Friday saw another devastating barrage of Russian missile attacks on Ukraine. At least 21 people, including one child, were reported to have been killed in the region of southern Odesa.
According to Ukraine’s emergency services, a nine-storey building was damaged and a holiday center was destroyed in Serhiyivka.
Andriy Yeermak, chief of staff to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zilensky, claimed that Russia is a “terrorist nation”.
He said that Russia was waging war against civilians as a response to defeats on battlefields.
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Fierce fighting continued around Lysychansk, the easternmost city in the Luhansk Region that is not under Russian control.
According to BBC News analysis of data by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, (Acled), a US-based non profit group that records violence and political deaths, more than one third of all Ukrainian civilian deaths occurred since February 24, according to BBC News.
Experts believe that the number of deaths recorded is likely to be significantly underestimated.
Russia and Ukraine claim that the number is in the tens or thousands, but their claims are wildly different and cannot be independently verified.
It is important to examine a variety of sources to get a better understanding of the human costs of war. These include the UN and national governments as well as independent monitors.
Ukraine is requesting more weapons supplies in order to resist Russia’s invasion.
At this week’s meeting, President Volodomyr Zelensky stated that “We must break the Russian artillery edge.” We need more modern systems.
He said that if Ukraine didn’t receive the weapons necessary to defeat Russia, then NATO leaders would be facing a future war against Moscow.
More than 30 countries have given Ukraine huge amounts of military equipment, but heavy weaponry was slow to arrive, and some areas have seen heavy outgunning.
After suffering heavy losses at war’s start, one of Russia’s most elite fighting forces, 331st Guards Parachute regiment is now back in Ukraine.
While the state media portrays the unit’s heroic heroism, the story back home about the regiment’s support for the fighters seems less certain.
An armoured vehicle raced up to a field station carrying several wounded men from the Donbas battleground, as seen on the Rossiya channel in June.
“The [Ukrainian] Tank was firing at Us,” one of the Russian paratroopers explained, while his wounds were being treated “…first close to us, then straight at US.
These glimpses of the brutality of war are rare. However, acknowledgments of the cost being paid by the army are getting less frequent.
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Evidence is mounting that Russian forces are actively stealing grain from Ukrainian farmers in the occupied regions of Ukraine. This contributes to a food shortage and a global food crises.
Ukraine claims some of the stolen grain was transported on a ship from Russia-occupied Ukraine, and has requested that the ship be seized.
Reality Check from BBC has been following the Zhibek Zholy (Russian-flagged) on its journey from Berdyansk, Ukraine, to Karasu, Turkey.
Although it is unclear where the cargo came from, or how it was obtained from there, Russia has been accused in some cases of stealing grain from Ukraine.
Moscow is looking to purchase a large oil and gas project in which Shell holds a 27.5% share.
This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree giving him the responsibility for Russia’s Sakhalin-2 project.
This could lead to Shell, a British multinational company, and Mitsubishi in Japan being forced to sell their investments due to the economic downturn caused by the Ukraine war.
According to Theo Leggett, BBC’s business correspondent, this appears to be a highly political move.
While the fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces is continuing on the ground, Ukraine declared victory in a different type of war after the UN’s cultural agency included the Ukrainian cooking of Borsch to its endangered intangible cultural heritage list.
Unesco stated that the war in Ukraine had “threatened the practice of cooking Borsch” in Ukraine. Borsch is a hearty soup made mostly with potatoes and beetroot.
“Victory in war for Borsch is ours!” Oleksandr Tkachenko, Ukraine’s Culture Minister, stated.
Russia’s foreign ministry mocked the move and stated that the dish didn’t need to be protected.
