A Russian missile strike targeting Kyiv killed at least one person shortly after a meeting in the city between UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and President Volodymyr Zelensky, who described the attack as an attempt to “humiliate” the UN.
Vera Hirsch, a journalist for the US-funded Radio Free Europe, was killed in the attack on her apartment building, The announcer said Friday. Her body was found early Friday in the wreckage. His family told the media Friday, in a separate incident, an American combatant in Ukraine was killed.
Ukraine’s emergency services said at least 10 others were wounded in the strike, which targeted a high-rise apartment building and another building. Russia claimed to have “destroyed production buildings” at a defense plant in Kyiv.
“This says a lot about Russia’s true attitude towards global institutions, about the attempts of the Russian authorities to humiliate the United Nations and everything the organization represents,” Zelensky said in an address to the nation. “Therefore, it requires a corresponding strong reaction.”
About an hour ago, Guterres appeared with Zelensky at a press conference. The UN chief was in Ukraine and Russia this week to seek humanitarian evacuations from the besieged port city of Mariupol, which the UN said Russia had agreed to “in principle”. Guterres also toured some of the devastation in and around Kyiv.
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► In United Nations Human Rights Office On Friday, he said 2,899 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the war began. The office said 3,235 others were injured.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who is hosting the event and spoke with the two leaders this week, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend the G20 summit in Bali in November.
Tens of thousands of troops from NATO and other North Atlantic countries will participate in a series of military exercises across Europe in the coming weeks as Western nations seek to deter Russian aggression.
President Joe Biden on Thursday asked Congress to approve $33 billion in security, economic and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, the latest move that indicates the United States will provide long-term support to the country.
Ukrainian prosecutors Thursday identified 10 Russian soldiers accused of atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, one of the war’s main flashpoints that helped mobilize Western support for Ukraine.
Zelensky says Russian forces have approached his capture, his family
Zelensky recorded the war from his own eyes during an in-depth interview with Time magazinedetailing the moments of the beginning of the war that almost led to his arrest and his family.
Zelensky spoke of multiple attempts to storm presidential offices in Kyiv at the start of the Russian invasion. At one point, he said, Russian strike teams parachuted into the city to capture or kill him and his family.
“Before that night, we had only seen such things in movies,” Andrey Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, told Time magazine of the incident.
Kremlin forces attempted several times to storm the presidential compound and the guards used everything they could find to secure the area, including using police barricades and plywood to create a barrier.
The first night of fighting around Kyiv resulted in the guards turning off the lights in the compound and distributing assault rifles and flak jackets. He said that the Russians made two attempts that evening to break into the area where Zelensky’s wife and children were inside.
Former US Marine killed fighting in Ukraine
A former US Marine was killed fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, according to his relatives, making it the first known death of an American citizen while fighting in the war against Russia.
His mother, Rebecca Cabrera, said Willie Joseph Cancel, 22, was killed on Monday while working for a military contracting company that sent him to Ukraine. CNN. Cancel joined the Marines after graduating from the Newburgh Free Academy in New York and served from 2017 to 21. Most recently, he worked as a corrections officer in Tennessee.
Cabrera said that her son registered to work with the private military contractor shortly before the fighting began in Ukraine on February 24, and that he had agreed to go to Ukraine. She said he traveled to Poland on March 12, entered Ukraine shortly thereafter and was fighting alongside men from a number of countries.
“He wanted to go because he believed in what Ukraine was fighting for, and he wanted to be a part of it to contain it there, so he didn’t come here, and maybe our American soldiers wouldn’t have to get involved in that,” she said.
Cabrera said her son’s body has not been recovered.
Reports: The European Union is close to imposing an embargo on Russian oil
The European Union has been close to imposing a ban on Russian oil imports as part of recent sanctions against Russia from the 27-nation bloc. The New York Times And Washington Post I mentioned Friday.
The newspaper, citing unnamed EU officials and diplomats, stated that approval of a gradual ban is likely to come by the end of next week. The “Washington Post” newspaper reported that the controversy will continue over the weekend, with Germany earlier signaling more acceptance of the move. However, it was not clear whether Hungary would agree given its dependence on Russian oil, the newspaper reported.
The United States in March banned imports of Russian oil as part of a broad package of sanctions aimed at putting pressure on the Russian economy. EU countries, although punishing Russia in other ways, have been more reluctant to cut ties with Russian energy sources.
UN votes to replace Russia at Human Rights Council
The United Nations General Assembly will hold a vote next month on a country to replace Russia at the Human Rights Council after suspending the nation over its actions in Ukraine.
Assembly spokeswoman Polina Kubik said the Czech Republic was the only candidate to vote on May 10. The Human Rights Council has 47 members divided by regional groups, and the alternative to Russia will have to come from Eastern Europe.
After his membership in the council was suspended, Russian Deputy Ambassador Gennady Kuzmin said that his country would withdraw from the council, allowing it not to deprive it of observer status in the human rights body.
Mariupol officials: living conditions for medieval citizens
Ukrainian officials in the besieged port city of Mariupol warned again Friday of the dire conditions facing civilians.
Mayor Vadim Boychenko called for the immediate evacuation of the remaining citizens because living conditions “are now medieval.”
The city council warned that with no central water, sewage and decomposing bodies under the city’s ruins, diseases such as cholera and dysentery could spread.
Talk to CNN Of the Azovstal steel plant, Major Serhiy Volyn, commander of the 36th Ukrainian Separate Marine Brigade, said the plant’s field hospital was recently targeted. He said water, food and medical supplies are also scarce.
Ukraine reveals first war crimes charges amid 8,000 investigations
Ukrainian authorities revealed The first war crimes charges were filed Thursday against members of the Russian military, as the United States and other countries worked behind the scenes to assist Kyiv in more than 8,000 criminal investigations related to possible atrocities in the two-month-old war.
The first charges accuse 10 Russian soldiers of taking civilians hostage and mistreating them in Posha, a suburb of Kyiv, in March. Bucha was occupied by the Russian army for a month, and authorities and witnesses say mass graves and corpses were found in the streets in the town after the Russian withdrawal. Some Bucha residents were found dead with gunshot wounds and their hands tied behind their backs.
– Josh Mayer and Kim Helmgaard
Read the full story here:Ukraine reveals first war crimes charges amid 8,000 investigations
The air strike in Kyiv disturbs a relative calm
Russia’s attack on Kyiv on Thursday sparked a sense of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital, where air strikes have been largely limited since the Russian military withdrew and refocused its offensive on eastern Ukraine.
In addition to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ visit to Kyiv this week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US Secretary of State and Defense, Anthony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, met with Zelensky in the Ukrainian capital earlier this month.
In the wake of a Russian attack on the city earlier this month, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko warned residents who fled when the fighting intensified not to return to the city.
more:‘You won’t get away with it’: Ukraine reveals first war crimes charges amid 8,000 investigations
Russia launches a barrage of strikes across Ukraine
Russian air strikes hit targets across Ukraine on Thursday, sending a barrage of explosions from east to west.
In addition to the strike in Kyiv, explosions were reported in Boulogne in the west, Chernihiv near the border with Belarus, and Fastiv, a major railway hub southwest of the capital.
On the other hand, the British Ministry of Defense said that the Russian offensive in the Donbass region in the east remains its primary focus. The fighting was fiercest around Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, and the Russians attempted to advance south from Izium towards Slovyansk, The Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update.
Satellite images indicate that Russia is using dolphins to protect the naval base
Russia has placed trained dolphins at the entrance to a major port on the Black Sea to help protect a Kremlin naval base there, according to satellite images analyzed by a naval analyst.
Around the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, two pens of dolphins were positioned at the entrance to the port of Sevastopol, the most important naval base in the Black Sea, according to the photographs.
Dolphins can be trained to perform tasks such as preventing divers from infiltrating a military base undetected. Both the US and Russian military have trained marine mammals to complete such tasks.
“This may prevent Ukrainian special operations forces from infiltrating the underwater port to sabotage warships,” submarine analyst Hay Sutton wrote in an article published by the US Naval Institute on Wednesday.
– Maria Jimenez Moya
As terror spreads in Ukraine, most of the world is not punishing Putin
When world leaders voted in early April to punish Russia for human rights abuses in Ukraine, diplomats who represent the majority of the world’s population sided with Moscow or refused to choose a side.
According to a USA TODAY analysis of the vote, about three-quarters of the world’s population lives in a country that does not support the measure initiated by the United States that halted Russia’s membership in a top rights group. Each country got one vote, regardless of its population, land mass or wealth. Read more here.
– Joel Shannon
Contributing: The Associated Press
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