Russian forces launched a missile strike in the Kyiv area for the first time in weeks on Thursday and also hit the northern Chernihiv region in what Ukraine said was revenge for a standoff with the Kremlin.
Russia attacked the Kyiv region with six missiles launched from the Black Sea, hitting a military unit in the village of Lyutizh on the outskirts of the capital, according to Oleksii Hromov, a senior Ukrainian official.
He said the attack destroyed one building and damaged two others, and that Ukrainian forces shot down one of the missiles in the town of Bucha.
Fifteen people were injured in the Russian attacks, five of them civilians, Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said.
State Day
Kuleba linked the attacks to State Day, a commemoration that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instituted last year and which Ukraine marked for the first time on Thursday.
“Russia, with the help of missiles, is increasing the revenge of the widespread popular resistance, which the Ukrainians were able to organize precisely because of their statehood,” Kuleba said on Ukrainian television. “Ukraine has already foiled Russia’s plans and will continue to defend itself.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hands over a Ukrainian national passport to the daughter of a Ukrainian soldier killed in fighting against Russian troops. Ukraine celebrated the Ukrainian State Day for the first time on Thursday. (Alexey Furman/Getty Images)
Chernihiv regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus reported that the Russians also fired missiles from the territory of Belarus at the village of Honcharivska. The Chernihiv region had not been attacked for weeks.
Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions months ago after failing to capture either.
The new strikes come a day after the leader of pro-Kremlin separatists in the east, Denis Pushilin, urged Russian forces to “liberate the Russian cities founded by the Russian people: Kyiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lutsk.”
Counter-attack leaves Russian troops ‘vulnerable’: UK officials
A Ukrainian counter-offensive has virtually cut off the southern Russian-held city of Kherson, leaving thousands of Russian troops stationed near the Dnipro River “highly vulnerable”, British defense and intelligence officials said on Thursday.
Ukraine has made clear it intends to retake Kherson, which fell to Russia in the first days of the invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces likely established a bridgehead south of the Ingulets River and used new long-range artillery to damage at least three of the bridges crossing the Dnipro.
An armored truck of pro-Russian troops is parked near the building of the former regional council of Ukraine in the Russian-controlled city of Kherson, Ukraine, on July 25. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
“Russia’s 49th Army, stationed on the west bank of the Dnipro River, now looks very vulnerable,” he said in a regular intelligence bulletin on Twitter, adding that Kherson was virtually cut off from other Russian-held territories .
“Their loss severely undermines Russia’s attempts to paint the occupation as a success.”
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, tweeted earlier that Russia was massing “the maximum number of troops” in the direction of Kherson, but did not elaborate.
“Massive redeployment” of Russian forces
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russia was carrying out a “massive redeployment” of forces from east to south in what was a strategic shift from attack to defense.
Video footage from last Saturday showed the extent of damage to the key Antonivskyi Bridge in the Kherson region following Ukraine’s July 20 shelling.
Zelenskyy said that Ukraine will rebuild the bridge over the Dnipro and other crossings in the region.
The Antonivskyi Bridge in the Russian-controlled Kherson region of southern Ukraine was damaged after Ukrainian shelling on July 20. The bridge is considered essential for Moscow to reach its forces occupying the south of the country. (Reuters)
“We are doing everything possible to ensure that the occupying forces have no logistical opportunity in our country,” he said in a speech Wednesday evening.
Russian officials had previously said pontoon bridges and ferries would be used to cross the river.
Russian-backed forces said Wednesday they had captured the Soviet-era Vuhlehirsk coal-fired power plant, Ukraine’s second-largest, in what was Moscow’s first significant gain in more than three weeks.
The US diplomatic effort
Russia invaded Ukraine in late February in what Moscow calls a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” its neighbor. Ukraine and its allies call the invasion an unprovoked war of aggression.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he planned a telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the first between the two government officials since before the start of the war .
The call in the coming days would not be “a negotiation on Ukraine,” Blinken told a news conference on Wednesday, reiterating Washington’s position that any negotiations to end the war must be between Kyiv and Moscow.
A Ukrainian self-propelled artillery is fired at Russian forces on a front line in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on Wednesday. (Evgeniy Maloletka/The Associated Press)
Russia has not received a formal request from Washington about a phone call between Blinken and Lavrov, the TASS news agency reported.
The United States has made a “substantial offer” to Russia to release the American citizens of WNBA star Brittney Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, Blinken said, without elaborating on what the U.S. United offered in exchange.
Blinken said he would press Lavrov to respond to the offer.
A source familiar with the situation confirmed a CNN report that Washington was willing to exchange Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States, as part of a deal.
Apart from discussing the Americans detained by Russia, Blinken said he would raise with Lavrov the tentative agreement on grain exports reached last week between Russia, the United States, Turkey and Ukraine.
Russia cut gas flows to Europe on Wednesday in an energy standoff with the European Union. It has blocked Ukraine’s grain exports since its invasion, but on Friday agreed to allow deliveries across the Black Sea to Turkey’s Bosphorus strait and to world markets.
LOOK | Heavy damage from Russian missile attack near Odesa, Ukraine:
Heavy damage from Russian missile attack near Odesa, Ukraine
The Ukrainian government released a video on Tuesday, which it says shows widespread damage from a Russian missile that hit Zatoka, a key coastal city south of Odesa.
The deal was thrown into doubt almost immediately when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port, on Saturday, just 12 hours after the deal was signed.
Before the invasion and subsequent sanctions, Russia and Ukraine accounted for nearly a third of world wheat exports.
The Russian journalist is fined again
In Moscow, former Russian TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova was fined 50,000 rubles ($1,050 Canadian) on Thursday after being found guilty of discrediting the country’s armed forces in social media posts condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
The sentence was passed after a short hearing in an administrative court in Moscow. Ovsyannikova dismissed the proceedings against her as “absurd”.
Marina Ovsyannikova, the journalist who rose to international prominence after protesting against Russian military action in Ukraine during a prime-time newscast on state television, appears in a Moscow court on Thursday, accused of “discrediting” the ‘Russian army fighting in Ukraine. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images)
“The evidence confirms Ovsyannikova’s guilt. There is no reason to doubt its authenticity,” the judge said.
Ovsyannikova gained international attention in March after she burst into a studio at Russian state television, her then employer, to denounce the war in Ukraine during a live news bulletin. At the time she was fined 30,000 rubles ($600 CAN) for violating protest laws.
LOOK | Ovsyannikova interrupts the news broadcast on Russian state television channel One:
A protester disrupts a news broadcast on Russia’s state-run One TV channel
Carrying a sign with the headline “No war” and “don’t believe the propaganda”, an anti-war protester walked into the background of the main news program of Russia’s Channel One.
Thursday’s hearing was about subsequent social media posts in which he wrote that those responsible for Russia’s actions in Ukraine would be in the dock before an international court.
Russia passed a law against “discrediting” the armed forces, punishable by up to 15 years, in early March, shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began.