WAR IN UKRAINE: Aug 7, 2022
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 165
A Kyiv Independent reporter said on Twitter he personally saw people’s heads on a spike in Russian-occupied Popasna. Wrote Oleksiy Sorokin: “This is only a fraction of the Russian war crimes committed. I’m terrified when I think of what we’ll see when we retake the Russian-occupied cities and villages.”
The operator of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine says parts of the facility were "seriously damaged" by Russian military strikes, forcing the closure of one reactor. There was still a risk of radioactive leaks, the operator Enerhoatom warned - BBC
Following months of fierce battles in the east, Russia's war in Ukraine is about to enter a new phase, with the heaviest fighting shifting along the Dnipro River to a nearly 350-kilometer front that stretches southwest from near Zaporizhzhya to Kherson, British military intelligence said on August 6. They reported that Russia has been moving long columns of military trucks, tanks, towed artillery, and other weapons away from the Donbas in the east toward the southwest. Russia has also been moving equipment and personnel into the annexed Crimean Peninsula from Russian-occupied Melitopol, Berdyansk, Mariupol, and from mainland Russia via the Kerch Bridge - RFE/RL
CNN reports from the so-called green corridor near Zaporizhiya where families and traders attempt to cross between Russian and Ukrainian held territories. Video report by Nic Robertson here
Oksana Pokalchuk, head of Amnesty International Ukraine, resigns after the organization reported that Ukraine's armed forces are "endangering civilians in Ukraine." She had asked AI to withdraw the frivolous report. "Only yesterday I had the naive hope that I could fix everything. That we will even hold 200 meetings, but we will reach out, make our opinion known, and this text will be removed. Today I realized that this will not happen," she wrote on Facebook. The report has received widespread international condemnation, including from international humanitarian law experts. Calls have also come in for the resignation of AI’s chief, Agnes Callamard - including from Ukraine’s former minister of health, Ulana Suprun.
Yurij Kovryzhenko, who's previously run restaurants in South Korea and Georgia, as well as Ukraine, is preparing to open a neo-bistro-style establishment in London that will be staffed by Ukrainian refugees. He and his partner Olga Tsybytovska will launch Mriya in London's upscale Chelsea neighborhood later this month. More in this CNN article here
At a recent panel in Lviv, media experts slammed a Ukrainian government-initiated tele-marathon, saying it has outlived its usefulness and threatens the viability of TV stations.