Russian bombardment kills and injures blood transfusion center

• According to Volodymyr Zelensky, a Russian bombardment hit a blood transfusion center in Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, in the east of the country, causing casualties. “There are dead and injured” said President Zelensky without providing further details. “This war crime says it all about Russian aggression. Beasts that destroy everything that simply allows us to live”he denounced. “Our rescuers are putting out the fire”he said again, accompanying his text with a photo of a building in flames.
• A Russian tanker was hit by Ukrainian drones in the Kerch Strait, briefly halting traffic on the strategic bridge linking Crimea with Russia, Russian media reported on Saturday. According The Moscow Timesthis is the chemical tanker GIS which is the subject of American sanctions for having supplied fuel to the Russian forces which came to the aid of the regime of Bashar Al-Assad during the war in Syria.
• Explosive devices were dropped by Ukrainian drones on the Russian town of Rylsk, in the western Kursk oblast, near the border with Ukraine, announced on Telegram the governor of the region, Roman Starovoyt. According to him, two administrative buildings were hit, and no casualties were reported.
• Russia had already announced on Friday that it had repelled a Ukrainian attack by naval drones in the Black Sea against the Novorossiïsk base, which were reportedly shot down. But a video and a satellite photo suggest that the Russian landing ship Olenegrorsky Gornyak was touched. Kyiv has not officially commented on the event, but “a new Russian ship is about to sink”the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry commented on social media, alongside a video showing a building tilted steeply to the side.
• Around 30 countries, including China, are invited Saturday and Sunday to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for new talks around the ten-point formula drawn up by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to end the war with Russia. Moscow takes a dim view of the participation of southern countries and part of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) in a meeting invited by Ukraine, to which it is not invited .
• Already imprisoned for nine years in trying conditions, the main opponent of the Kremlin, Alexei Navalny, was sentenced on Friday to nineteen years in prison for “extremism” after a closed trial. The 47-year-old anti-corruption activist called on the Russians, in a message broadcast by his team, to continue to ” resist “ in front of the “band of traitors, thieves and scoundrels who have taken power”.
• The United States condemns the sentence imposed on Alexei Navalny, “unjust conclusion of an unjust trial”according to a statement from the State Department. The United Nations has requested the “immediate release” of the Russian opponent.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “did not observe any mines or explosives” on the roofs of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, its general manager, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said on Friday. The organization had access on Thursday afternoon “without hindrance” to the roofs “of the two reactors and could also clearly see the roofs of the turbine halls”she clarified.

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Read all our articles, analyzes and reports on the war in Ukraine

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