Ukrainian prosecutors say they have correctly identified more than 8,000 war crimes in Bucha. (File)
Moscow:
On Friday, Russia confirmed that it carried out an air strike on Kyiv during the visit of the United Nations Secretary-General, the first such attack on the Ukrainian capital in nearly two weeks, and which A journalist was also killed.
Vera Gyrych, producer of Radio Free Europe / American-sponsored Radio Liberty, was killed when a Russian missile hit the building where she lived in Kyiv, the media group said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had deployed “high-precision, long-range weapons” capable of “destroying the production buildings of the Artyom rocket and space enterprise in Kyiv”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the airstrikes, which took place shortly after his talks with UN chief of staff Antonio Guterres, were a Russian attempt “to humiliate the UN and everything it stands for”. “.
Earlier that day, Guterres toured Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv, where Moscow is alleged to have committed war crimes. Russia denies killing civilians.
Germany called the attack “inhumane” showing Russian President Vladimir Putin “no respect for international law”.
The powerful explosion tore through walls and doors, leaving piles of rubble on the ground.
“I think Russians are not afraid of anything, not even the judgment of the world,” Anna Hromovych, deputy director of a badly damaged clinic, told AFP as she and others were cleaning up. ravaged Friday.
However, Putin will attend the G20 summit in November, President Joko Widodo of host Indonesia said. Zelensky was also invited.
‘Terrorists’ jibe
Ukrainian prosecutors say they have pinpointed more than 8,000 war crimes and are investigating 10 Russian soldiers suspected of atrocities in Bucha, where dozens of bodies dressed in civilian clothes were found seen after Moscow withdrew.
Britain said it would send a team of war crimes experts in May to help Ukrainian investigators.
Three months after an invasion failed to achieve its short-term goal of capturing Kyiv, Russia is now ramping up operations in the eastern Donbas region and tightening its siege on the devastated southern port city of Mariupol. .
Ukrainian authorities said they planned to evacuate civilians on Friday from the besieged Azovstal steel plant, the last holdout in Mariupol, where hundreds of civilians are sheltering with Ukrainian troops.
But Denis Pushilin, Leader of the breakaway region east of Donetsk, accused Ukrainian forces of “acting like outright terrorists”.
He said Ukraine was holding civilians hostage in the steel mill, and stated that people were free to leave at any time.
‘Small’ advances
With the war claiming thousands of lives, Kyiv acknowledged that Russian forces had captured a series of villages in the Donbas region.
But Ukrainian forces, armed by their Western allies, also reported small victories along the front lines.
A senior NATO official said Russia had made only “small” and “uneven” advances in its efforts to encircle enemy positions as Ukrainian forces counterattacked.
A Pentagon official on Friday said the Kremlin’s eastern offensive was “behind the scenes” because the airstrikes did not facilitate lightning ground strikes.
In the Kharkiv region, Ukrainian forces said they had recaptured a “strategically important” village, Ruska Lozova.
But in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, civilians continue to live in fear.
One resident, Antonina, told AFP she returned home to find a rocket had pierced her building and was in her bathroom.
“When I returned home, everything was destroyed… It was scary,” she told AFP.
More Western weapons will be arriving in Ukraine, with US President Joe Biden on Thursday seeking billions of dollars from Congress to boost supplies.
A senior US official said the package would help the Ukrainian government and military continue to operate until early October.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in recent days that its forces had attacked Ukrainian military sites with Western-supplied weapons and ammunition, a claim denied by a senior NATO official. receive.
‘We’re leaving’
Britain says it is deploying about 8,000 troops for exercises across Eastern Europe to demonstrate the resolve of its Western allies against Russian aggression.
Concerns about the conflict spilling over into Moldova’s pro-Kremlin breakaway region of Transnistria spiked this week after explosions, gunfire and a drone sighting were reported.
“I don’t know what to do, I’ve never had to go through a situation like this,” Victoria, a 36-year-old medical assistant working in Transnistria, told AFP.
“If things change, we’ll leave, obviously.”
A NATO official said the presence of 1,500 to 2,000 Russian troops in Transnistria was a “concern” because they could distract Ukrainian forces and were potentially stronger than the Moldovan army.
The costs of the war have reverberated across Europe, with Brussels data showing eurozone output growth slowed to 0.2 per cent, while consumer prices rose to a record 7.4 % in April.
But that pales in comparison to the plight of Ukrainians, more than 5.4 million people who have fled their country since the invasion, according to United Nations estimates.
The International Organization for Migration says another 7.7 million people are internally displaced and is calling for $514 million to help.
“We have only one hope left: to return home,” said Galina Bodnya, a pensioner in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
