Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 523 of the invasion

 

Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 523 of the invasion

 

At least four people have been killed in Kryvyi Rih, and two people killed in occupied Donetsk, after multiple strikes across Ukraine

 

Martin Belam, Guardian staff and agencies

Mon 31 Jul 2023 10.56 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/31/russia-ukraine-war-at-a-glance-what-we-know-on-day-523-of-the-invasion

 

• At least four people, including a 10-year-old child, have been killed and more than 40 injured after Russia struck a high-rise apartment in Kryvyi Rih. Authorities said people were also trapped under rubble. Oleksiy Kuleba, the deputy head of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, called for revenge, saying: “Every day, Ukrainian cities are under fire from Russian terrorists. Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kharkiv. This is only for the last few days.” He said targeting civilians was a sign of “the despair and defeat of the Russian Federation at the front”.
• Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said: “This is how the week begins in a Ukrainian city that just wants a quiet, normal life. Russia wants to take peace and life away,” and offered condolences to the victims and their families. The city is the home town of Zelenska and her husband.
• Denis Pushilin, the Russian-imposed acting governor of occupied Donetsk, has claimed at least two people have been killed and at least six injured after a Ukrainian strike hit a bus in the city that has been capital of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic since 2014, and which Russia claimed to have annexed last year.
• Three Ukrainian drones that were shot down over Moscow damaged a high-rise building containing government offices and briefly shut an international airport, according to reports. The Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said nobody was hurt and there was only minor damage to the facade of two office buildings in the Moscow city business district early on Sunday. Russia’s state news agency Tass reported a security guard had been injured. One of the damaged buildings – several kilometres from the Kremlin – was home to three Russian government ministries as well as residential apartments, according to Russian media, in the third such attack on the capital region in a week.
• “War is returning to the territory of Russia,” Zelenskiy warned after the drones were downed over Moscow. The Ukrainian president said that was “an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process” and that Russia’s symbolic centres and military bases would be targeted.
• Suspilne reports that as a result of morning shelling in Kherson, a 60-year-old employee of a utility company was killed, and four more people were injured. The Russian army also shelled Kramatorsk with rockets at night, and an industrial zone was hit. There were no casualties or injuries reported.
• Alexey Kulemzin, the Russian-imposed mayor of the occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, has reported that “facades, balconies, roofing and glazing” have been damaged in Kuibyshevskyi district in the city by overnight shelling.
• The Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to have said in a voice message published on Monday that his Wagner group was not currently recruiting fighters but was likely to do so in future. Prigozhin said in the voice message that “unfortunately” some of his fighters had moved to other “power structures”, but he said they were looking to return. “As long as we don’t experience a shortage in personnel, we don’t plan to carry out a new recruitment,” Prigozhin said. “However, we will be extremely grateful to you if you keep in touch with us, and as soon as the Motherland needs to create a new group that will be able to protect the interests of our country, we will certainly start recruiting.”
• Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow would be “forced” to use a nuclear weapon if Kyiv’s counteroffensive was a success and its forces “tore off a part of our land”. Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s security council, said that in that situation “there would simply be no other option”.
• Saudi Arabia will host a Ukrainian-organised peace summit in early August seeking a way to start negotiations over the war, the Associated Press has reported, citing Saudi officials. One, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russia was not invited to the talks in Jeddah. The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, later confirmed the talks would be held in Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has not acknowledged the summit nor responded to a request for comment. The Kremlin said on Monday it needed to find out the purpose of upcoming talks.
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