Kyiv intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov says a colonel general and lieutenant general are among injured but does not confirm reports of death of Black Sea fleet Admiral Viktor Sokolov
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and his South Korean and Japanese counterparts have expressed “serious concern” over the discussion of military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, including possible arms trade, South Korea’s foreign ministry has said.
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, made a weeklong visit to Russia earlier this month and discussed military cooperation with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
US and South Korean officials have expressed concern that the summit was aimed at allowing Russia to acquire ammunition from the North to supplement its dwindling stocks for its war in Ukraine.
The South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, said on Wednesday that if Russia helped North Korea enhance its weapons programs in return for assistance for its war in Ukraine, it would be “a direct provocation” and Seoul and its allies would not stand idly by.
In Ukraine, the second summer of the invasion has been a season of unbearable goodbyes: to teachers, artists and loved ones, writes Oleksandr Mykhed in the Guardian.
“If anyone still thinks that Ukraine is regaining the occupied territories too slowly, they should remember that for every de-mined and liberated metre of our free country, the highest price has been paid by our soldiers,” Mykhed writes.
“The pantheon of our national myth is being formed before our eyes. Our friends, teachers, brothers are already in it. And the only thing I dream of is that the living will take their places in the pantheon after victory.”
Read the full piece here:Russian activist jailed for eight years over Bucha video
Russia has handed a long jail term to a political activist over social media posts critical of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.
A spokesman for a military court in the central city of Yekaterinburg confirmed to AFP the activist Richard Rouz had been sentenced to eight years in jail.
He was detained in April last year after reposting a video that accused Russian forces of abuses in Bucha, a town outside Ukraine’s capital that was occupied for several weeks, the OVD-Info rights monitoring group said.
Authorities accused him of spreading illegal disinformation and then opened a terror-related case against Rouz, 38, after finding a post that called for President Vladimir Putin to be killed to end hostilities in Ukraine.
His wife, Marya Rouz, was detained in April 2022 and released pending trial, OVD-Info said.
The group said she fled to Armenia, where she was detained and threatened alongside her son with extradition. She was released and has since fled to Poland, OVD-Info said.
The monitoring group says some 20,000 people in Russia have been detained for speaking out against the conflict. Several high-profile political opposition figures have also been given long jail terms for protesting the conflict.Russian hackers targeting war crimes investigations – Kyiv cyber defence chief
Russian spies are using hackers to target computer systems at law enforcement agencies in Ukraine in a bid to identify and obtain evidence related to alleged Russian war crimes, Ukraine’s cyber defence chief has told Reuters.
Yurii Shchyhol, head of the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine, which handles cyber defence, has claimed the hackers, working for Russia’s GRU and FSB intelligence agencies, have stepped up digital intrusion campaigns targeting the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office and departments documenting war crimes.
