Ukrainians who returned to the northeastern region retaken in Kiev’s blitzkrieg earlier this month searched for their dead as Russian artillery and airstrikes continued to pound targets across eastern Ukraine. Five civilians were killed in Russian attacks in the eastern Donetsk region last day, and in Nikopoli, further west, dozens of residential buildings, gas pipelines and power lines were hit, regional governors said on Sunday. Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure, including a power grid and a dam, had intensified over the past seven days. “Faced with setbacks on the front lines, Russia has likely expanded the locations it is prepared to strike in an effort to directly undermine the morale of the Ukrainian people and government,” he said in an intelligence briefing. Last defense intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – September 18, 2022 Find out more about the UK government’s response: pic.twitter.com/j7bINlhTKp —@DefenceHQ US Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed the UK’s statement about Russian failures. “The war is not going very well for Russia right now. So it is incumbent on all of us to maintain high levels of readiness, vigilance,” he said on Sunday.
Russian pop icon blasts Putin
The UK’s latest assessment comes as Alla Pugacheva, the queen of Soviet pop, on Sunday denounced President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, which she said killed soldiers for illusory purposes, burdened ordinary people and turned the Russia a global pariah. Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Russian pop singer Alla Pugacheva pose for a photo during an awards ceremony at the Moscow Kremlin in Moscow in 2014. Pugacheva, hugely popular since her Soviet days, says she wants to put herself on Russia’s foreign agent list in solidarity with her husband who has been designated as one. (Alexei Druzhinin and Sputnik via Associated Press) Since the February 24 invasion, Russia has cracked down on dissent, with fines for artists who make anti-war comments. State television branded critics as traitors to the country. Pugacheva, 73, a Soviet and then post-Soviet icon who is perhaps Russia’s most famous woman, asked Russia to also label her a “foreign agent” after her husband, TV comedian Maxim Galkin, 46, was on Sept. 16 . are included in the state list. “I ask you to include me in the ranks of foreign agents of my beloved country because I stand in solidarity with my husband,” Pugacheva said on Instagram, which is banned in Russia. Pugacheva said her husband was a patriot who wanted a prosperous country with peace, freedom and “an end to the death of our boys for illusory purposes”. Such penetrating criticism from one of Russia’s most famous people – known across generations for hits such as the 1982 song Million Scarlet Roses and the 1978 film The Woman Who Sings – is rare and potentially dangerous in modern Russia. It also indicates the level of concern among the wider Russian elite about the war.
Mass grave at Izium
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has promised that the fighting will not stop. “Maybe it seems to some of you that after a series of victories we now have a kind of calm,” he said in his regular nightly address on Sunday. “But there will be no peace. There is preparation for the next series… Because Ukraine must be free. All of it.” A Ukrainian soldier identifies the body of a Ukrainian soldier in a recaptured area near the border with Russia in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Saturday. (Leo Correa/The Associated Press) Zelensky on Saturday said authorities found a mass grave containing the bodies of 17 soldiers in Izium, some of which he said bore signs of torture. Residents of Izium search for dead relatives in a forest grave where emergency workers began exhuming bodies last week. The cause of death for those in the grave has not yet been ascertained, although residents say some died in an airstrike. WATCHES | Ukraine exhumes hundreds of bodies in mass grave in newly recaptured city:
Ukraine is exhuming hundreds of bodies in a mass grave in the newly recaptured city
WARNING: This story contains disturbing details. Ukraine has exhumed more than 400 bodies in a mass grave in the reclaimed city of Izyum. The bodies are soldiers, civilians and children, with some showing signs of torture. Ukrainian officials said last week they had found 440 bodies in the woods near Izium. They said most of the dead were civilians and the cause of death had not been ascertained. The Kremlin has not commented on the discovery of the graves, but in the past Moscow has repeatedly denied that it deliberately targeted civilians or committed atrocities.
“Torture Cell”
In the village of Kozacha Lopan, about 45km north of Kharkiv and just five kilometers from the Russian border, a Reuters reporter was taken to a squalid cellar with rooms fitted with iron bars, which local officials said served as a makeshift prison during his possession. The mayor of the local district, Vyacheslav Zadorenko, said the rooms had been used as a “torture cellar” to detain civilians. Reuters could not verify these accounts. Elsewhere in the region, residents of cities recaptured after six months of Russian occupation returned with a mixture of joy and terror. WATCHES | Mass grave in the recaptured Ukrainian city of Izium believed to contain at least 440 bodies:
Mass grave in retaken Ukrainian city of Izium believed to contain at least 440 bodies
David Schaefer, a former diplomat who served as the first United States Ambassador for War Crimes, discusses the mass grave site found in Ukraine and what the discovery means for the ongoing investigation into possible war crimes. “I still have this feeling, that at any moment a shell might explode or a plane might fly,” said Nataliia Yelistratova, who traveled with her husband and daughter 80 kilometers by train from Kharkiv to her hometown , Balakliia to find her. apartment building intact, but scarred by shelling. “I’m still scared to be here,” he said after discovering a piece of shrapnel in a wall. Putin did not respond to the accusations, but on Friday rejected Ukraine’s swift counterattack and that Moscow would respond more forcefully if its troops came under further pressure. Such repeated threats have raised concerns that it could at some point turn to small nuclear weapons or chemical warfare. A Ukrainian soldier walks out of a basement that Ukrainian authorities say was used as a torture cell during the Russian occupation, in the recaptured Ukrainian village of Kozacha Lopan on Saturday. (Leo Correa/The Associated Press) US President Joe Biden, asked what he would say to Putin if he considered using such weapons, replied: “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. It would change the face of war unlike anything since World War II.” An excerpt of comments in an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes program was released by CBS on Saturday. Some military analysts said the Russians could also carry out a nuclear attack at Zaporizhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant owned by Russia but run by Ukrainian personnel. Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for shelling around the plant that damaged buildings and disrupted power lines needed to keep it cool and safe. The plant has been reconnected to Ukraine’s electricity grid after one of its power lines was repaired, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Saturday. He warned, however, that the situation at the factory “remains precarious”. During a visit to the United Kingdom on Sunday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Ottawa remains “unwavering in its support for Ukraine” and will continue to provide aid to the country. Trudeau, in London for Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, is scheduled to meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal on Sunday afternoon.
