At least 23 people were killed after Russia targeted civilians in the town of Vinnytsia. An act that the European Union has described as “barbaric” and which, according to the Ukrainian president, “demonstrates that Russia must be considered a terrorist country”. In the Donbass, the Russian troops continue their progress and seem on the point of occupying the locality of Siversk, located not far from Bakhmout.
Briton Paul Urey, captured in April by pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine during a humanitarian mission according to relatives, died in custody on July 10, separatist authorities announced on Friday July 15.
Briton Paul Urey, captured in April by pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine during a humanitarian mission according to relatives, died in custody on July 10, separatist authorities announced on Friday. “Despite the seriousness of (his) crimes, Paul Urey was receiving adequate medical assistance. Despite this, in view of his diagnosis and the stress, he died on July 10,” the separatists’ rights officer said on Telegram. Donetsk region, Daria Morozova, assuring that it was a mercenary and not a humanitarian worker.
A non-profit organization based in the United Kingdom, Presidium Network, announced on April 29 that two aid workers it knew, Paul Urey and Dylan Healy, had been captured by the Russian army in the south of the country. Ukraine as they sought to evacuate a woman and two children.
Paul Urey’s mother then indicated that her son was on a humanitarian mission, that he suffered from diabetes and needed insulin. Originally from Manchester and Warrington in the North of England, Paul Urey is presented by Presidium Network as a father who did not serve in the army but spent eight years in Afghanistan as a civilian contractor, while Dylan Healy worked in a hotel chain in the UK.
Downing Street has called “alarming” the announcement by the separatist authorities of the death in custody of Briton Paul Urey. “This is alarming information and our thoughts are obviously with his family and friends,” a Downing Street spokesman said.
On Thursday July 14, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled” by the Russian attack on Vinnytsia, a city in central Ukraine, which killed at least 23 people, including three children. Shortly after, the European Union condemned “in the strongest terms” these three Russian strikes having deliberately targeted a commercial building and castigated the “barbaric behavior” of Russia. “These atrocities in Vinnytsia are the latest in a long series of brutal attacks targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure,” said a joint statement from EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and EU Commissioner for Disaster Management. Janez Lenarcic fits. “There can be no impunity for the violations and crimes committed by the Russian forces and their political leaders”, can we read in the text.
Vinnytsia is a city far from the front lines, well to the west of the capital kyiv, but President Volodymyr Zelensky is not surprised by this attack: “This day demonstrates once again that Russia must be officially recognized as a terrorist state. No other country in the world allows itself to destroy peaceful cities and ordinary human lives every day with cruise missiles and artillery,” he said Thursday evening.
For its part, the Russian army claimed this Friday to have struck a meeting of the Ukrainian air force in Vinnytsia. The Russian Ministry of Defense explains in a press release that Kalibr missiles fired from the sea hit the “officers’ house” of this city where a meeting of the “Ukrainian air force command was held with representatives of foreign arms suppliers “. “Because of this strike, the participants in the meeting were eliminated,” he added. Russia has never recognized any blunders or crimes by its armed forces in Ukraine and systematically ensures that it only hits military targets. She accuses Ukraine of staging bombings or executions of civilians by Russians.
These new strikes came precisely at a time when a conference on crimes committed in Ukraine was being prepared in The Hague, organized by the International Criminal Court, the European Commission and the Netherlands.
The main battles, however, remain concentrated in the East, in the Donbass region, an industrial and mining basin that Moscow has promised itself to conquer entirely. According to the governor of the Lugansk region, Sergiï Gaïdaï, “massive artillery and mortar attacks continue and the Russians are trying to break through towards Siversk to open the way towards Bakhmout”, where a civilian died in shelling in the night from Wednesday to Thursday.
Pro-Russian separatists in the region say they are close to winning another victory. “Siversk is under our operational control, which means that the enemy can be hit by our fire throughout the area,” said separatist official Daniil Bezsonov. .
Western moneymakers on Friday condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at a G20 meeting in Indonesia and accused its economic leaders of having created a “shock wave” in the global economy.
The two-day meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors is being held on the Indonesian island of Bali, a week after foreign ministers, who sent a salvo of accusations over the invasion of Ukraine to the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov.
This week’s meeting has resulted in a new confrontation between Westerners, who denounce Moscow’s responsibility for economic problems, and Russia, which blames Western sanctions for all evil. “There was a very broad denunciation of the war and its consequences”, while “Russia tried to say that the world economic situation had nothing to do with the war”, a source told AFP. within the French delegation.
By analyzing photographs taken by satellites and those of individuals posted on social media, the Center for Information Resilience, CIR, reveals a sharp increase in the number of burials in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine . This organization, which fights against disinformation, has analyzed six areas that have been or are still in the hands of the Russians. “Open source information can provide unprecedented access behind the front lines and to areas occupied by Russian forces,” said CIR Director of Investigation Benjamin Strick. For example, at the Starokrymske Cemetery in Mariupol, the report’s authors estimate that around 1,700 new graves were dug between May 12 and June 29.
Their images also revealed large trenches at two sites near Mariupol, at Pionerske and Mangouch, as well as hastily dug graves around the town. Ukraine estimates that 22,000 civilians died in Mariupol, the scene of the heaviest fighting of the war so far. In Kherson, a southern city also conquered by the Russians, the CIR estimates that 824 graves were dug between the outbreak of the war and the beginning of April.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential administration on Thursday called on parliament to set up a committee to control arms received by Ukraine from its Western allies to fight against Russia’s invasion. This proposal comes after the European Union expressed concern that these weapons were smuggled out of Ukraine to equip criminal gangs in Europe. “Parliament, as the legislature, should be involved in oversight of allied defense aid. Our aim is to be as transparent as possible under martial law,” the office said. presidential.
However, he assured that all the weapons supplied by the West were already “registered and sent to the front”. This week, the European Union said it would set up a center in Moldova to fight organized crime, particularly arms smuggling from neighboring Ukraine.
The authorities appointed by Moscow in the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhia, partly occupied by the Russian army, announced Thursday that they wanted to organize a referendum on the annexation of their territory by Russia from the beginning of the fall. “I took the decision to hold a referendum which will take place at the beginning of the autumn”, declared Evguéni Balitski, head of the civil and military administration set up in the territories of this region controlled by the Russians. “We want to be in the Russian Federation,” he added, during a press conference in Melitopol. This is the first time that an official has mentioned such a precise timetable for such a referendum.
