The EU has imposed a new round of sanctions on Russia. the expansion of import and export bans and the blacklisting of individuals for Moscow’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy told European leaders gathered in Prague that Ukraine must win lest Russia “advance towards Warsaw or again towards Prague”.
The Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has been in prison in Moscow since April, is being investigated for “high treason”. while the authorities are ramping up their case against him for his criticism of the war in Ukraine.
The United States has accused Russian mercenaries of exploiting natural resources in Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan and elsewhere to fund Moscow’s war in Ukraine, a charge Russia dismissed as “anti-Russian anger.” US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Wagner Group mercenaries were exploiting natural resources and “these ill-gotten gains are being used to fund Moscow’s war machine in Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine.” .
Three bodies were pulled from the rubble, according to Ukrainian emergency services after a Russian missile attack destroyed a five-story apartment building in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia.
The Kremlin dismissed reports that 700,000 Russians had fled the country since Moscow announced a mobilization campaign that would call on hundreds of thousands to fight in Ukraine.
Two Russians who said they fled their country to avoid conscription have applied for asylum in the United States After landing in a small boat on a remote island in Alaska’s Bering Sea, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s office said Thursday.
The head of the UN nuclear agency is on his way to Kyiv to discuss establishing a security zone around Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, after Vladimir Putin ordered his government to adopt it. “Heading to Kyiv for important meetings,” Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), wrote on Twitter, saying the need for a safe zone around the site was “more urgent than ever.” Grossi is expected to visit Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation at the plant. The IAEA said it has learned of plans to restart a reactor at the plant, where all six reactors have been shut down for weeks.
Ukrainian forces continue their advance in the east and south, forcing Russian troops to retreat under pressure on both fronts. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military had made large and rapid advances against Russian forces over the past week, recapturing dozens of cities in southern and eastern regions that Russia thought it had annexed. Military experts say Russia is at its weakest point, partly because of its decision not to mobilize sooner and partly because of massive casualties in troops and equipment.
Ukraine has expanded its control area in the Kherson region by six to 12 miles, according to the Southern Command of his military. In a speech on Wednesday Zelenskyy confirmed the recapture of the villages of Novovoskresenske, Novohryhorivka and Petropavlivka and said the settlements had been “liberated from the mock referendum and stabilized”.
Moscow’s armed forces have left cities destroyed once under occupation and in places mass burial sites and evidence of torture chambers. More than 50 graves, some with names and others with numbers, were found in Lyman, which was retaken by Ukrainian forces on Sunday, the Kyiv-based newspaper Hromadske reported on Wednesday.