At least 23 people, including three children, were killed and up to 66 others wounded after Russian missiles struck civilian buildings and a cultural centre in the city of Vinnytsia, in central Ukraine. The attack on Vinnytsia, far from the war’s front lines, occurred mid-morning on Thursday when the streets were full of people. Ihor Zhovkva, deputy head of the office of the president of Ukraine, said that “more than 70 people are still in hospital” and “18 people are missing, and the rescue operation is going on”. Eleven bodies, including two children, remain unidentified.
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 urged European and international criminal court officials to open a “special tribunal” to investigate Russia’s invasion of his country.
A top Ukrainian official said the missile attacks in Vinnytsia were an “approved military strategy” by Vladimir Putin. Mykhailo Podolyak, the head of Ukraine’s negotiating team and a key adviser to Zelenskiy, said Russian forces were attacking “peaceful” Ukrainian cities such as Vinnytsia, Kremenchuk, Chasiv Yar and Kharkiv in order to force Ukrainians to “peace at any price”, Podolyak wrote on Twitter. Russia’s attacks on peaceful Ukrainian cities were not a mistake but an approved military strategy.
A four-year-old girl was killed in the Vinnytsia strike with social media posts charting her life and death. Footage – which the Guardian is not publishing – showed Liza Dmitrieva lying dead in her overturned pushchair. “A girl is among the dead today in Vinnytsia, she was four years old, her name was Liza. The child was four years old!” Zelenskiy said. “Her mother is in critical condition.”
Russia’s ministry of defence has claimed without providing any evidence that yesterday’s missile strike on Vinnytsia was aimed at a military target – a meeting of Ukrainian air force command. They claim “As a result of the strike, the meeting participants were destroyed.”
Vitaliy Kim, governor of Mykolaiv, has said that the city’s universities have been struck by Russia this morning.
Reports say that Paul Urey, a British man who was captured by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine and accused of being a mercenary, has died. Urey and another British man, Dylan Healy, were detained in April.
Russian and pro-Russian Luhansk People’s Republic separatist forces claim to have entered the outskirts of Siversk in Ukraine’s Donbas, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. Acknowledging that reports have not corroborated, the ministry said Russian forces have been slowly advancing westwards and probing assaults towards Siversk from Lysychansk to open a pathway onward to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
Russia has banned investigative news outlet Bellingcat and its partner The Insider. Russia’s prosecutor general said their activities “posed a threat to... the security of the Russian federation”. A statement said both organisations will be added to Russia’s “undesirable” list, which bans them from operating in Russia and makes cooperating with them illegal for Russian organisations and individuals. Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins questioned how it can be applied, given that it has no official presence in Russia
New satellite images show an expanding mass grave site in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol, according to a report published by the UK-based Centre for Information Resilience (CIR). Investigators at CIR used satellite images to determine that approximately 1,400 new graves were added at the Mariupol Starokrymske cemetery between 12 May and 29 June.
The world’s largest security body has expressed “grave concern” about the alleged mistreatment of tens of thousands of Ukrainians in so-called filtration centres set up by Russia in Ukraine. Tens of thousands of civilians are taken to these centres in the self-proclaimed breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, before being deported to Russia, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said.
The United States and more than 40 other countries have agreed to coordinate investigations into suspected war crimes in Ukraine. On Thursday, 45 countries including European Union states as well as Britain, the US, Canada, Mexico and Australia at a conference in The Hague signed a political declaration to work together. With some 23,000 war crimes investigations now open and different countries heading teams, evidence needed to be credible and organised, officials said.
The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has said Russia’s war in Ukraine poses the greatest threat to the global economy. Representatives of Putin’s regime “have no place” at a meeting of the G20 countries in Bali, she said, adding that she would continue to press allies for a price cap on Russian oil, which she said would “deny Putin revenue his war machine needs”.
Canada’s finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, has told Russian officials at a meeting of G20 finance leaders that she held them personally responsible for “war crimes” committed during Russia’s war in Ukraine, a western official said.
Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, said Kyiv was “definitely a step closer” to reaching a deal to export grain through its Black Sea ports after talks with Russia, Turkey and the United Nations. Turkey earlier announced a deal with Ukraine, Russia and the UN aimed at resuming Ukrainian grain exports blocked by Russia.
Vladimir Putin signed into law tougher measures for individuals or entities considered “foreign agents” by Russia, as well as a new law equating defection with high treason. The new bill, which will come into force on 1 December, will broaden the definition of “foreign agents” to anyone deemed to have fallen “under foreign influence” or receiving support from abroad, not just foreign money.
Russia has begun “volunteer mobilisations” to address its soldier shortage, according to the Institute for the Study of War. In a new report, the US-based thinktank said the Kremlin had “likely ordered Russian ‘federal subjects’ (regions) to form volunteer battalions to participate in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, instead of declaring partial or full mobilisation in Russia”.
