August 9, 2023 at 2:27 a.m. EDT
Rescuers work on the web site of a constructing in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, that was destroyed in a Russian missile strike this week. (Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters)
Officers together with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of concentrating on emergency staff by launching missiles at residential areas to lure rescuers earlier than hitting the identical spot with a second strike. “It is a deliberate resolution of the terrorists to trigger the best ache and injury,” he mentioned in his nightly deal with.
Zelensky mentioned Russia will “bear most duty” for the pair of missile strikes that killed no less than 9 folks, together with one rescue employee, and injured greater than 80 within the Ukrainian metropolis of Pokrovsk this week. The assaults, within the metropolis’s heart, got here inside 40 minutes of one another.
Right here’s the most recent on the conflict and its ripple results throughout the globe.
The Russian strikes on Pokrovsk broken 12 high-rise buildings, together with retailers, an workplace and a resort, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko mentioned on Telegram. He mentioned the injured included two kids, born in 2006 and 2012; 31 policemen; seven staff of the State Emergency Service; and 4 navy personnel. Photographs posted on Telegram confirmed severely broken buildings with blown-out home windows and obliterated roofs.
The police had been “placing their efforts into rescuing folks after the primary strike,” Ivan Vyhivskyi, chief of Ukraine’s Nationwide Police, mentioned Tuesday, based on the Related Press. “[Police personnel] knew that underneath the rubble had been the injured. … And the enemy intentionally struck the second time,” he mentioned.
Not less than 5 others had been killed in current assaults on Ukraine, officers mentioned, together with three within the Kharkiv area, one individual in Kherson and one other within the southern metropolis of Nikopol. A number of non-public houses and farm buildings had been broken in Nikopol, Ukraine’s operational armed forces mentioned, and pictures confirmed constructing particles scattered on the bottom.
Russian forces shot down two drones within the Moscow area, the nation’s Protection Ministry mentioned early Wednesday. It accused Ukraine of attempting to hold out a terrorist assault utilizing the unmanned aerial automobiles. There have been no casualties or injury, the ministry mentioned.
Ukrainian forces tried to cross the Dnieper River by boat, the Russia-appointed head of the occupied Kherson area mentioned Tuesday on Telegram. Within the put up, he mentioned Russian forces thwarted the touchdown makes an attempt and remained answerable for the financial institution — which British officers say marks the restrict of Russian-controlled territory within the Kherson area. The Washington Put up couldn’t instantly confirm that declare.
A large Russian navy storage web site has been stripped of lots of its Soviet-era tanks and armored automobiles that had been there earlier than the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, based on the Moscow Occasions. The unbiased outlet analyzed satellite tv for pc imagery that confirmed about 3,840 tanks or automobiles on the Vagzhanovo navy gear depot within the autumn of 2021. In November 2022, solely about 2,600 remained, it reported.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned Russia’s supply to offer free grain to African international locations was “laughable.” The remarks, which got here throughout an interview with the BBC, had been in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s supply to ship as much as 50,000 metric tons of free wheat to no less than a half-dozen African international locations after Moscow’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal threatened to worsen a meals scarcity on the continent. “The Black Sea Grain Initiative delivered 20 million tons to lower- and middle-income international locations,” Blinken mentioned, calling the Russian proposal a “drop within the bucket of what international locations had been getting.”
New sanctions from Britain goal firms and people accused of supplying militarily important parts to Russia. People and entities in Belarus, Iran, Turkey, Slovakia and Switzerland are amongst these affected. “Right now’s landmark sanctions will additional diminish Russia’s arsenal and shut the web on provide chains propping up Putin’s now struggling protection trade,” British Overseas Secretary James Cleverly mentioned in an announcement.
Poland will deploy an extra 1,000 troops to the nation’s border with Belarus, Polish media reported. Tensions between Warsaw and the Russian ally have risen significantly in current months, after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko supplied protected harbor to Wagner Group fighters and joked that they had been itching to invade Poland.
Elite, well-connected Russians are sidestepping sanctions and sparking protests: Dozens of Russians related to Putin or the Russian navy are nonetheless welcome within the European Union regardless of sanctions meant to isolate Russia. That privilege is drawing criticism from politicians and antiwar activists, Francesca Ebel studies. An Olympic gold medal-winning Russian pole vaulter with shut ties to Putin resides in an expensive residence value tens of millions in Spain’s Canary Islands. A daughter and son-in-law of the pinnacle of a weapons firm proceed to reside in Prague, the place the household owns quite a few properties and luxurious automobiles.
“Representatives of the antiwar opposition, who’re persecuted in Russia, have issue getting the chance to maneuver to the West,” an exiled Russian businessman and Putin critic primarily based in London mentioned. “Whereas representatives of Putin’s elite, even relations of conflict criminals who’ve acquired European residence permits upfront, reside effectively within the West and spend cash stolen in Russia there.”