Moscow said on Friday that it had targeted a command meeting of Ukrainian forces in Vinnytsia, a city in central Ukraine where a Russian bombardment condemned by the UN and the European Union killed at least 23 people the day before.
In eastern Ukraine, pro-Russian separatist forces announced the death in custody of a British national, Paul Urey, captured in April, information deemed “alarming” by London.
On the diplomatic level, a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Indonesia has given rise to a new confrontation between Westerners who denounce Moscow’s responsibility for the planet’s economic problems and Russia who accuse Western sanctions of all evils .
In Vinnytsia, a city far from the front lines, well west of the capital kyiv, images released by the Ukrainian emergency service show dozens of charred carcasses and a building of about ten floors ravaged by the explosion and the fire following the Russian strikes on Thursday.
According to the Ukrainian army, “three missiles” hit the parking lot and this commercial building in the center of the city, housing offices and small businesses.
In a statement, the Russian Defense Ministry says missiles fired from the sea hit Vinnytsia’s “officers’ house” while a meeting of the “Ukrainian Air Force Command was held there with representatives of foreign service providers.” ‘armaments’.
“Because of this strike, the participants in the meeting were eliminated”, adds the ministry, which has never recognized any blunder or crime by its armed forces in Ukraine and systematically ensures that it only hits military targets.
The latest assessment given by Ukrainian relief Thursday evening amounts to 23 dead, 29 missing, 71 people hospitalized and more than a hundred wounded treated on the spot.
Three children are among the number of those killed, which is “unfortunately” not definitive, because “dozens of people are missing” and there are “very seriously” injured people, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday evening.
“terrorist state”
“This day demonstrates once again that Russia must be officially recognized as a terrorist state,” he added.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that he was “appalled” by this tragedy, and the European Union for its part castigated Russia’s “barbaric behavior”.
The EU also intends to target Russian gold exports in its next round of sanctions, as the G7 countries decided at the end of June, announced Maros Sefcovic, vice-president of the European Commission, on Friday.
According to him, the EU will also seek “to close the loopholes” for those who bypass the previous rounds of sanctions decided by the Europeans against Russia, because of its invasion of Ukraine.
On Telegram, Daria Morozova, a separatist official in the Donetsk region, a province of Donbass partly controlled by the Russian army and the secessionists, announced that the Briton Paul Urey had died in custody.
“Despite the seriousness of [ses] crimes, Paul Urey was receiving adequate medical assistance. Despite this, in view of his diagnosis and stress, he died on July 10,” she said, calling the late detainee a mercenary as Presidium Network, a UK-based non-profit organization United, introduced him as a humanitarian.
After his capture, Urey’s mother had indicated that her son was on a humanitarian mission, that he suffered from diabetes and needed insulin.
In the theater of military operations, the separatist authorities in Donetsk reported on Friday morning four people killed by Ukrainian shelling in the area under their control in 24 hours.
In Bali, Indonesia, Western moneymakers have denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which they accuse of having created a “shock wave” in the world economy, responsible for the food and energy crisis which is hitting Many countries.
“There was a very broad denunciation of the war and its consequences” while “Russia tried to say that the world economic situation had nothing to do with the war”, indicated to AFP a source in the French delegation.
In Moscow, the Ministry of Defense indicated that a “final document” would be ready shortly to allow the export of cereals from Ukraine, after the negotiation session which involved Wednesday in Turkey Moscow, kyiv, Ankara and the UN.
According to Ankara, a new meeting is to take place next week on this key issue for food security in many countries, particularly in Africa.