Russian forces invade Ukraine with strikes on major cities

[Huat Zai]

Sergiy Stakhovsky: Ukrainian tennis player who returned to defend his country

 

 

Sergiy Stakhovsky was in Dubai on holiday when he got the phone call from his parents that he had been dreading.

They could hear explosions outside their house in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

 

Russia had invaded.

Stakhovsky switched on the news and from that moment did not sleep or think for three days while he tried to process what was going on.

"I couldn't believe the pictures I was seeing," he tells the BBC. "I was trying to understand where my family were, what they were doing and how bad it was."

Just a month before, Stakhovsky had been playing in qualifying for the Australian Open. Defeat in Melbourne at the age of 36 led to him deciding to retire, ending a 19-year tennis career. In 2010 he had reached a world ranking of 31. In 2013 he had beaten Roger Federer at Wimbledon, ending the champion's run of 36 consecutive Grand Slam quarter-final appearances.

He knew what his next step would be.

He brought his family back to Budapest in Hungary, where they live. His wife asked what he was going to do.

"It was not the answer she wanted to hear and she got upset," Stakhovsky says.

"I played Davis Cup with pride for almost 17 years so I honestly don't see how I could be the privileged one to stay out of what's going on in my country.

"I actually sneaked out. The kids were reading and watching cartoons so I didn't bother them. The only one that saw me leaving was the youngest one and he asked me: 'Daddy where are you going?' I had the backpack on and so I said: 'I'll be right back.'"

Stakhovsky did not turn back, heading first to Bratislava in Slovakia to pick up some gear including bulletproof vests and helmets before driving to the border with Ukraine. People were already starting to leave. He says he saw about 100 children standing in -8C temperatures.

He met up with a friend and they started the drive towards Lviv in the west of the country. There he stayed the night before heading to Kyiv to meet his brother and father. He had already organised for his mother to escape, along with his brother's wife and his brother's two daughters.

Stakhovsky was assigned to a military unit and the following Monday was stationed in Kyiv, trying to help as much as he could. In the capital, the enormity of the situation began to sink in. He had never had any military training.

"We wanted to use that time to the maximum because we didn't know when they were actually going to enter Kyiv or when they were going to start shelling harder, the same way as they were in Kharkiv," he says.

"We all basically slept with the Kalashnikov next to us. When there's a strike, we need to be ready."

All that time he was doing press interviews to try to bring the situation to people's attention. He also wanted to counter the Russian narrative about his country.

There were countless air raids and he was constantly going down to the shelter. It was an emotional time for him, but his trip to Bucha really showed the horrors of the war.

Bucha, a town outside Kyiv, was occupied by the Russians for a month at the beginning of the war. There is evidence of civilians being tortured, raped and murdered.

Images of the situation there have been shown around the globe but Stakhovsky says the world only saw a small reflection of what happened. Initially, he was not sure what he would do if he had to go into a gunfight. That changed after Bucha.

"The things they did and the way they did it are honestly inhuman," he says. "You cannot describe the hatred you feel towards the Russian army.

"The people who lived there, they didn't deserve it. They were not part of this war. They didn't want to participate. They were just civilians and they didn't have the chance to live.

"I would have no hesitation. If I saw a Russian soldier I know what I'm going to do."

Since the invasion, there has been a lot of discussion about how to react to Russian athletes and whether they should be banned from competing internationally. Tennis has taken a varied approach.

In the first weeks of the conflict, Russian tennis player Andrey Rublev wrote 'no war please' on a TV camera lens after winning a match in Dubai. World number two Daniil Medvedev spoke of "promoting peace". This was before a new Russian law that can lead to up to 15 years in jail for spreading anything the authorities consider to be 'fake news' about the military. Most Russian sportspeople have stayed silent since.

Last month, Wimbledon announced Russian athletes would be banned from competing in the tournament this summer. It was met with a mixed reception, but Stakhovsky fully supports the decision.

"In the first few weeks I honestly believed that the Russians, once they saw what the army was doing, when they're watching the destruction of cities, the bombing of cities such as Kharkiv and Kyiv that they would go out and protest," he says.

"But that didn't happen. Nobody came out. Few came to protest. There were no masses.

"So I stand behind it [Wimbledon's decision]."

Stakhovsky has been able to return to Budapest. During a brief visit home he fully explained to his children what he is doing in Ukraine, before leaving once more to continue his duties.

"I explained to my wife, we talked it through and we really did talk it through," he says. "I now feel better about myself because I came back.

"I left three kids and a wife I adore and I went to defend my country and I went to defend my family. There's nothing great about what I did.

"But the outcome could have been different. And it still can be."

 

https://www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/61387779

[Huat Zai]

 

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Marianna Vyshemirsky: 'My picture was used to spread lies about the war'

The beauty influencer was accused of being an actor after this photo was published

A photo of a heavily pregnant woman fleeing a bombed maternity hospital became one of the most iconic images of the war in Ukraine. But its subject was targeted by an extraordinary Russian disinformation campaign and she received hate from both sides.

Wrapped in a duvet with her forehead bloodied, Marianna Vyshemirsky's image was seen around the world.

The photo above was taken in the aftermath of a Russian airstrike in Mariupol. It circulated online, on newspaper front pages, and was argued about at the UN Security Council.

But, having survived one attack, Marianna faced another onslaught - of disinformation and hate aimed at her and her family.

As Russia attempted to sow falsehoods about the attack, 29-year-old Marianna was falsely accused of "acting". Russian diplomats even claimed that she had "played" not one, but two different women.

Marianna on a video call during her interview with the BBC

I've spoken extensively to her friends and relatives, but have been trying to interview my namesake for weeks. So when she finally appears on my screen on a video call, it feels a little surreal. She tells me about her harrowing escape, and about the online abuse that came after.

"I received threats that they would come and find me, that I would be killed, that my child would be cut into pieces," she says.

This is her first interview with a major western media outlet after being evacuated to her hometown in a part of Donbas controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

Marianna seems at ease, and is speaking to me without any preconditions, but a pro-separatist blogger is with her.

She tells me what it's like to find herself inside an information battle - all while giving birth to her daughter Veronika in a war zone.

"She chose to show up at a difficult time," she explains, "but it's better she arrived under these circumstances than not at all."

'Things were turned upside down'

Life in Mariupol was very different before the war. Marianna promoted beauty products on social media, while her husband Yuri worked at the Azovstal steel works.

 

"We had a quiet and simple life," she says, "and then, of course, things were turned upside down."

Her Instagram account shows her excitement at the prospect of becoming a mother.

Marianna posted this picture on Instagram in late February, asking her followers to guess whether her baby would be a boy or a girl

But by the time Marianna was admitted to hospital, Mariupol had become the most bombed city in Ukraine.

On 9 March, she was chatting with other women on the ward when an explosion shook the hospital.

She pulled a blanket over her head. Then a second explosion hit.

"You could hear everything flying around, shrapnel and stuff," she says. "The sound was ringing in my ears for a very long time."

 

The women sheltered in the basement with other civilians. Marianna suffered a forehead cut and glass fragments lodged in her skin, but a doctor told her she didn't need stitches.

What she did need, she explains, was to retrieve her possessions from the ruins of the hospital. She asked a police officer to help her back inside.

"Everything I had prepared for my baby was in that maternity ward," she says.

Anatomy of a lie

While she stood outside the hospital, waiting to recover her things, she was photographed by journalists from the Associated Press. They snapped her again as she descended the stairs exiting the building.

Those images quickly went viral. And that's when false allegations that the pictures were "staged" first appeared on a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel. Marianna's beauty blogging was used to suggest she was an "actor" who had used makeup to fake injuries.

These falsehoods were repeated and amplified by senior Russian officials and state media.

They even claimed that a photo of another pregnant woman on a stretcher was also Marianna, even though it's clear that the photos are of different people. The woman on the stretcher and her unborn child later died from their injuries.

This tweet from the Russian Embassy in London containing false information was taken down by Twitter

Fleeing and without internet access, Marianna didn't see those images until days later.

By that point, her Instagram was inundated with accusatory and threatening messages. She found both the trolling and the false allegations shocking.

"It was really offensive to hear that, because I actually lived through it all," she says. But she refrains from directly criticising the Russian officials who spread the false information about her.

Instead, she criticises the Associated Press.

"I was offended that the journalists who had posted my photos on social media had not interviewed other pregnant women who could confirm that this attack had really happened."

She suggests this may help explain why some people "got the impression that it was all staged". But by Marianna's own account she was one of the last patients to be evacuated, and that was when the AP journalists arrived. The journalists interviewed other people at the scene. And they had nothing to do with the subsequent false story spread by Russian officials. We approached the AP for comment.

The search for Marianna

In the days after the attack, Marianna gave birth to Veronika in another hospital.

Marianna in a different hospital after giving birth to her daughter, several days after the bombing

Like thousands of others, Marianna and Yuri were desperately trying to escape Mariupol. For weeks, it was largely impossible to make contact with them. Eventually Marianna's relatives told me the couple had got out of the city, but their whereabouts were unclear. Then in early April, they resurfaced in the Donbas region.

She filmed an interview with Denis Seleznev, a blogger who is a vocal supporter of Russian-backed separatists. There was speculation how free she was to say what she wanted.

Marianna says to me: "I had to describe the whole situation, as I saw it with my own eyes."

My conversation with her was also arranged via Denis. Marianna speaks to me from his home. He is present throughout our chat but doesn't interrupt. Marianna's relatives and friends have assured me she is now safe.

Piecing together the truth

Much of what she says in her interview with me undermines the Russian government's mistruths.

The Kremlin wrongly and repeatedly suggested the hospital that was attacked was Mariupol's hospital number one, and that it was no longer operational.

But the BBC's disinformation team identified the hospital where Marianna was - hospital number three.

We contacted the Russian Embassy in London for comment.

Marianna confirms that the hospital was definitely treating her and other patients - contrary to Russian claims that it was not functioning as a health care facility.

Russia also claimed that the hospital had been taken over by the Azov regiment - the controversial Ukrainian nationalist group that has been linked with neo-Nazis, allegations they themselves deny.

Comments Marianna made in her interview with Denis were cherry-picked by Russian officials to claim soldiers forced Marianna and the other pregnant women to act as human shields.

But Marianna told me there were no Ukrainian military stationed in the building where she was. She says she saw Ukrainian soldiers in the oncology unit in the building opposite the maternity unit. It's unclear whether they were based there or not.

Nevertheless, Marianna's interview with Denis Seleznev was used by the Kremlin to suggest further falsehoods.

Russian officials have seized on her comments that she doesn't believe the explosions at the hospital were caused by an airstrike, implying that the damage was Ukrainian shelling.

"The typical sound a plane makes when it flies overhead is impossible to miss," Marianna tells me, saying that she did not hear one.

But here she is mistaken. The AP journalists documented evidence it was an airstrike, including video where a plane can be heard. At the scene both a soldier and a police officer say the attack was an airstrike.

Also visible in photos is a huge crater which munition experts say could only have been caused by an airstrike.

"I personally did not see this crater, but I saw the video of it," Marianna says. "In reality I can't blame anyone - because I didn't see with my own eyes where for certain [the explosions] came from."

Target for trolls

This fresh controversy sparked a new wave of online vitriol.

"Some people said that I was an actress, others said that I was lying about the fact that there were no air raids," she says.

Even some she regarded as friends don't believe her. Fellow beauty blogger Yaroslava lives in Russia and continues to believe state TV claims that Marianna was acting.

"I think that Marianna played her part. That Ukraine needed the Ukrainian military to blame everything on Russia." Yaroslava told me. She's since unfollowed Marianna on Instagram - and doesn't want to speak to her again.

"It's a pity when people I know believe in something that I haven't done," Marianna says.

But she brightens whenever the conversation turns to baby Veronika.

Marianna has returned to blogging and in a recent post told readers to stick around if they were interested in "cosmetics, nappies and the everyday life of a new mum".

Her message to those who want to send her hate was "go in peace".

But unwillingly finding herself at the centre of an information war - as the military conflict continues - has changed Marianna's life forever.

"You know, for now I'm not thinking about my hopes or making plans, because we don't know what tomorrow will bring."

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-61412773

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Huat Zai]

Just now, Huat Zai said:

Marianna Vyshemirsky: 'My picture was used to spread lies about the war'

The beauty influencer was accused of being an actor after this photo was published

A photo of a heavily pregnant woman fleeing a bombed maternity hospital became one of the most iconic images of the war in Ukraine. But its subject was targeted by an extraordinary Russian disinformation campaign and she received hate from both sides.

Wrapped in a duvet with her forehead bloodied, Marianna Vyshemirsky's image was seen around the world.

The photo above was taken in the aftermath of a Russian airstrike in Mariupol. It circulated online, on newspaper front pages, and was argued about at the UN Security Council.

But, having survived one attack, Marianna faced another onslaught - of disinformation and hate aimed at her and her family.

As Russia attempted to sow falsehoods about the attack, 29-year-old Marianna was falsely accused of "acting". Russian diplomats even claimed that she had "played" not one, but two different women.

Marianna on a video call during her interview with the BBC

I've spoken extensively to her friends and relatives, but have been trying to interview my namesake for weeks. So when she finally appears on my screen on a video call, it feels a little surreal. She tells me about her harrowing escape, and about the online abuse that came after.

"I received threats that they would come and find me, that I would be killed, that my child would be cut into pieces," she says.

This is her first interview with a major western media outlet after being evacuated to her hometown in a part of Donbas controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

Marianna seems at ease, and is speaking to me without any preconditions, but a pro-separatist blogger is with her.

She tells me what it's like to find herself inside an information battle - all while giving birth to her daughter Veronika in a war zone.

"She chose to show up at a difficult time," she explains, "but it's better she arrived under these circumstances than not at all."

'Things were turned upside down'

Life in Mariupol was very different before the war. Marianna promoted beauty products on social media, while her husband Yuri worked at the Azovstal steel works.

 

"We had a quiet and simple life," she says, "and then, of course, things were turned upside down."

Her Instagram account shows her excitement at the prospect of becoming a mother.

Marianna posted this picture on Instagram in late February, asking her followers to guess whether her baby would be a boy or a girl

But by the time Marianna was admitted to hospital, Mariupol had become the most bombed city in Ukraine.

On 9 March, she was chatting with other women on the ward when an explosion shook the hospital.

She pulled a blanket over her head. Then a second explosion hit.

"You could hear everything flying around, shrapnel and stuff," she says. "The sound was ringing in my ears for a very long time."

 

The women sheltered in the basement with other civilians. Marianna suffered a forehead cut and glass fragments lodged in her skin, but a doctor told her she didn't need stitches.

What she did need, she explains, was to retrieve her possessions from the ruins of the hospital. She asked a police officer to help her back inside.

"Everything I had prepared for my baby was in that maternity ward," she says.

Anatomy of a lie

While she stood outside the hospital, waiting to recover her things, she was photographed by journalists from the Associated Press. They snapped her again as she descended the stairs exiting the building.

Those images quickly went viral. And that's when false allegations that the pictures were "staged" first appeared on a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel. Marianna's beauty blogging was used to suggest she was an "actor" who had used makeup to fake injuries.

These falsehoods were repeated and amplified by senior Russian officials and state media.

They even claimed that a photo of another pregnant woman on a stretcher was also Marianna, even though it's clear that the photos are of different people. The woman on the stretcher and her unborn child later died from their injuries.

This tweet from the Russian Embassy in London containing false information was taken down by Twitter

Fleeing and without internet access, Marianna didn't see those images until days later.

By that point, her Instagram was inundated with accusatory and threatening messages. She found both the trolling and the false allegations shocking.

"It was really offensive to hear that, because I actually lived through it all," she says. But she refrains from directly criticising the Russian officials who spread the false information about her.

Instead, she criticises the Associated Press.

"I was offended that the journalists who had posted my photos on social media had not interviewed other pregnant women who could confirm that this attack had really happened."

She suggests this may help explain why some people "got the impression that it was all staged". But by Marianna's own account she was one of the last patients to be evacuated, and that was when the AP journalists arrived. The journalists interviewed other people at the scene. And they had nothing to do with the subsequent false story spread by Russian officials. We approached the AP for comment.

The search for Marianna

In the days after the attack, Marianna gave birth to Veronika in another hospital.

Marianna in a different hospital after giving birth to her daughter, several days after the bombing

Like thousands of others, Marianna and Yuri were desperately trying to escape Mariupol. For weeks, it was largely impossible to make contact with them. Eventually Marianna's relatives told me the couple had got out of the city, but their whereabouts were unclear. Then in early April, they resurfaced in the Donbas region.

She filmed an interview with Denis Seleznev, a blogger who is a vocal supporter of Russian-backed separatists. There was speculation how free she was to say what she wanted.

Marianna says to me: "I had to describe the whole situation, as I saw it with my own eyes."

My conversation with her was also arranged via Denis. Marianna speaks to me from his home. He is present throughout our chat but doesn't interrupt. Marianna's relatives and friends have assured me she is now safe.

Piecing together the truth

Much of what she says in her interview with me undermines the Russian government's mistruths.

The Kremlin wrongly and repeatedly suggested the hospital that was attacked was Mariupol's hospital number one, and that it was no longer operational.

But the BBC's disinformation team identified the hospital where Marianna was - hospital number three.

We contacted the Russian Embassy in London for comment.

Marianna confirms that the hospital was definitely treating her and other patients - contrary to Russian claims that it was not functioning as a health care facility.

Russia also claimed that the hospital had been taken over by the Azov regiment - the controversial Ukrainian nationalist group that has been linked with neo-Nazis, allegations they themselves deny.

Comments Marianna made in her interview with Denis were cherry-picked by Russian officials to claim soldiers forced Marianna and the other pregnant women to act as human shields.

But Marianna told me there were no Ukrainian military stationed in the building where she was. She says she saw Ukrainian soldiers in the oncology unit in the building opposite the maternity unit. It's unclear whether they were based there or not.

Nevertheless, Marianna's interview with Denis Seleznev was used by the Kremlin to suggest further falsehoods.

Russian officials have seized on her comments that she doesn't believe the explosions at the hospital were caused by an airstrike, implying that the damage was Ukrainian shelling.

"The typical sound a plane makes when it flies overhead is impossible to miss," Marianna tells me, saying that she did not hear one.

But here she is mistaken. The AP journalists documented evidence it was an airstrike, including video where a plane can be heard. At the scene both a soldier and a police officer say the attack was an airstrike.

Also visible in photos is a huge crater which munition experts say could only have been caused by an airstrike.

"I personally did not see this crater, but I saw the video of it," Marianna says. "In reality I can't blame anyone - because I didn't see with my own eyes where for certain [the explosions] came from."

Target for trolls

This fresh controversy sparked a new wave of online vitriol.

"Some people said that I was an actress, others said that I was lying about the fact that there were no air raids," she says.

Even some she regarded as friends don't believe her. Fellow beauty blogger Yaroslava lives in Russia and continues to believe state TV claims that Marianna was acting.

"I think that Marianna played her part. That Ukraine needed the Ukrainian military to blame everything on Russia." Yaroslava told me. She's since unfollowed Marianna on Instagram - and doesn't want to speak to her again.

"It's a pity when people I know believe in something that I haven't done," Marianna says.

But she brightens whenever the conversation turns to baby Veronika.

Marianna has returned to blogging and in a recent post told readers to stick around if they were interested in "cosmetics, nappies and the everyday life of a new mum".

Her message to those who want to send her hate was "go in peace".

But unwillingly finding herself at the centre of an information war - as the military conflict continues - has changed Marianna's life forever.

"You know, for now I'm not thinking about my hopes or making plans, because we don't know what tomorrow will bring."

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-61412773

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moral of the story, Chiobu not only don't pangsai, Chiobu also cannot be pregnant in war.

[Huat Zai]

 

Very interesting view point about why European countries are throwing weapons to Ukraine like candy

[The_King]

 

[The_King]

 

[Huat Zai]

 

If this was a Singapore leader, knn don't know run until which country already.

[Huat Zai]

 

[The_King]

https://time.com/6176748/ukraine-war-economy/

[Huat Zai]

 

[Huat Zai]

1 hour ago, Huat Zai said:

 

Never thought I'll live to see the day where an infantry man is saying that they take care of the sniper quickly... just how shitty are the Russian troops...

[Huat Zai]

 

[Huat Zai]

 

[Huat Zai]

Ukraine reports 'massive' attack from Belarus

 

KYIV: Ukraine said it came under "massive bombardment" on Saturday (Jun 25) from neighbouring Belarus, a Russian ally not officially involved in the conflict, the day after announcing a retreat from the strategic city of Severodonetsk.

Twenty rockets targeted the village of Desna in the northern Chernigiv region, Ukraine's northern military command said in a statement, adding that infrastructure was hit, but no casualties had yet been reported.

Belarus has provided logistic support to Moscow since the Feb 24 invasion, particularly in the first few weeks, and like Russia has been targeted by Western sanctions - but is officially not involved in the conflict.

"Today's strike is directly linked to Kremlin efforts to pull Belarus as a co-belligerent into the war in Ukraine," the Ukrainian intelligence service said.

The strikes came ahead of a planned meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and meets his Belarussian counterpart and close ally Alexander Lukashenko in Saint Petersburg on Saturday.

Russia's foreign ministry on Friday condemned the decision by Brussels to grant Ukraine official EU candidate status as a move to "contain Russia" geopolitically.

The decision "confirms that a geopolitical monopolisation of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) space is continuing actively in order to contain Russia," foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.

Ukraine's Western allies meanwhile will gather on Sunday at a summit of G7 leaders in Germany, where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to speak.

US President Joe Biden will be attending the G7 and a summit of the NATO military alliance in Madrid next week.

"SLOW WAR"

In the face-to-face talks, the Western allies will take stock of the effectiveness of sanctions imposed so far against Moscow, consider possible new aid for Ukraine, and begin turning their eye to longer-term reconstruction plans.

The European Union (EU) offered a strong statement of support on Thursday when it granted Ukraine candidate status, although the path to membership is long.

Moscow dismissed the EU decision as a move to "contain Russia" geopolitically.

 

Related:

Donbas battles reach 'fearsome climax' as Ukraine becomes EU membership candidate

Ukraine forces ordered to withdraw from key battleground city

After four months, the conflict remains focused on the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv's forces have finally given up a key hold-out, the industrial city of Severodonetsk.

Sergiy Gaiday, governor of the Lugansk region that includes the city, said on Friday that the military had received the order to withdraw.

"Remaining in positions that have been relentlessly shelled for months just doesn't make sense," he said on Telegram, adding that 90 per cent of the city had been damaged.

Severodonetsk has been the scene of weeks of street battles as outgunned Ukrainians put up a stubborn defence.

Capturing the city and its twin across the river, Lysychansk, would effectively give the Russians control of Lugansk, and allow them to push further into the wider Donbas.

But Ukraine's retreat from Severodonetsk will not change the course of the war, said Ivan Klyszcz, an international relations researcher at Estonia's University of Tartu.

"The big picture - of a slow war of entrenched positions - has hardly changed. We cannot expect a massive Russian breakthrough," he told AFP.

Separately, Russia said on Saturday its troops had killed up to 80 Polish fighters in "precision strikes" on a factory in Konstantinovka" in the Donetsk region. The claim could not be independently verified.

LYSYCHANSK UNDER FIRE

Gaiday said Russians were now advancing on Lysychansk, which has been facing increasingly heavy bombardments.

The situation for those that remain in the city is bleak.

Liliya Nesterenko, who was cycling toward a friend's house to feed her pets, said her home had no gas, water or electricity, forcing her and her mother to cook on a campfire.

But the 39-year-old was upbeat about the city's defences: "I believe in our Ukrainian army, they should (be able to) cope."

Andrei Marochko, a spokesman for the Moscow-backed army of Lugansk, said on Friday that all the villages in the neighbouring areas of Zolote and Hirske were now under the control of Russian or pro-Russian forces.

In a video on Marochko's Telegram channel, a man in military clothing could be seen replacing a Ukrainian flag featuring a Zolote coat of arms with a red hammer-and-sickle flag.

Russia's defence ministry said on Friday that up to 2,000 people were "completely blocked" near Zolote and Hirske, and that around half of Zolote was under Russian control.

 

Related:

Commentary: Growing fears Russia could drag Belarus into Ukraine war

HUMAN REMAINS

Russia has also intensified its offensive in the northern city of Kharkiv in recent days.

An AFP team on Saturday saw a 10-storey administrative building in the city-centre hit by missiles overnight, causing a fire but no casualties.

It had already been bombed, prompting one soldier on the scene to note: "The Russians are finishing what they started."

On Friday, the same reporters found a stray dog eating human remains in the town of Chuguiv, southeast of Kharkiv, where an attack earlier this week left six dead.

In the southern Kherson region, a Moscow-appointed official was killed by an explosive device planted in his car, Russian news agencies reported.

Moscow's deputy head of Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, said the regional head of the department of family, youth and sports had died "as a result of a terrorist act".

It was the first confirmed death of a pro-Russian official during a string of attacks on pro-Kremlin officials in Ukrainian regions under Russian control.

 

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/ukraine-reports-massive-bombardment-belarus-russian-ally-2770756

[The_King]

 

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