At least 22 people – including three children – were killed and up to 50 others wounded after Russian missiles struck civilian buildings and a cultural centre in the city of Vinnytsia, in central Ukraine, on Thursday morning. The victims reportedly include three children. Ukraine’s state emergency services say 52 people were injured in the strike, and that 46 people are considered missing.
The attack on Vinnytsia, far from the war’s frontlines, occurred in mid morning when the streets were full of people. It appeared to have hit a business centre, setting cars on fire and sending plumes of thick black smoke over the city.
The news of the attack in Vinnytsia emerged as EU foreign and justice ministers were meeting in The Hague for a conference on alleged Russian war crimes. In opening remarks at the conference, organised by the ICC and the European Commission, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said Russia should be held responsible for its actions in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, called the Russian attack in Vinnytsia “an open act of terrorism”. In a video address at The Hague conference, Zelenskiy said: “Every day Russia destroys civilian population, kills Ukrainian children and directs rockets at civilian targets where there is nothing military. What is this if not an open act of terrorism? It is a killer state. A terrorist state.”
Two educational institutions, a transport infrastructure facility and a hotel have been damaged by Russian missiles in the city of Mykolaiv Thursday morning, according to regional governor Vitaly Kim. Kim says that so far it is known that one person was injured after “nine missiles from the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system were fired at the regional centre.”
Russian forces achieved “no significant territorial advances” over the last 72 hours in Donbas, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. The latest British intelligence report reads: “In the Donbas, Russian forces continue to conduct artillery strikes across a broad front followed by, in some areas, probing assaults by small company and platoon-sized units. However, they have achieved no significant territorial advances over the last 72 hours and are in danger of losing any momentum built up following the capture of Lysychansk.”
A top Russian official has said Ukraine must accept the “territorial realities” of the situation in order to resume peace negotiations with Moscow. Kyiv must provide a clear response to Moscow’s proposals that Ukraine accepts “non-aligned” and “non-nuclear” status in order to strike a peace deal, Russian deputy foreign minister Andrey Rudenko said, adding that Zelenskiy must also recognise Russia’s control over Crimea and the status of the pro-Russian self-proclaimed “people’s republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk.
A deal to resume exporting Ukrainian grain has been announced with the establishment of a coordination and monitoring centre in Istanbul. Turkey’s defence minister Hulusi Akar said Ankara will ensure the safety of shipments in transit and the parties will jointly check grain cargoes in ports after officials from Ukraine, Russia, United Nations and Turkey met for talks in Istanbul on Wednesday. UN chief António Guterres described the talks as a “critical step forward” but said more work was needed before a deal is set to be signed next week.
A traffic jam of more than 130 cargo ships loaded with Ukrainian grain is waiting in the Black Sea to pass into the Danube. The ships are waiting to access exit routes through the Sulina and Bystre estuary canals to reach a series of ports and terminals in Romania from where the grain can be transported on around the world.
Britain will provide a further £2.5m support package to Ukrainian prosecutors investigating alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces, the Foreign Office has announced. The package will include the deployment of mobile justice teams to the scene of potential war crimes, the training of up to 90 judges and forensic evidence gathering and support from British experts in sexual violence in conflict.
Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, has given a press briefing saying Nato was waging “hybrid warfare” on Russia by providing arms to Ukraine. Zakharova also criticised Britain’s decision to bring Ukrainian service personnel to the UK for weapons training.
Lithuania has said it will keep restrictions on Kaliningrad trade in place while it works out rules on how to resume the trade. The European Union executive said Wedensday that sanctioned Russian goods could transit through the bloc’s territory by rail, after tensions between Moscow and EU member Lithuania escalated over trade with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.
US treasury secretary Janet Yellen said representatives of President Vladimir Putin had no place at a meeting of the Group of 20 major economies, warning that the war in Ukraine was causing a negative spillover around the world.
Russian and proxy forces have reportedly entered the town of Siversk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to Russian media reports. State news agency Tass quoted Vitaly Kiselyov, an official from the self-appointed Luhansk People’s Republic, as saying the town could fall within a couple of days, but it was not clear what that claim was based on.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has ruled out ceding territory to Russia as part of any ceasefire deal. In a briefing, Kuleba said no peace talks were under way between Moscow and Kyiv “because of Russia’s position and its continued aggression against our country”.
The death toll from Saturday’s Russian missile attack on the town of Chasiv Yar has climbed to 48, according to Ukrainian emergency services. “Debris clearance continues after the Russian attack on the city of Chasiv Yar. As of this time, the list of the dead includes 48 people, including one child,” Zelenskiy said in his latest evening address.
Russia has forcibly removed nearly 2 million people from Ukraine, including several hundred thousand children, since its invasion of the country, Zelenskiy said. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian are being held in filtration camps in the temporarily Russian-occupied territories, Zelenskiy said in a video address to the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul on Wednesday.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, called for an immediate halt to Russian deportations of Ukrainian citizens. Blinken accused Russia of “deliberately separating Ukrainian children from their parents and abducting others from orphanages before putting them up for adoption inside Russia”.
A third American national is being held captive by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, according to reports. Suedi Murekezi, 35, was arrested last month in Kherson, a Russian-occupied port city in southern Ukraine where he had been living for more than two years, his brother Sele Murekezi said.
North Korea has officially recognised the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, the pro-Russian occupied territories in the east of Ukraine. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) becomes only the third UN member state to recognise them as legitimate authorities, after Russia and Syria. In response, Ukraine’s foreign ministry announced it has cut ties with North Korea.
A Moscow court has ordered one of the last prominent opposition figures still in Russia, Ilya Yashin, to be detained for two months pending an investigation into the spreading of “fake information” about Russia’s army. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison for spreading “false information” about Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
The global economic outlook has “darkened significantly” following the consequences of the war in Ukraine, according to the head of the International Monetary Fund. Kristalina Georgieva said the global outlook remains “extremely uncertain” with an increased risk of recession. “The human tragedy of the war in Ukraine has worsened. So, too, has its economic impact … and it’s only getting worse,” she said. G20 finance ministers and central bank governors are preparing to meet in Bali this week.
