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LAST UPDATE | 12 Jul 2022
UKRAINE SAID IT had launched artillery barrages that destroyed a Russian arms depot and carried out a “special operation” to free military captives in the Moscow-controlled Kherson region.
The bombardments in the south came as Washington and the EU announced nearly $3 billion combined for Ukraine, and Turkey said delegations from Moscow and Kyiv would meet in Istanbul Wednesday to discuss restarting stalled grain deliveries across the Black Sea.
Ukrainian military officials said the strikes had destroyed artillery, armoured vehicles “and a warehouse with ammunition” in the town of Nova Kakhovka.
Russian-backed authorities accused Ukraine, however, of damaging civilian infrastructure and killing at least seven people, a toll that could not be independently verified.
“Warehouses were hit, as were shops, a pharmacy, petrol stations and even a church,” the head of the city’s Moscow-backed administration, Vladimir Leontiev, said on social media.
Ukrainian military intelligence said separately its forces had freed five captives in a “special operation” in Kherson, including a military serviceman and former police officer, without specifying when.
The Ukrainian army has for several weeks been waging a counter-offensive to recapture Kherson, which was taken by Russian troops early in the invasion of Ukraine.
The deputy head of the pro-Russian authorities in Kherson, Ekaterina Gubareva, said Ukraine had used long-range, precision artillery systems supplied by the United States in the strikes in Nova Kakhovka.
Western financial aid
Military analysts are crediting newly arrived systems from the West – including HIMARS from the United States – with attacks deeper into Russian-controlled territory across the front line.
EU member states, which have been supplying Ukraine with military support, on Tuesday approved €1 billion in financial help for Kyiv, billing it as the first instalment of a promised nine-billion-euro rescue package agreed in May.
The United States separately announced $1.7 billion for Ukraine to help fund recovery.
“This aid will help Ukraine’s democratic government provide essential services for the people of Ukraine,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said of the funds that are part of a $7.5 billion aid package signed by President Joe Biden in May.
Moscow was striking back across Ukraine, with officials in the southern city of Mykolaiv saying Russian forces had bombed two medical facilities and homes, injuring 12 people.
Five people were injured in Russian shelling on Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, said regional governor Oleg Synegubov, after strikes the previous day left seven dead across that region.
But the heaviest fighting in recent weeks has centred on the Donbas where Moscow’s forces have slowly advanced under fierce resistance since failing to capture Kyiv after the 24 February invasion.
Ukrainian emergency services said the death toll had risen to 45, two days after Russian bombardment flattened a residential building in the eastern town of Chasiv Yar, in the Donetsk region of the Donbas.
In Bakhmut – one of the few remaining cities under Ukrainian control in Donbas – AFP journalists could hear nearby artillery fire.
Upcoming grain talks
“The front is getting closer,” said municipal official, Dmytro Podkuyidko, estimating that more than one-third of the town’s population of 73,000 have fled.
“If it gets worse, I’ll end up leaving too,” Podkuyidko said.
Turkey announced meanwhile that Russian and Ukrainian delegations had agreed to meet in Istanbul Wednesday for talks to break an impasse on allowing Ukrainian grain to leave its southern ports which are mined and blocked by Russian warships.
The four-way meeting with Turkish officials and the United Nations comes as food prices soar globally due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Unblocking Ukrainian ports is one of the key components of global food security,” Ukrainian presidential aide Andryi Yermak said on Telegram.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the first time since the invasion at talks hosted by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran next Tuesday.
The talks are due to focus on the situation in war-ravaged Syria, but the Kremlin said Putin and Erdogan will hold a separate meeting that is almost certain to focus heavily on Ukraine.
The Kremlin has been working to consolidate its hold over territories it controls like Kherson, both militarily and bureaucratically since the beginning of the conflict.
After Putin on Monday passed a decree fast-tracking Russian passports for all Ukrainians, Ukraine’s breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic on Tuesday unveiled its “embassy” in central Moscow.
Top Russian officials did not attend the ceremony amid a beefed-up police presence.
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When’s the ukraine elections?
@John Smith: great point
@John Smith: You don’t conduct elections during an invasion, it is written into the Ukrainian constitution.
@John Smith: Do you think the russians would allow Ukrainians in the occupied territories to vote?
Do you think these should be denied representation in parliament?
The UK did not hold elections during WWII either.
@John Smith: I knew the first comment would be a putin apologist. Sad.
@Ted Daly: A Putin apologist? Putin is a dirt bag just like Zelenskyy.
Two little dictators, maybe Napoleon complex.
@John Smith: Zelensky is freely elected by the Ukrainian people. And Ukraine’s president is not a ruler with tyrannical powers. It has a parliament too, one with real legislative power.
The last Ukrainian president was impeached by that parliament, when he tried to sell out Ukraine to the russians.
Anyone who believes or claims otherwise is giving away that they *are* a Putin apologist, and have been taken in by russian propaganda, and/or are such propaganda spreaders themselves.
@John Smith: Where are you getting the idea that Zelenskyy is a dictator. Tomorrow you’ll be posting that he’s an irrelevant mouthpiece.
And yet Leo Vradkar ends up being the Taoiseach of this country having gotten less than 8500 votes in the general election of 2020.
Thank God we live in a democracy!
@Denis Slattery:
Leo Varadkar WAS elected by the people in Dublin 15.
Leo Varadkar IS the leader of Fine Gael.
The leader of the party DOES become Taoiseach.
It is indeed democracy.
@Denis Slattery: Coming 7th in his ward whereby he had to sweat the be re-elected. Yep, such a popular leader.
@KTH: He was declared elected on the 5th count after receiving less than 20% of the first preference vote. He wasn’t even the first choice as TD of over 80% of the voters in his own constituency .
The Fine Gael party got 20% of the first preference votes nationally and was the third largest party in terms of seats in the Dail behind Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein. . 80% of the voters nationally did not vote to put Fine Gael into government .
It’s a very peculiar form of democracy when the preferences of 80% of the voting public are ignored .
You would think a Professor of politics would be aware of the irony before writing an article on Putins sham election
@Denis Slattery:
“He was declared elected”
Re-read my post…
I rest my case.
@Denis Slattery: So you understand,why not say that.
@Daniel Roche: dont
I wonder if Putin reads many articles on the Journal? Or does he do what most of us do and skip over them until he finds one with the comments open? Hi, Vlad…
Puck Futin. Slava Ukraini.
@Roy Dowling: wrong
@Roy Dowling: no, free the 100 captive children, at this stage I fear waving a Palestinian flag is more important than abusing children in the dark underground of Gaza… Nobody knows anything about them right? Not even the people who live above the hatches of the tunnels…. Yeagh right!! Fight Israeli soldiers but don’t do exactly the same and abuse children yourself, whatever is the reason behind it. In more simple terms if you don’t understand that, if you condemn me for being an Israeli sympathiser I won’t abduct your children as reprisal, it’s that simple!!!
@peter willekens: No do the countless Palestinian children who are not hostages of Israel.
Because they have been murdered.
Murdered since the Israeli colonist first began attacking the Palestinian people to steal their land, and their homeland.
@John Smith: Why don’t you look it up and share with the class?
If you did, you easily find that as per Ukraines constitution elections are suspended due to the murderous invasion by Putin and his orc army.
I’d be of the opinion that you’re just trying to be clever. Ironically.
A mean the level hypocrisy shown by the west towards Russia is off the charts, the US is the last country to talk about fair elections, 2000 anyone.
@Marcus Maher – Triskellion Films: But 2008 was fair, right?
And 2012?
And 2016?
And 2020? Despite the attempts of the wannabe Putin?
And 1996?
And 1992?
And…
How can you compare the US – as bad as it is – to russia?
I mean, have you really no sense of proportion?
Putin, a weak man.
And you get clowns in the West idolising a literal tyrant that kills off or jails all political opponents and critics, while said tyrant temporarily stepped down to have laws changed to stay president indefinitely after…
Why are comments on Mr Putin allowed, but anything do do with the genocide in Gaza blocked?
I hope those people blocking American aid to Ukraine wont suffer nasty repurcussions in the future for causing a genocide….
@peter willekens: And let’s hope the Israelis are put in front on The Hague for their crimes against humanity, alongside Putin and his minions.
Whatever about the colour of Diane Abbot’s skin, she is without a doubt the thickest MP ever elected!
What a joke the Russian people are as bad as putin
This article is so misrepresentation of the facts of the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet union and president Putin,
Please anybody who wants the facts, follow professor Jeffrey Sacks, and listen to the this man who was part of the American administration during this time,
The writer of this article really must think people only get their news from RTE, BBC and CNN. Plus one of the seven owned news papers of the West.
What ever happened to doing some research. But I guess you don’t need to, when the article is already wrote for you, all you have to do is put your name to it,
Frightening to think you lecture at a university, my God it’s true as one professor said , students come out of university more stupid than when they went in, I can see why.
Bacon took his ‘Study after Velasquez’ gaping mouth from Potemkin film, there you go now.
“faux oppositionists”… “pseudo-challengers”, Goebbels would be so proud.
Meanwhile in Missouri over 23,000 dead people registered to vote in one week in February.
have your say