Russian forces went to Snake Island to conduct a radio reconnaissance, according to the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.
Oleksii Danilov told Ukrainska Pravda that they were on the island to monitor Odessa, the Bessarabia region and the disorders in Transnistria.
“They had a very difficult position there,” he said, calling it a “strategically important” victory for Ukraine.
He refuted Russia’s claims that its forces had left the island voluntarily.
He said: “The way the Russian Federation translates the occasions, which they would have left as a gesture of goodwill, is in line with reality.
“In fact, they were evicted by our heavy artillery.
“Our armed forces, with all available means, inflicted the respective damage on two occasions.
“There was nowhere to hide, and they [Russian troops] had to flee. “
Here are the latest images of the missile attack on Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, in the Odessa region.
Fourteen other people were killed in the attack on the nine-story residential building in the early hours of the morning.
The images are from Ukraine’s state emergency service.
There is an update after a rocket attack on Odessa.
Another 14 people were killed and 30 injured (including 3 children) after a nine-story construction in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi in the Odessa region.
The update (and the following) comes from Ukraine’s state emergency service.
Meanwhile, three other people were killed in a missile attack on a recreation centre in the Belgorod-Dniester district.
It happened around 1 a. m. , Ukraine’s state emergency service said.
Among the 3 dead a child. One user was also injured.
Sky’s Alex Crawford reports from the city of Lysychansk, the last Ukrainian stronghold to the east.
By Gillian Joseph, sky news anchor, and Nick Stylianou, sky news maker, in Kyiv.
On the outskirts of Kyiv, Alla Samoilenko has no electricity or water. He lives on the side of the road that Russian tanks attacked at the beginning of the war, in their failed attempt to take the Ukrainian capital. In the space she helped build, she said she would never leave, even if the projectiles fell on her head.
But we are here to communicate about his war, we are here to communicate about his son: Ilya Samoilenko, 27, is one of the prominent faces of the Azov regiment, the defenders of the Azovstal metallurgical plant in Mariupol.
For months, she was in daily contact with him as he retaliated from the city’s last outpost.
We tell you about the siege and tactical resistance of Ilya and her comrades.
“I’m not sure I can tell you, because it’s still a secret,” she said. “I think we’ll know a lot of things right when they’re at home. “
Ilya’s giant beard, eye patch and titanium hook on her right arm made him immediately recognizable in global press meetings and media interviews. But Ms. Samoilenko showed us professional images of an 8-year-old boy with a new face and younger brother, separated by just over a year.
“They looked almost identical. And they were friends,” Alla said.
She is a famous casting director and her guys briefly flirted with the concept of following her in the industry. But the young Samoilenko became seriously ill, could not get out of the hospital, and Ilya was concerned about biomedical science and deeply passionate about history. a subject he later studied at Kyiv University.
In 2015, he enlisted in the Azov, then a battalion, and taught combat medicine. But in 2017, at a demining project in Donbass, a Russian projectile exploded nearby and detonated the device he was holding in his hand.
“But he is still vigilant and orders his own medical evacuation,” Alla said.
Returning to the existing invasion, he recalled seeing his last interviews as the end of the aforementioned siege approached. One, along with Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan, is his favorite for his son’s clarity and directivity. She saw him back with us.
“It was surely crazy, in this interview he said they would probably be killed in a few hours. The next day, I didn’t hear anything from them, but from our local Facebook network that said [the Russians] would start this ‘evacuation’. She said ‘evacuation’ with aerial quotation marks, after the many failed attempts to safely smuggle those seeking to escape.
Do you know where your child is now? She shook her head. He hasn’t heard of it since. A friend with some other son of the Azov regiment said he saw “Gandalf” in Russian captivity in eastern Ukraine a few weeks ago. His beard, his length and his love for Tolkien earned him this nickname among his friends. one of the most outstanding soldiers, there is a possibility that he was taken to Russia.
She explained: “Two places are a possibility, one is Olenivka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, it is with the commanders of Azov in the Lefortovo prison, near Moscow in Russia, we do not know exactly where. “
Samoilenko referred to the case of British fighters Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, captured in Mariupol and sentenced to death by Russian-backed separatists.
“So many messages from the Russian side about those British citizens. We are trying to figure out what is happening with this case and what is happening with other foot soldiers, with Ukrainian infantrymen, everything they do with them, is surely illegal. Our infantrymen are not criminals, they are defenders. The defenders of their country.
We asked him if he had ever told him about the option of not coming back. He said he had only spoken about it once. ” I understood that he was in a position for that. “
He stops, his eyes now full of tears. ” I haven’t cried for a long time.
“I stay inside. . . I plan to keep him inside, let him come back. He comes back. He will come back. “
He repeated it like a mantra until he calmed down again.
Alla’s husband, Ilya’s, is in the territorial army but returns home for normal breaks. Four-year-old Marguerite rides a bright pink motorcycle down the aisle. Life tries to become general again in Kyiv, but Ilya is never far from it. mind. Your child’s room is sparse: a pack of cigarettes, a few bottles of alcohol, and a camouflage jacket left on a hanger.
The rest of the rooms are full of toys, there is food on the kitchen table and there are cupboards full of books. She is proud of the family circle house she built.
“My daughter gives me so much power for life, and I think I dedicate my time to everything for her return. “
Alla grows vegetables and roses in her garden. When he pulls out the weeds, he says he believes russians are out of his country.
If it were that simple.
Late last month, the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk fell to Russian forces.
At the time, Mayor Oleksand Stryuk said on national television: “The city is now the general profession of Russia.
“They are looking to identify their own order, as I know, they have appointed some kind of commander. “
There’s more to this story here, however, those are the most recent images of the inner city (the images are from June 30).
Odessa army administration spokesman Sergey Brachuk said on the messaging app Telegram that at least 10 other people were killed after a rocket hit a high-rise residential building.
A translated edition of his earlier message indicated there were two attacks: one on a nine-story residential building and the other on a recreation center.
In the residential building, several bodies and others rescued from the rubble had already been removed.
An adjacent building had caught fire.
There is no fireplace in the recreation center, he said, but there were more casualties.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered his evening speech, focusing on news from snake island.
Earlier on Thursday, he announced that Russian troops had withdrawn from the strategically vital island.
On Thursday night, Zelenskyy said: “Without a doubt, the main word is ‘Zmiyinyy’ (in Ukrainian, ‘snake’).
“Perhaps there was as much communication about Zmiyinyy as the day the Russian shipment arrived there.
“Then the shipment was gone – – and now the island is loose again.
“Zmiyinyy Island is a strategic point, and this is particularly tight in the Black Sea.
“It does not guarantee safety, it does not guarantee that the enemy may not return.
“But this already limits the movements of the occupants.
“Step by step, we will expel them from our sea, our land, our sky. “
He also took stock of the Donbass region, where Russia has directed its attacks in recent weeks.
“The Donbass is still the toughest and incredibly difficult.
“The superiority of the occupants’ chimney is still very much felt.
“They have already taken their reserves to attack us in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. “
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has surrendered to Russia, former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone said.
Speaking to Piers Morgan on TalkTV, Ecclestone, the Ukrainian president, “could have arrested him himself. “
He continued: “If this had happened and I was there and had sought to protect my people, they would have shaken my hands on Putin and said, ‘Look, we have to avoid this. ‘”
Asked through Morgan if he would have given up, Ecclestone replied, “I would have figured out a very worthy way to do it because that’s what’s going to have to happen anyway. “
“To put an end to this, they communicate with each other. . . of what’s going on. “
Ecclestone also repeated his complaint from Mr. Zelenskyy, claiming that the Ukrainian president was seeking “publicity. “
He added: “It’s for a little publicity, no one had heard of it before.
“Now he’s talking to the press, the United States and everybody.
“And not just talking to them, making sure he speaks to them when it’s televised and broadcast around the world. “
Earlier that day, the former F1 boss defended Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine and would “get shot” by the Russian president.
Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Ecclestone described the Russian leader as a “first-class person” and gave the impression of downplaying his invasion of Ukraine.
“What he’s doing is everything he thought was the right thing he was doing for Russia,” he said.
“Unfortunately, he’s like a lot of entrepreneurs, like me, we make mistakes from time to time.
“I would still get a ball for him. If it didn’t hurt, but if it does, I would still get a bullet, because he is a first-class person. “
Ecclestone added that the war could have been avoided if the Ukrainian president had made a “sufficient effort” to communicate with Putin.
Russian forces use erroneous missiles from former Soviet stockpiles for more than 50 of their movements in Ukraine, said Oleksii Hromov, a brigadier general in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Hromov told a news conference that Russia seeks to attack the military and critical infrastructure, but that the use of old, less accurate Soviet missiles resulted in significant civilian casualties.
He said: “The enemy’s targets remain army installations, critical infrastructure and industry, shipping networks. At the same time, the civilian population suffers losses due to (misdirected) attacks.
“To carry out rocket attacks, the enemy in more than 50% (of cases) uses missiles from the Soviet reserve, which are accurate enough. As a result, civilian buildings are affected. “
Earlier, Hromov also said Russian forces stepped up missile movements in June.