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Longtime Belarusian Activists Sentenced For 2020 Anti-Government Protest [1]
["Rfe Rl'S Belarus Service"]
Date: 2022-07
Ukrainian forces have struck at least three Russian military sites in southern Ukraine as they intensified their counteroffensive in the region, while Russia maintained its shelling of towns and cities in the east, south, and center of the country.
Among the bloodiest of the attacks on July 14, Ukrainians authorities reported that three missiles hit the historic town of Vinnytsya, 270 kilometers west of Kyiv, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the attack "an open act of terrorism."
Meanwhile, on the diplomatic front, a breakthrough appeared near on July 14 in Istanbul, where Russian and Ukrainian military delegations were negotiating a deal aimed at resuming Black Sea grain exports blocked by Russia and ease the risk of starvation faced by millions.
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, Western military aid, worldwide reaction, and the plight of civilians and refugees. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.
Ukraine's Operational Command South said on July 14 that its forces had hit two military checkpoints and a landing pad in the second strike this week on Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region, a Russian-held area in the south. It said 13 Russian "occupiers" had been killed.
The strike came two days after Ukraine said its forces had hit a Russian munitions depot in Nova Kakhovka, killing 52 soldiers. The town's Russian-installed authorities said at least seven civilians were killed in that assault.
Ukraine's attacks in the south followed an announcement by Kyiv that it was amassing hundreds of thousands of troops in the region to prepare for a major offensive to recapture territory there while Russian forces set their focus on capturing the Donbas region, which consists of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Battlefield claims on either side of the conflict could not be independently verified.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Ukraine's Donetsk regional military administration, said three civilians were killed and five injured in shelling in the region, including two people in the town of Chasiv Yar.
Chasiv Yar, with a population of about 12,000 people, was the site of a Russian rocket attack on an apartment building on July 9 that killed 48 people, an assault Ukrainian officials have called a "war crime."
Kyrylenko said Russian shelling also hit a granite factory in Slovyansk. There were no injuries, but the destruction was extensive, he said on Telegram, where he posted videos of the bombed factory.
The British Defense Ministry in its daily intelligence briefing on July 13 said Russian troops were nearing the towns of Siverskiy and Dolyna, with the urban areas of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk "the principal objectives for this phase of operation."
The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said on July 14 that Russian forces were repelled following an attempt to take the town of Kurulka near Kharkiv, which is in northeast Ukraine but outside the Donbas.
It said, though, that Russian troops had "partial success" in an offensive being carried out toward the village of Kamyanka in southern Ukraine.
In Mykolayiv, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said on Telegram that rescuers and emergency teams were working on the ground following a shelling attack on the southern city of some 476,000 people, 60 kilometers northwest of the Russian-occupied port of Kherson.
In the attack on Vinnytsya, authorities said the Russian missiles hit an office block, residential buildings, and a medical center.
"Every day, Russia kills civilians, kills Ukrainian children, carries out missile attacks on the civilian facilities where there is no military target. What is this, if not an open act of terrorism?" Zelenskiy said in an online posting.
Vinnytsya, a city of 370,000 people, dates back to the Middle Ages, founded in 1363, according to the city's website.
RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan in a tweet quoted the Russian Defense Ministry as saying the site was a housing unit for Ukrainian military officers.
The news came as EU foreign and justice ministers were meeting at The Hague for a conference on alleged Russian war crimes.
Zelenskiy, addressing the gathering through a video linkup, called for a "special tribunal" to investigate Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"Existing judicial institutions cannot bring all the guilty parties to justice. Therefore, a special tribunal is needed to address the crime of Russian aggression against Ukraine," Zelenskiy said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is scheduled to attend the gathering in person.
Russia denies deliberately attacking civilians, despite video evidence showing otherwise and the widespread destruction of Ukrainian cities.
While wider peace talks have broken off indefinitely between Russia and Ukraine, military contingents from the two countries met in Istanbul for talks aimed at restoring wheat and grain exports from Ukrainian ports now occupied by Russia.
Participants said that enough progress had been made in the talks brokered by Turkey and the UN to allow for further sessions next week.
With reporting by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, AP, AFP, and Reuters
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