Intense street battles rage in Ukrainian city
LYSYCHANSK, UKRAINE: President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces were “holding on” in the flashpoint eastern city of Severodonetsk where intense street battles with Russian troops could determine the fate of the Donbas region.
Moscow has concentrated its firepower on the industrial city, which it now mostly controls, with the area’s governor saying on Friday that Russian forces had destroyed a major sports arena.
Death sentence
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that the two Britons and one Moroccan sentenced to death on Thursday in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) had committed crimes on the territory of the self-proclaimed state trying to break away from Ukraine.
Lavrov said: “At the moment, the trials you mentioned are being held on the basis of the legislation of the Donetsk People’s Republic, because the crimes in question were committed on the DPR’s territory
On Thursday, separatist authorities in the Donetsk region of the Donbas ordered the death penalty for Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Saadun Brahim, Russian media reported.
Britain’s foreign secretary Liz Truss called the sentence “a sham judgment, with absolutely no legitimacy”, while a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the sentence contravenes prisoner rights under the Geneva Convention.
Britons Aslin and Pinner surrendered in April and Brahim surrendered in March in the
eastern town of Volnovakha.
During a trial that lasted three days, the men pleaded guilty to “actions aimed at seizing power and overthrowing the constitutional order of the Donetsk People’s Republic”, Russian news agency Interfax said.
A lawyer representing one of them told the TASS news agency that they would appeal.
More deaths
The Ukrainian presidency said four people were killed in a Russian airstrike on Toshkivka, a village around 25 kilometres south of Severodonetsk. It reported seven other deaths in fighting across the country.
In Kyiv, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky said the capital was in no immediate danger, but troops were keeping a line of defence all the same.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, appeared to compare his actions to Peter the Great’s conquest of the Baltic coast during his 18th-century
war against Sweden.
Grain crisis
Zelensky on Thursday called for Russia to be expelled from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), blaming Moscow for “causing hunger” and spurring the global grain crisis by invading his country.
Ukraine’s Black Sea ports export millions of tonnes of grain each year but have been blocked since the invasion, while Western sanctions on Russia have prevented Moscow from selling much of its grain abroad, sending food prices soaring.
The FAO warned that poor countries will suffer the most from the crisis as they were “paying more but receiving less food”.
The African Union on Thursday urged Kyiv to demine waters around the Ukraine-controlled Odessa port to ease exports, warning of “serious famine” and destabilisation on the continent.