At least four employees were killed on Wednesday in a Russian strike that destroyed a Ukrainian school ten days before the start of the school year, another deadly day as Ukraine will enter its 19th month of war.
In addition, Moscow was Wednesday for the sixth consecutive day the target of drones disrupting its air traffic and causing material damage without causing casualties.
The Russian army continued its daily strikes on its neighbor on Wednesday, often very far from the front. Some 400 kilometers from the front lines, in Romny, in the Sumy region (northeast), four people died in a drone attack which hit a school.
“Rescuers found the bodies of the school director, deputy director, a secretary and a librarian,” Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said on Telegram.
Three civilians were also killed near Lyman, in the Donetsk region (east), according to local authorities, while Russia again targeted the Ukrainian port facilities of Izmail (south) on the Danube.
The river has become an outlet for Ukrainian agricultural products since Moscow ended a grain deal in July. Grain silos and warehouses were damaged, according to the prosecution.
Drawing up an initial assessment of these attacks, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov deplored the loss for foreign customers of “270,000 tonnes of cereals” in one month.
For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “the Black Sea is the key to food, and therefore to social stability in the world. Crimea is the key to the security of the Black Sea. You cannot leave the keys in the hands of terrorists. And we won’t.”
kyiv has also denied the loss of one of its military ships in the Black Sea, claimed the day before by Moscow.
“In fact, the Russian missile fell into the water,” said the Ministry of Defense.
On Tuesday, Russia claimed to have “destroyed” two Ukrainian military ships in the Black Sea.
And then Ukrainian military intelligence claimed to have destroyed a Russian anti-aircraft defense system on the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, on Wednesday morning.
Russian authorities said nothing about the strike, but influential Russian military blogs reported on the attack, also far from the front and showing that anti-aircraft defense is also being tested.
Russian soldiers are facing a counter-offensive that also affects Russian territory. Thus, an explosive device released by a drone caused the death of “three civilians” in Lavy, a village in the Russian region of Belgorod, wrote on Telegram the governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russian diplomacy, pointed to “the role of Western intelligence services in these crimes”, because “they provide Ukrainian neo-Nazis with information allowing them to trace the routes of these drones”.
These devices penetrate more and more often and ever deeper into Russia. Thus, Moscow faced such drones for the sixth day in a row.
At dawn on Wednesday, one of them arrived in the center of the capital before being “neutralized” and hitting a building under construction in the Moscow City business district, the ministry said. Russian Defense.
At the level of an edge of a skyscraper, a window appeared destroyed and the windows around blackened, noted an AFP photographer.
Two other machines were destroyed by anti-aircraft defense in Mozhaisk and Khimki, two cities in the Moscow region, according to the Ministry of Defense.
Vladislav Chapcha, governor of the Kaluga region, located southwest of Moscow, also said on Telegram “that a drone attack was repelled on the territory of the Kirovsky district”.
Once again, air traffic at Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo international airports was briefly interrupted.
On the eve of Independence Day on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda and Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean.
Vladimir Putin, for his part, attended by videoconference a summit of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) to which he could not go, being the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. .
23/08/2023 21:00:59 – Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
