Russian army claims to have repelled a “massive” Ukrainian attack
Ukraine’s chief of staff said Russia has threatened civilian ships in the Black Sea and urged the international community to condemn “the methods of terrorists”.
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The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff has said Russia is threatening civilian vessels in the Black Sea and called upon the international community to condemn what he said were “the methods of terrorists”.
Andriy Yermak posted on the Telegram messaging app on Friday:
“Russian warships are threatening civilians in the Black Sea, violating all norms of international maritime law.”
In a separate statement, Ukraine’s border guard service said it had intercepted a warning communicated by a Russian warship to a civilian vessel near a Ukrainian port on Thursday. It did not identify the name of the ship or the port.
The statement quoted Russia’s message:
“I am warning you about the ban on movement to the ports of Ukraine.
Also, the transport of any cargo to Ukraine is considered by the Russian side to be the potential transportation of military cargo.”
Russia last week quit a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey allowing Ukraine to safely export grain via the Black Sea and warned that ships heading to Ukrainian seaports could be considered military targets.
RUSSIA ACCUSES UKRAINE OF ‘MASSIVE ATTACK’
The Russian army claims to have repelled a “massive” Ukrainian attack involving several hundred soldiers near the town of Orikhiv in the south, one of the areas where Kyiv has been carrying out its counteroffensive.
Kyiv last month began a highly anticipated counteroffensive against Russian troops after stockpiling Western weapons and building up its offensive forces.
“On the morning of July 26, the enemy resumed intensive offensive operations” near Orikhiv, Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement.
It added that Ukraine “conducted a massive attack by the forces of three battalions reinforced by tanks”.
“All attacks of the Armed Force of Ukraine were repelled. Positions were held,” the ministry said.
The Russian military also said it progressed in the direction of Lyman, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, after reporting an advance of up to two kilometres on Tuesday.
The ministry said the fighting was taking place near the village of Sergiivka, which Moscow claimed to have take control of.
RUSSIAN FIGHTER JET FIRES FLARES AT US DRONE
A Russian fighter jet flew “dangerously close” to a US drone over Syria and damaged it with flares, according to the US Air Force, in the latest in a series of incidents between the two militaries in the Middle East.
On Sunday, a Russian jet closed to within a few meters of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone that was taking part in an anti-ISIS mission over Syria. The Sukhoi Su-35 began dropping flares in front of the US drone, severely damaging its propeller, the Air Force said. The drone’s crew was able to control the aircraft and fly it back to its home base.
A senior air force commander said the Russians attempted on Sunday to knock the MQ-9 Reaper drone out of the sky. It came just a week after a Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a US surveillance aircraft carrying a crew in the region, jeopardising the lives of the four Americans on board.
“One of the Russian flares struck the US MQ-9, severely damaging its propeller,” Lt Gen Alex Grynkewich, the head of US Air Forces Central, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“We call upon the Russian forces in Syria to put an immediate end to this reckless, unprovoked and unprofessional behaviour.
“The Russian fighter’s blatant disregard for flight safety detracts from our mission to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS.”
Video of the encounter from the US drone shows a Russian fighter jet drawing closer as it approaches from behind. The clip then shows the jet dropping flares near the drone.
In a similar encounter over the Black Sea in March, a Russian Su-27 fighter jet struck the same type of US drone, damaging its propeller and forcing it down in the water.
‘TOUGH, RETALIATORY MEASURES’
Russia said on Monday that drone attacks in central Moscow and annexed Crimea could warrant a harsh response, after Ukraine claimed an attack on the capital.
“We regard what happened as yet another use of terrorist methods and intimidation of the civilian population by the military and political leadership of Ukraine,” the Russia’s foreign ministry said.
“The Russian Federation reserves the right to take tough retaliatory measures.”
Russia launched a deadly strike against east Ukraine
A child was killed and six people wounded in the strike on the city of Kostiantynivka on Monday, the region’s governor said.
Russian forces fired Smerch rockets at “a local pond, where people were resting,” Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram, adding that three children were among the injured.
Kostyantynivka has been truck by Russian missiles before.
Many of the schools in the front line city have been destroyed with residents saying that only a few are left standing.
According to the Ukrainian government well over 300 educational institutions have been damaged or destroyed.
It comes as two buildings in Moscow and an ammunition depot in Russian-annexed Crimea were hit by Ukrainian drones on Monday, Russian officials have announced.
No casualties have been reported and Russia said it had “neutralised” the drones.
“I wasn’t asleep. It was 3:39am. The house really shook,” 70-year-old local resident, Vladimir, told AFP reporters on site. “It is scandalous that a Ukrainian drone almost flew into the defence ministry.”
A 35-year-old manager named Polina, who was out walking her dog, said her husband and child were woken by “a very loud noise right next to our house”.
The drone attack came a day after Kyiv vowed to “retaliate” for a Russian missile attack on the Black Sea port of Odessa, where two people were killed and 22 wounded. Ukraine’s The Transfiguration Cathedral was also destroyed in the missile attack.
Crimea Governor Sergei Aksyonov said Russian forces had shot down 11 Ukrainian drones and that an ammunition depot and private house were hit.
He also said villages near the depot were being evacuated.
Meanwhile, Ukraine officials reported a Russian drone attack on port infrastructure on the Danube River, which spans across Romania and Ukraine. The river is used as an export route for Ukrainian grain.
“As a result of the strikes, a grain hanger was destroyed, tanks for storing other types of cargo were damaged,” Ukraine’s southern military command said.
“According to initial reports, about four workers of the port were injured, but the information is still being clarified.”
Last week, Russia pulled out of a key deal which had allowed the safe export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.
Kyiv has since accused Russia of targeting grain supplies and infrastructure vital to grain exports.
Ukraine’s military said it shot down three of the drones used in Monday’s attack.
PUTIN DECLARES UKRAINE COUNTEROFFENSIVE HAS ‘FAILED’
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Sunday that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had “failed”, as he began two-day talks with his Belarus counterpart and closest ally Alexander Lukashenko.
The longtime leaders met for the first time since Lukashenko helped end a mutiny by Russian Wagner mercenaries in Russia last month, in the biggest threat to Putin’s more than two-decade rule.
“There is no counteroffensive,” Lukashenko said, before being interrupted by Putin: “There is one, but it has failed.”
In a sign of the importance of the meeting, the pair met for two days of talks in Putin’s native Saint Petersburg, hours after the Russian army had struck Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odessa.
Putin and his Belarus counterpart Alexander Lukashenko met a crowd of people in Russia’s Kronstadt town on Kotlin Island, in a rare walkabout for the longtime leaders a month after a deal to end a dramatic Wagner munity in Russia.
Russia’s Kommersant newspaper posted a video of Putin and Lukashenko posing for photographs with people, with bodyguards standing nearby.
Lukashenko on Sunday said he was “keeping” Russian Wagner mercenaries in central Belarus and that Minsk was “controlling” the situation with the notorious fighters on its territory.
“They are asking to go West [to Poland], ask me for permission … to go on a trip to Warsaw, to Rzeszow,” Lukashenko said to Putin, who smiled. “But of course, I am keeping them in central Belarus, like we agreed.”
“We are controlling what is happening (with Wagner),” he said, adding: “They are in a bad mood.”
Russia’s latest strike on Odessa on Sunday killed two people and wounded 22, including four children. It severely damaged a historic Orthodox cathedral, drawing a vow of retaliation from Ukraine’s leader.
The 18th century Transfiguration Cathedral, the biggest Orthodox Church in Odessa, lies within the UNESCO-protected historic city centre.
On the Black Sea in Odessa, locals looked in disbelief as the Transfiguration Cathedral – originally built in 1794 under imperial Russian rule – was badly damaged.
Clergymen rescued icons from rubble inside the badly damaged shrine, which was demolished under Stalin in 1936 and rebuilt in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine said it had been “destroyed twice: by Stalin and Putin.” It said the cathedral strike was a “war crime.”
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed retaliation: “They will definitely feel this,” he said.
Images showed smashed mosaics on the cathedral floor as workers cleared the rubble. The outside of the building appeared intact.
“There was a direct hit to the cathedral, it completely damaged three altars,” Father Myroslav, the assistant rector of the cathedral said.
He said icons were pulled out from under the rubble and that the shrine is “very badly damaged inside”, with “only the bell tower intact.”
Clergymen said a security guard and a priest readying for a morning liturgy were inside during the attack but both survived.
Russia blamed the cathedral damage on Ukrainian air defence. Moscow said it had hit all its intended targets in the Odessa strike, claiming the sites were being used to prepare “terrorist acts” against Russia.
BUSINESSES, RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS HIT
But on the ground, locals said Russia had hit ordinary residential areas.
“We have ordinary residential buildings here, where people live,” a woman who owns a beauty salon nearby, Tetiana, told AFP.
“There are no military facilities here. Just simple beauty salons, a marine agency, a groomer. Nothing military here at all.”
Anzhelika Domanska said she ran with her neighbours when she saw the cathedral burning.
The strike came a year after a missile had hit her house in nearby Mykolaiv. “It is not a pleasant anniversary,” she said.
Russia launched a wave of attacks on the Black Sea port this week, after exiting a deal allowing the safe passage of cargo ships between Moscow, Kyiv, Istanbul and the UN.
Ukraine has vowed to find a way to continue exports from the ports and said Sunday repeated Russian strikes on Odessa this week were an attempt to “prevent and neutralise international efforts to restore the functioning of the “grain corridor.”
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