The Russian special operation in Ukraine continues, today, Friday, as the Russian army continues to… Attacking the positions of Ukrainian forces and military infrastructure And the liberation of the Donbass lands, while Kyiv receives Western support and military equipment.
In the latest developments, the Russian military said, on Friday, that it targeted a meeting of the Ukrainian Air Force in central Vinnytsia, a Ukrainian city far from the front lines, on Thursday, in a bombing that led to deaths and was condemned by the international community.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that Kalibr missiles fired from the sea hit the “officers’ house” in this city, where a meeting of “the command of the Ukrainian Air Force with representatives of foreign arms suppliers was taking place.”
In addition, it was announced the death of British Paul Burray, detained by the pro-Moscow separatists. Donetsk separatist authorities said that “Paul Boray died on July 10, he had diabetes.”
Earlier, British intelligence reported that Russian and separatist forces in Donbass announced their entry into the outskirts of Seversk. She added that Bakhmut is the next target of the Russian forces following the control of Seversk.
Mutual military strikes escalated between Kyiv and Moscow in eastern and central Ukraine, as the city of Vinnytsia witnessed Dozens of Ukrainians were killed and injuredMeanwhile, Ukrainian forces targeted buses of separatist forces of Russia north of Donetsk, which led to deaths in their ranks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the Russian bombing of the city of Vinnytsia, which resulted in 23 people were killed, including 3 children‘An act of terrorism’. While the Russian Defense Ministry has not commented on the operation, it usually says that the Russian military does not target civilians.
In a video statement to the conference organized by the International Criminal Court, the European Commission and the Netherlands, Zelensky called for the creation of a “special court” to investigate “crimes of Russian aggression once morest Ukraine”.
In Vinnytsia, photos published by the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Service showed dozens of charred corpses and a ten-storey building destroyed by the explosion and the ensuing fire.
This comes as the director of the Ukrainian presidency, Andrei Yermak, called on lawmakers to form a monitoring committee to oversee the weapons received by Ukraine from its Western allies to help repel Russian forces.
The proposal comes following Brussels raised concerns regarding arms smuggling from Ukraine to organized crime gangs in Europe.
Kyiv said it closely monitors the weapons it receives from Western partners and that overseeing the deliveries is a “priority” for the government.
Russia has also been accused of spreading misleading propaganda regarding the spread of arms smuggling from Ukraine.
Individual weapons became increasingly available in Ukraine following the 2014 conflict between Moscow-backed separatists in the east and the Ukrainian army.
It is reported that Russian strikes – away from the front lines of the front – were relatively rare over several weeks. But the war is expanding and raging around areas such as the strategic port of Mykolaiv in the south and near the Black Sea, which early Thursday morning was the target of a “massive missile strike” for the second day in a row.
“Two schools, transportation infrastructure and a hotel were damaged,” the Ukrainian presidency said in its daily morning briefing.
Pictures released by local authorities showed the remains of a building destroyed by the bombing, while municipal workers were cleaning up the debris left by the attack.
A few weeks ago, Kyiv launched a counterattack to retake Kherson, located sixty kilometers from Mykolaiv and the only regional capital that Moscow had captured since February 24. While the front line remains relatively stable, Ukraine is launching increasingly aggressive attacks using new US and European missile systems targeting arms depots.
The main battles remain concentrated in eastern Ukraine and in the Donbass, the industrial and mining basin that Moscow has vowed to fully occupy.
The governor of Lugansk region noted that “artillery and mortar attacks continue (and) the Russians are trying to storm Seversk and open the road towards Bakhmut”, where a civilian was killed in shelling on the night of Wednesday-Thursday.
The Moscow-backed separatists assert that they are close to achieving a new victory, days following seizing several important cities.
“Servsk is now under our operational control, which means that we can target the enemy in the entire region,” the Russian news agency TASS quoted a separatist official, Daniil Bezunov, as saying.
