Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned the northeastern metropolis of Izium has turn out to be the newest location the place the Russians have left behind mass graves.
Zelenskyy mentioned Thursday that Ukrainian authorities have discovered a mass burial website close to Izium in the just lately recaptured Kharkiv area beforehand occupied by Russian forces.
“Bucha, Mariupol, now, unfortunately, Izium,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly televised address, adding that confirmation would likely come Friday. “Russia leaves death everywhere. And it must be held accountable for it. The world must bring Russia to real responsibility for this war.”
The Associated Press reported that its journalists saw the site in a forest outside Izium on Thursday. A mass grave had a marker saying it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers. It was surrounded by hundreds of individual graves with only crosses to mark them.
TURNING POINT IN UKRAINE WAR:As Russia admits defeat in Kharkiv, Ukraine regains land, confidence
Latest developments:
►The U.N. atomic agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution Thursday calling on Russia to immediately end its occupation of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, where shelling of the facility and nearby areas in recent weeks heightened fears of a possible radiation disaster.
►Superstar guard Stephen Curry of the NBA champion Golden State Warriors said his “contacts in the Biden administration rebuffed a suggestion to assist” the efforts to free WNBA star Brittney Griner from Russian captivity.
Russians flee to the border close to Kharkiv
Tensions had been rising in Russian villages bordering the Kharkiv area Thursday as the roar of the Ukraine army’s firepower edged nearer to the border.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod area mentioned residents had been wounded when Ukraine shells slammed into one border village, and personal homes, farm buildings and energy traces in one other had been partially destroyed. Vyacheslav Gladkov additionally ordered the evacuation of a number of villages.
Ukraine has retaken 1000’s of miles and greater than 300 villages and cities this month. The Ukraine Defense Ministry mentioned Russian troops fleeing the Ukraine advance are massing at the Belgorod border, the place different Russian troops are retaining them from crossing over.
“They have no communication with the command,” the ministry mentioned in a press release. “There is no supply of food and ammunition.”
The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, reporting from Belgorod in latest days, discovered locals who expressed worry and concern. One schoolteacher mentioned she advised college students who heard missiles that the sound was solely thunder.
Some residents have fled to Belgorod from villages in Ukraine after working for Russian administrations – solely to have the Russians abandon the Ukraine cities. Now they worry payback from Ukrainian authorities who view them as traitors.
Biden to meet kin of Brittney Griner, Paul Whelan at White House
This will be the first in-person contact between the president and family members of the two Americans being held captive in Russia, considered by the U.S. government to be “wrongfully detained.”
The Biden administration said in July that it had made a “substantial proposal” to get them home in a prisoner exchange, but those efforts so far have proved fruitless.
Griner has been held in Russia since February on drug-related charges. She was sentenced last month to nine years in prison after pleading guilty, and has appealed the punishment. Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence on espionage-related charges that he and his family say are false. Bill Richardson, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, visited Moscow this week to discuss their release.
Putin acknowledges China’s ‘concerns’ about war in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged China has “questions and concerns” about Moscow’s war in Ukraine as he met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on Thursday in Uzbekistan.
“We highly appreciate the well-balanced position of our Chinese friends in connection with the Ukrainian crisis,” said Putin, who took the opportunity to blast the West. “We understand your questions and concerns in this regard.”
Putin’s rare mention of Chinese worries comes as Beijing has been anxious about the impact of volatile oil prices and economic uncertainty resulting from a war that has lasted nearly seven months and has seen Russia experience some embarrassing battlefield setbacks.
China’s economy has already taken a downturn this 12 months largely due to its strict anti-COVID measures. Russia has dramatically elevated vitality gross sales to China in latest months as Europe purchases declined due to sanctions.
Xi didn’t make any references to Ukraine in his public feedback throughout the assembly on the sidelines of the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a safety alliance created as a counterweight to U.S. affect. The alliance additionally contains India, Pakistan and 4 ex-Soviet nations in Central Asia.
Some Russian troops in Kharkiv ‘fled in obvious panic,’ British ministry says
The Russian retreat from the Kharkiv area, the place Ukrainian forces have been consolidating their just lately recaptured territory, was in some situations orderly however at different instances the troops “fled in obvious panic,” the British Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update.
In the process, the Russians left behind valuable equipment “important to allow Russia’s artillery-centric fashion of warfare,” the ministry mentioned, concluding that such abandonment illustrates “localized breakdowns in command and control.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
