and another 11 by Ukrainian shelling between Wednesday and Thursday.
Russian gas flows to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline and via Ukraine remained steady on Thursday, operator data showed. Russia cut flows on the pipeline to 20% of its capacity on July 27 citing maintenance work.
The EU decided to renew sanctions against Russia for a further six months, until the end of January 2023. (Reuters)
Ukraine appointed experienced investigator Oleksandr Klymenko as the head of its Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office on Thursday, answering a European Union request as it seeks EU membership.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said new Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin had signed off on Klymenko's appointment after the investigator was chosen by a special selection committee.
Klymenko was appointed after a long selection process following his predecessor's resignation nearly two years ago. He previously worked for the national anti-corruption bureau, another state body that tackles corruption.
The EU granted Ukraine candidate status this month, putting it on the long road to membership, but said Kyiv still had work to do in several areas including fighting corruption and called for the appointment of an anti-corruption prosecutor. (Reuters)
Five people were killed and 25 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a flight school in the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi on Thursday, the regional governor said.
Andriy Raikovych, governor of the Kirovohrad region, told a news briefing that two missiles had struck hangars at the National Aviation University Flight Academy around 12:20 p.m. (0920 GMT).
"There are victims, dead and wounded. Twenty-five have already been taken to medical institutions - they were wounded. Five were killed, one of them from the military," he said. (Reuters)
Russian forces launched a missile attack on the Kyiv area for the first time in weeks Thursday and pounded the northern Chernihiv region as well, in what Ukraine said was revenge for standing up to the Kremlin.
Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, announced a counteroffensive to take back the occupied Kherson region in the country's south, territory seized by Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces early in the war.
The Vyshgorod district on the outskirts of Kyiv was targeted early in the morning, and an “infrastructure object” was hit, regional Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram. (AP)
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A Russian court fined former state TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova 50,000 roubles ($822) for "discrediting Russia's armed forces" in social media posts in which she publicly opposed Russia's actions in Ukraine.
Ukraine-born Ovsyannikova rose to prominence in March after holding up an anti-war placard on the Vremya nightly news programme, where she worked as an editor. (Reuters)
A former state TV journalist charged with discrediting Russia's armed forces by protesting against Moscow's actions in Ukraine told a court on Thursday that the charge against her was absurd.
Marina Ovsyannikova defiantly repeated her protest and said she would not retract her words. "What's going on here is absurd," Ovsyannikova told the court. "War is horror, blood and shame." (Reuters)
Ukraine stepped up its drive to retake the Russian-controlled south of the country by trying to bomb and isolate Russian troops in hard-to-resupply areas, but said it saw evidence that Moscow was redeploying its forces to defend the territory.
British military intelligence, which helps Ukraine, said it was likely that Ukrainian forces had also established a bridgehead south of a river which runs along the wider Kherson region's northern border. "Ukraine's counter-offensive in Kherson is gathering momentum," it said in a statement.
Ukraine has retaken some small settlements in the north of the region in recent weeks as it tries to push Russian forces back, a potential prelude to what Kyiv has billed as a major counter-offensive to retake the south. (Reuters)
Russia's Feb 24 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and sown economic strife across the world. Following are the main impacts of the war:
US intelligence estimates that some 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed so far in Ukraine and three times that wounded - equal to the total Soviet death toll during Moscow's occupation of Afghanistan in 1979-1989.
Since Feb 24, one third of Ukrainians - which has a population of more than 41 million - has been forced from their homes, the largest current human displacement crisis in the world, according to the United Nations RefugAe agency.
Besides the human losses, Ukraine has lost control of around 22% of its land to Russia since the 2014 anexation of Crimea, according to Reuters calculations.
The invasion and Western sanctions on Russia led to steep rises in the prices of fertiliser, wheat, metals and energy, feeding into both a brewing food crisis and an inflationary wave that is crashing through the global economy.
The United States has provided about $7.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Feb. 24 including stinger anti-aircraft systems, Javelin anti-armour systems, 155mm Howitzers and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear protective equipment. (Reuters)
More than 100,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Britain under two schemes set up to help those fleeing the country following Russia's invasion on Feb 24, the British government said on Thursday.
Nearly 6.2 million refugees from Ukraine have been recorded across Europe as of July 26, according to United Nations data, with more than half applying for temporary residence schemes. Poland alone has registered more than 1.2 million Ukrainians. (Reuters)
Russia's defence ministry said on Thursday its forces had destroyed six Ukrainian munitions depots in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and in Mikolayiv region. (Reuters)
Russian forces on Thursday launched massive missile strikes on Ukraine's Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, areas that haven't been targeted in weeks, while Ukrainian officials announced an operation to liberate an occupied region in the country's south.
Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram that a settlement in the Vyshgorod district of the region was targeted early on Thursday morning; an “infrastructure object” was hit. It wasn't immediately clear if there were any casualties. Vyshhgorod is located 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) north of downtown Kyiv.
”Chernihiv governor Vyacheslav Chaus reported that multiple missiles were fired from the territory of Belarus at the village of Honcharivska. Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions months ago after failing to capture either.
The renewed strikes on the areas come a day after the leader of pro-Kremlin separatists in the east, Denis Pushilin, publicly called on the Russian forces to “liberate Russian cities founded by the Russian people — Kyiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lutsk.” (AP)
Forty-thousand Russian soldiers killed in less than six months of war. That staggering claim made by the Ukrainian military on Wednesday is impossible to verify and far exceeds estimates by the United States and Western allies.
But it aligns with Western assessments that the war has taken a high toll on Russia’s military, and underscores a central question at this point in a conflict where both sides have suffered grievous losses.
Russian gas flows to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline and via Ukraine remained steady on Thursday, operator data showed.
Physical flows via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia to Germany were at 14,415,629 kilowatt hours an hour (kWh/h) for 0800-0900 CET, a similar level to the previous 24 hours.
Russia cut flows on the pipeline to just 20% of its capacity on July 27 citing maintenance work. (Reuters)
A Russian court on Thursday fined Snapchat owner 1 million roubles ($16,667) for an alleged refusal to localise Russian user data on the country's territory, the Interfax news agency reported.
Moscow has clashed with Big Tech over content, censorship, data and local representation in a simmering dispute that has erupted into a full-on battle since Russia sent its armed forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24. (Reuters)
Russian-backed separatists in east Ukraine's Donetsk said on Thursday that four civilians had been killed by Ukrainian shelling over the previous day.
According to a message posted on an official separatist Telegram channel, four people were killed and another 11 wounded between 8.00 local time on Wednesday and 8.00 on Thursday. (Reuters)
Despite initial setbacks, Russian forces are slowly taking control of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and currently hold a huge swath of territory connecting Crimea with Russian territory to the east.
Russia's failure to take Kyiv may have been a costly embarrassment, but Putin can always argue that the primary purpose of the invasion was to secure the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics. Putin said at the start of the invasion there was no intention to occupy all of Ukraine. That means he'll be able to present any territory gained in addition to securing Donetsk and Luhansk as a win.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently suggested Russia plans to secure more territory than initially intended in the light of the West supplying long-range rocket systems to Ukraine. But Russia already controls enough new territory to boast about, and could give a little ground in the south and still claim success.
Alexander Hill, Professor of Military History, University of Calgary, writes for the Associated Press.