WAR IN UKRAINE: August 6, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 529
The Russian army on Friday night dropped a guided aerial bomb on the blood transfusion center in Kupyansk community in the Kharkiv region. There are dead and wounded, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. "This war crime alone says everything about Russian aggression," he said.
The blood transfusion Centre attack was part of what was described by official organs as a "massive missile attack" - with at least 70 missiles and suicide drones targeted sites around the country.
The Khmelnytskyi region was attacked three times since yesterday evening, Suspilne reported, targeting, in particular, the Starokostyantynov airfield. Most of the missiles were shot down by air defense forces.
Zelensky also said that on Saturday Russia separately carried out a missile attack, targeting an aeronautical company run by group Motor Sich in the western Khmelnytskyi region. Pre-war, the company was to have been sold to China before the U.S. intervened. It was then nationalized.
Ukrainian officials are ordering mandatory evacuations for children in nine additional frontline settlements "due to the difficult security situation and hostile shelling." The government ministry that manages Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine said in a statementSaturday that officials have voted unanimously in favor of the new compulsory evacuations. They affect a series of towns and villages that dot the eastern Donetsk region: Yampil, Zarichne, Torske, Orihuvatka, Nykonorivka, Malynivka, Tykhonivka, Vasiutynske and Rai-Oleksandrivka. All are close to the front lines in an area that has seen attacks of growing intensity by Russian forces. The order applies to 130 children, the ministry said - CNN
Ukraine peace plan meeting kicks off in Saudi Arabia. A two-day summit, set to last until Aug. 6, began in Jeddah, gathering senior officials from some 40 countries, except Russia, to discuss the implementation of Ukraine's peace formula between international partners.
Ukraine has warned Russia that its drones are becoming increasingly accurate after an oil tanker became the second Russian vessel to be damaged in two days in what Moscow said was a Ukrainian drone attack overnight in the Kerch Strait, close to a bridge that links Moscow-occupied Crimea with Russia. A Ukrainian naval drone carrying 450 kilograms of TNT struck the Russian Navy base at Novorossiisk in the Black Sea, causing extensive damage to a Russian warship docked there, sources in the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) told RFE/RL.
The State Bureau of Investigation reportedly searched the office of Volodymyr Kolodyuk, the assistant of lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky, on Aug. 5 over the alleged forging of documents during Dubinsky's travel abroad, according to an undisclosed source of Ukrainska Pravda. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials discover draft evasion scheme. An employee of the Military Commissariat and four other accomplices in the Ternopil Oblast were caught forging documents to help people evade mobilization and travel abroad illegally - Kyiv Independent