EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / Communal workers excavate the body of an elderly man who died ... [+]
Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 853.
Russia has fired at least 2,400 guided aerial bombs on Ukraine since the beginning of June, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a weekend video address. According to the Ukrainian leader, almost a third of these were aimed at the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv, and surrounds. Just on Saturday, June 22, the Kremlin bombed a residential neighborhood of Kharkiv in the city’s center with four UMPB D-30 SN gliding bombs – guided aerial bombs with longer ranges than earlier versions, where a UMPK (Universal Gliding and Correction Module) conversion kit was attached to unsophisticated, Soviet-era munitions without guidance. “On top of the correction and planning modules, these bombs also have a small engine that increases their firing range,” explained aviation expert Anatolii Khrapchynskyi in a recent broadcast interview. These cheap and powerful weapons have been inflicting enormous damage in northeastern Ukraine.
KHARKIV, UKRAINE - JUNE 23: An aerial view of an apartment at residential building damaged as result ... [+]
The June 22 bombing in Kharkiv left three dead and at least 52 injured civilians, including children, said the regional prosecutor’s office. Two of the deceased were men, the third was a woman, who was killed at a bus stop. Sections of an apartment building were also destroyed in the attack.
Russian forces shelled the town of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast, or region, in eastern Ukraine on June 24, regional military governor Vadym Filashkin said. This attack killed at least four residents and wounded 34 others. The weapons used appear to have been two Iskander-M hypersonic missiles, which decimated one house and damaged some 16 more. Filashkin called the strike “one of the largest enemy attacks on civilians” in recent times on his Telegram social media channel. He warned that there are simply no safe zones left in Donetsk oblast anymore. “Take care of yourselves! Evacuate!” he urged.
Satellite images confirmed the success of a June 22 strike by Ukraine’s military on a drone storage facility in southern Russia. Published by Ukraine’s Navy, which conducted the operation together with the Security Service of Ukraine, the short video shows before/after pictures of the facility used by the Russian military in the Krasnodar krai region to store a trove of Iranian-made Shahed drones. Apart from the destruction of military equipment used to terrorize Ukraine, the strike killed an unspecified number of instructors and trained personnel responsible for operating the unmanned aerial vehicles, the Navy said.
The Council of the European Union finally adopted a 14th package of sanctions on Russia on June 24, further targeting its high-value sectors, including energy and finance. High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell called the decision the next “blow to Putin’s regime and those who perpetuate his illegal, unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine.” The package was agreed upon following a month-long debate arising from German objections to some of the suggested measures. Among other measures, the package prohibits reloading of Russian liquified natural gas in EU territory for shipment to countries outside the EU, and outlaws the use of the “System for Transfer of Financial Messages” (SPFS) — Russia’s analogue of the international SWIFT interbank network — to facilitate payments. It also bans EU political parties, non-governmental organizations or media service providers from accepting funding originating from the Russian state and its proxies.
Culture Front.
St. Martin’s Press will release a book of wartime testimonies collected by the late Ukrainian writer and human rights advocate Victoria Amelina in February 2025, the publishing house announced. The volume, “Looking at Women Looking at War - A War and Justice Diary” comprises accounts by Ukrainian women of their experiences since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Among the heroines are prominent lawyer Evhenia Zakrevska, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matvhiichuk, and librarian Yuliia Kakulia-Danyliuk, who helped find the war time diary of Volodymyr Vakulenko, a renowned Ukrainian poet who was tortured and murdered by occupying forces. Victoria Amelina, who compiled the volume, was tragically killed last summer, at age 37, in the Russian shelling of a restaurant in Donetsk oblast. As a member of the Ukrainian human rights organization Truth Hounds, she crisscrossed the country to document Russian-perpetrated war crimes. Her debut novel, “The November Syndrome,” was voted among the ten best publications of 2014 in Ukraine.
Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the War with Russia, a new book by Ukraine expert Adrian Karatnycky, was released this month. The book covers Ukraine during the period of the country's emergence after the collapse of the Soviet Union and through the current Russian full-scale invasion in 2022. It is the first English-language comprehensive account of Ukraine's recent history by a writer who is thoroughly familiar with Ukraine's identity, international context and the intricacies of Ukraine's cultural and historic contemporary developments.
By Daria Dzysiuk, Karina Tahiliani
