A 73-year-old woman was killed early Saturday due to shelling by Russian troops on a settlement in Kharkiv region; the UN said it was “appalled” at an attack on a hotel in Zaporizhzhia, while another strike to the west claimed the life of eight-year-old Volodymyr Balabanyk.
Saturday 12 August 2023 22:14, UK
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As Ukraine’s long-awaited but sluggish counteroffensive rumbles on, Kyiv insists it is making gains – however small – on key frontline areas in the east of the country.
The small village of Urozhaine in the Donetsk region has reportedly been flitting in and out of Ukrainian hands for days, while the country’s deputy defence minister claims they’ve recaptured areas near Bakhmut.
Bakhmut of course has seen some of the most intense and vicious fighting since the start of the war. Russia currently controls the city, but Ukraine continues to dig deep in trenches, launching missiles regularly.
One of the most perplexing moments of the war so far has been the Yevgeny Prigozhin-led mutiny by Wagner mercenaries, that was called off almost as quickly as it started.
Prigozhin was supposedly exiled to Belarus by Vladimir Putin – but has since been photographed back in St Petersburg, at a summit between the Kremlin and African leaders.
It’s raised eyebrows when other critics who have merely criticised the Kremlin, like Alexei Navalny, have been sentenced to decades in penal colonies.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Bellingcat’s lead Russia investigator Christo Grozev had a stark prediction.
“Putin went on TV and called Prigozhin a traitor,” he says.
“Everyone knows what they do with ‘traitors’, and Putin hasn’t done that. He wants to see him dead [but] he can’t do that yet.”
Mr Grozev predicted: “In six months, Prigozhin will either be dead or there will be a second coup.
“I’m agnostic between the two but I can’t see neither of these happening. […] You can hold me to it.”
Mr Grozev also touches on the Russian president’s longer-term strategy, provided he can’t win the war any time soon.
“Putin’s strategy in the Ukraine war is clearly to delay any military outcome until the US elections,” he said.
“He hopes western support will be throttled by a Trump victory.”
We reported at 2.30pm that two pilots were killed when their Su-30 fighter jet crashed during a demonstration in Russia’s Kaliningrad region.
Well now footage of the last moments of that flight has been published on Russian Telegram channels.
The plane is shown flying above a crowd of spectators, before taking a sudden dive and disappearing out of view behind a tree.
Russian state media and local officials said early investigations suggested the crash was caused by a technical malfunction, and that no ammunition was on board at the time.
The Su-30 fighter is a Soviet-era twin-engine, two-seat fighter aircraft. It has been used extensively during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
This picture has also been doing the rounds on Russian social media. It appears to show the wreckage of the downed plane in a field.
Let’s get a bit more on our previous post – the Kremlin-backed official’s claims that Ukrainian cluster bombs have killed a civilian in occupied Donetsk.
If Denis Pushilin’s claims are confirmed, it would mark a fairly significant moment in Ukraine’s use of the hugely controversial weapons.
Military expert Professor Michael Clarke has previously told Sky News cluster munitions are “on the border between conventional bombs and landmines”.
While cluster bombs are not illegal under international law when used on military targets, using them on civilians is a war crime.
More than 100 countries have signed a protocol to not use them. The UK is one of those countries – but Russia, Ukraine and the US have not signed it.
Announcing the US would send cluster munitions to Ukraine, President Joe Biden called it a “difficult decision” but said he had to act as “the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition”.
At the time, Bonnie Docherty, a senior researcher at the Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division, warned the decision would “exacerate a humanitarian crisis.”
“Having witnessed the gruesome impact of cluster munitions first-hand, I find the U.S. rationale for transferring them weak on multiple fronts,” she said.
“They cause civilian casualties at the time of attack because they cannot discriminate between soldiers and civilians.”
Ms Docherty said that children are the most common victims, because they’re inclined to pick up unexploded bombs and play with them.
But Dr Jack Watling and Professor Justin Bronk, from the Royal United Services Institute, argue the threat to civilians is “negligible” considering how many minefields Russia has already laid down in Ukraine.
They say objections to using them are “militarily dangerous, legally misleading and morally questionable, drawing a false equivalence between Russian and Ukrainian use cases.”
Essentially, they say Ukraine’s use is less ethically problematic, because they would be used in open countryside against Russian forces, and on their own territory.
“Cluster munition provision will not only increase Ukrainian military effectiveness against dug-in Russian forces, but will also help alleviate Ukrainian and wider NATO ammunition shortfalls and barrel constraints,” the academics said.
The Russia-installed leader of the occupied Donetsk region claims a civilian has been killed by Ukrainian forces using cluster munitions – weapons banned by over 100 countries.
Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (what Russia calls territory it claimed last year), wrote on Telegram that the civilian was killed in the Petrovsky district of the city of Donetsk.
He claimed six people, including a 12-year-old girl, were also wounded in nearby Makeyevka and Svetlodarsk.
“Today,” Mr Pushilin wrote, “peaceful towns and districts of the Republic are being subjected to intensive shelling by Ukrainian armed formations using cluster munitions.”
Mr Pushilin didn’t provide any pictures or other evidence to support his claims.
Cluster bombs are weapons delivered by planes, artillery or missiles, opening up in the air to release up to 100 ‘bomblets’ over a large area.
Using cluster bombs in a civilian areas breaches international law, and could be considered a war crime.
The US controversially agreed to send them to Ukraine last month, drawing concern from many of its allies in the West.
Two weeks later, the US confirmed the weapons were being used “effectively” by the Ukrainians, but didn’t confirm how.
Those fighting on the frontline face the prospects of death every single day – but doctors and nurses also put themselves at immense risk.
34-year-old Dariya Filipova was a medic in the Ukrainian army and died in an attack in the Donetsk region.
Her friends and family have been paying their respects in Kyiv’s Independence Square, one of the main public areas of the capital.
President Zelenskyy’s ambitious 10-point plan to end the war with Russia has the support of dozens of countries, according to a top official.
Writing on Telegram, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office Andriy Yermak said 58 countries had attended a meeting on how to implement the peace plan – up from 43 the last time a similar meeting was held.
But while the support of 58 countries may sound constructive, it remains just a fraction of the countries that openly support Ukraine.
When the UN voted last October on a resolution to condemn Russia’s invasion and demand the Kremlin’s immediate withdrawal, 143 countries voted in favour.
What is Ukraine’s peace formula?
President Zelenskyy has been pushing his formula as Ukraine’s solution since last autumn. In June, he called it “the only comprehensive and fair plan to overcome both the Russian aggression and all its consequences.”
The plan is based around 10 points, including the restoration of Ukraine’s state borders with Russia before the invasion, and signing a document confirming the war is over.
The points also cover food, energy and nuclear security, the release of war prisoners and deportees, and the establishment of a tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes.
But certain international figures have apparently suggested the president should lower his expectations.
Ahead of last weekend’s talks in Jeddah, which produced little concrete progress, US national security spokesman John Kirby said the formula should be a starting point in negotiations, not the end goal.
Incredible images show a street vendor waiting for customers at a destroyed market near a railway station in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region today.
It comes after Russia shelled 16 cities and villages in Donetsk this week, killing three people. Russian missiles also slammed into the centre of Pokrovsk in the region, which is partially occupied by Russia. Russia’s defence ministry later claimed it hit a Ukrainian army command post in Pokrovsk.
Three theme park employees in annexed Crimea have been fined after posting a video of them dancing to a song by a famous Ukrainian drag queen.
Authorities arrested the women, aged 19, 20 and 26, for “acts aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”
They were released but fined 15 thousand rubles, or about £120.
Andriy Mykailovych Danylko, better known by his drag persona Verka Serduchka, is one of Ukraine’s most popular entertainers. Serduchka finished second at Eurovision 2007 – beating Russia.
It’s understood the three women were dancing to Serduchka’s song ‘Gulyanochka’, which contains lyrics such as “Ukraine is not dead yet, if we walk like this.”
The court said the track was “the theme song of a Ukainian performer with inadmissible meaning.”
The video was first published on the Telegram account of the Krymsky Smersh movement
The women have since publicly apologised for what they called “a thoughtless act, and expressed support for the invasion.
Poland’s defence minister has declared that the country has bolstered its border security against Belarus by deploying additional troops, aiming to discourage concerning actions from its pro-Russian neighbour.
It comes after the Polish foreign ministry firmly responded to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s sudden desire to enhance relations between the two nations (post 14.48).
Mariusz Blaszczak met in Jarylowka, in eastern Poland, with some of the troops recently deployed close to the Belarus border. He emphasised that the expanded military presence is solely intended as a deterrent, refuting claims of hostility made by Minsk and Moscow.
“The intent behind our increased presence is unmistakable – we seek deterrence, not aggression,” he said, highlighting the destabilising efforts on Poland’s border by the Belarus regime, which is believed to be collaborating with the Kremlin.
Last week two Belarus military helicopters briefly entered Poland’s airspace, a move considered by Warsaw to be a deliberate provocation. Also, a pro-government group in Belarus recently alleged that Poland’s politicians, who support Ukraine in its war against Russia’s aggression, were “igniting the fire of war with their actions and rhetoric” and being “driven by the frenzy of chauvinism”.
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