The death toll from a weekend Russian missile attack on a residential apartment block in Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine has risen to at least 47. According to Kyiv, the residential building was hit by Russian rockets fired from truck-borne systems late on Saturday evening. Ukrainian emergency services initially gave a death toll of 10, but as rescue teams continued to comb through the debris that number rose.
At least seven people were reportedly killed by a Ukrainian missile strike on a large ammunition store in the town of Nova Kakhovka, in Russia-occupied Kherson, in a strike attributed to recently acquired US weapons. The explosion hit a warehouse close to a key railway line and a dam on the Dnieper river. Footage on social media showed a large explosion lighting up the night, burning ammunition and billowing smoke.
Russian artillery and rockets pounded the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut overnight and into Wednesday morning. Donetsk governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said Russian forces were “constantly shelling the entire free territory of Donetsk region [with] Bakhmut district suffering the most”.
The Russian ministry of defence has said that it caused large losses to Ukrainian forces in the last 24 hours, claiming to have killed at least 425 service personnel and shot down three planes and nine unmanned drones. Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force, dismissed Russia’s assertions as propaganda.
At least five people have been injured and one killed by Russian shelling in the region of Kharkiv, according to the daily update from the regional governor, Oleh Synyehubov. He has posted to Telegram this morning to say: “The terror of the civilian population of Kharkiv Region by the Russian occupiers continues.”
Military delegations from Ukraine, Russia and Turkey met with UN officials in Istanbul to discuss a possible deal to resume safe exports of Ukrainian grain. The four-way meeting came as exports across the Black Sea continue to be blocked by Russian warships and sea mines Kyiv has laid to avert a feared amphibious assault. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was quoted earlier on Wednesday as saying that Kyiv believed a deal was “two steps away”.
Grain shipments via the Danube river have increased with the reopening of the Bystre canal. The number of foreign ships reaching Ukraine ports to help with grain exports has doubled to 16 within the last 24 hours, according to Ukraine’s deputy infrastructure minister, Yuriy Vaskov. Ukraine has restored long-decommissioned ports to facilitate the exportation of grain due to Russia’s Black Sea blockade, and expects to increase monthly exports to 500,000 tonnes.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, says Russia “doesn’t have the courage” to admit defeat. In a nationally televised address, Zelenskiy also mocked the Russian military’s apparent reliance on ageing weapons and Soviet-era tactics, and insisted the unity of his country’s citizenry, combined with the strength of Ukraine’s armed forces, meant the outcome of the war was “certain”.
Russian forces will likely focus on taking several small Donbas towns during the coming week, including Siversk and Dolyna on the approaches to Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. “The urban areas of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk likely remain the principal objectives for this phase of the operation,” the British intelligence report 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 said it has cut ties with North Korea.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has 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.
The US treasury announced on Tuesday it was sending an additional $1.7bn (£1.4bn) in economic aid to Ukraine to fund “essential services”. European foreign ministers late on Monday approved €1bn (£850m) in aid, the first instalment of a €9bn rescue package agreed in May.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is set to visit Tehran next week to hold talks with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The meeting comes as the US has accused Iran of preparing to supply Russia with hundreds of weapons-capable drones for use in Ukraine.
The UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Tuesday that more than 5,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia invaded on 24 February, adding that the real toll was probably much higher.
The European Union has so far frozen €13.8bn (£11.7bn) worth of assets held by Russian oligarchs, other individuals and entities sanctioned for Moscow’s war against Ukraine, the EU’s top justice official said on Tuesday.
Russia has claimed to have killed a significant number of foreign mercenaries fighting in Ukraine in the last three weeks, including 23 from Britain.
Russia has launched a criminal case against one of the last opposition figures remaining in the country, for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian army, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Ilya Yashin, 39, a Moscow city councillor, was sentenced to 15 days in jail last month for disobeying police. He had been set to be released in the early hours of Wednesday.
The appeals over the death sentences of captured Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Saaudun Brahim will be dealt with within a month, an official from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said. The UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said she “utterly condemns” the sentencing, stating: “They are prisoners of war. This is a sham judgment with absolutely no legitimacy.”
Brazil is looking to buy as much diesel as it can from Russia and the deals closed “as recently as yesterday”, the Brazilian foreign minister Carlos Franca said on Tuesday, without giving further details.
