Moscow:
Russia on Friday confirmed that it carried out an airstrike on Kiev during a visit by the UN Secretary-General, the first attack on the Ukrainian capital in nearly two weeks, which also killed a journalist.
Vera Gyrych, a producer for US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was killed when a Russian missile hit the building where she lived in Kiev, the media group said.
Russia’s defense ministry said it had deployed “airborne high-precision long-range weapons” that “destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom missile and aerospace company in Kiev”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes, which immediately followed his talks with UN chief Antonio Guterres, were an attempt by Russia “to humiliate the UN and everything it represents”.
Earlier that day, Guterres had toured Bucha and other suburbs of Kiev, where Moscow allegedly committed war crimes. Russia denies killing civilians.
Germany said the “inhumane” attack showed Russian President Vladimir Putin “has no respect whatsoever for international law”.
The powerful blast had torn walls and doors and left debris 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 cleaned up the destruction on Friday.
Nevertheless, Putin will attend November’s G20 summit, host Indonesia President Joko Widodo said. Zelensky is also invited.
‘Terrorists’ hostage situation
Ukrainian prosecutors said they tracked down more than 8,000 war crimes and investigated 10 Russian soldiers for suspected atrocities in Bucha, where dozens of civilian bodies were found after Moscow’s withdrawal.
Britain said it would send a team of war crimes experts to assist Ukrainian investigators in May.
Three months after an invasion that failed in its short-term goal to take Kiev, Russia is now stepping up operations in the eastern Donbas region and tightening its stranglehold 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 shelter in Mariupol where hundreds of civilians are sheltering with Ukrainian troops.
But Denis Pushilin, the leader of the breakaway eastern region of Donetsk, accused Ukrainian troops of “acting like outright terrorists”.
He said Ukraine was holding civilians hostage in the steel mill and claimed people could leave at any time.
‘Small’ progress
With the war having claimed thousands of lives, Kiev has admitted that Russian troops have taken a series of villages in the Donbas region.
But Ukrainian forces, armed by Western allies, also reported minor victories along the front lines.
A senior NATO official said Russia had made only “minor” and “unequal” progress in its attempt to encircle enemy positions as Ukrainian forces counterattacked.
A Pentagon official on Friday said the Kremlin’s eastern offensive was “behind schedule” as airstrikes failed to facilitate ground offensives.
In the Kharkov region, Ukrainian troops said they had recaptured a “strategically important” village, Ruska Lozova.
But in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, citizens continued to live in fear.
A resident, Antonina, told AFP that she came home to find that a rocket had hit her building and got stuck in her bathroom.
“When I got home, everything was destroyed… It was scary,” she told AFP.
More Western weapons are expected to arrive in Ukraine, and US President Joe Biden on Thursday asked for billions of dollars from Congress to increase supplies.
A senior US official said the package would keep the Ukrainian government and military until early October.
Russia’s defense ministry has said in recent days that its forces have attacked Ukrainian military sites housing Western-supplied weapons and ammunition, a claim denied by a senior NATO official.
‘We will leave’
Britain said it is deploying about 8,000 troops for exercises across Eastern Europe to demonstrate the determination of Western allies against Russian aggression.
Fears of the conflict spilling over into the pro-Kremlin breakaway region of Transnistria, neighboring Moldova, have soared this week after explosions, gunfire and a drone sighting were reported.
“I don’t know what to do, I’ve never seen a situation like this,” Victoria, a 36-year-old medical assistant who works in Transnistria, told AFP.
“If things change, of course we will leave.”
A NATO official said the presence of 1,500 to 2,000 Russian troops in Transnistria was a “concern” because they could distract Ukrainian troops and have stronger capabilities than the Moldovan army.
The costs of the war have reverberated across Europe, with Brussels releasing data showing manufacturing growth for the eurozone has slowed to 0.2 percent, while consumer prices jumped a record 7.4 percent in April.
But that pales in comparison to the plight of Ukrainians, more than 5.4 million who have fled their country since the invasion, according to UN estimates.
Another 7.7 million others are internally displaced, the International Organization for Migration said, calling for $514 million to help.
“We have only one hope left: to return home,” says retiree Galina Bodnya in the southern city of Zaporizhzhya.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)