Ukraine: Fighting on in the east, UK PM decries unfair trials
LYSYCHANSK, UKRAINE: Ukraine on Friday said it has struck Russian military positions in the southern Kherson region where Kyiv’s army is fighting to reclaim territory captured by Moscow early in the invasion.
“Our aircraft carried out a series of strikes on enemy bases... equipment and personnel and field depots around five different settlements in the Kherson region,” the defence ministry said.
This news came as President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces are “holding on” in the battered eastern city of Severodonetsk. But Ukrainian forces have made strides in the Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions outside Donbas, and are “liberating our land”, he added.
Separately, he said his country should not be left in a “grey zone” with its EU membership bid, saying 70% of Europeans see the country as part of “the European family”.
Ukraine’s interior minister Denys Monastyrsky said there is no imminent risk of Russia marching on Kyiv, but the capital would not let its guard down.
“Serious training is under way” on a line of defence around the city, he said.
Meanwhile, the UN warned that unfair trials of prisoners amounts to war crimes after prorussian separatists sentenced two captured British fighters and a Moroccan to death for joining Ukraine’s army.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “appalled” by the verdicts, while foreign secretary Liz Truss called them an “egregious breach of the Geneva convention”.
‘Beef up eastern flank’
Nine Central and Eastern European countries on Friday asked Nato to strengthen its eastern flank following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The meeting of the leaders of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia was held in the Romanian capital Bucharest less than three weeks ahead of a Nato summit meeting in Madrid.
Baltic leaders also lashed out at Russian President Vladimir Putin for comments suggesting that his war aims compared with his nation’s 18th-century imperial expansionism under Czar Peter the Great.