WAR IN UKRAINE: August 1, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 524
A skyscraper in Russia's capital, Moscow, is attacked by a drone for the second time in two days, the city's mayor Sergei Sobyanin says. Several drones were shot down across the city overnight, Sobyanin adds. Russia's defence ministry blames Ukraine for the latest attacks - Kyiv makes no comment. Russia also says it destroyed three Ukrainian unmanned boats that were trying to attack two Russian ships in the Black Sea. On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned the war was coming back to Russia - BBC
Air raid sirens sounded across most regions of Ukraine just before lunchtime today amid fears that Russia would retaliate for the drone strikes. Around 11:10 a.m., the Russian army shelled the Kherson community, hitting one of the hospitals. A doctor was killed and a nurse was injured, an official said. Russian drones overnight caused heavy damage to education and sports facilities in Kharkiv
A trio of civilian cargo ships—one each from Israel and Greece plus one with Turkish-Georgian registration—ran the Russian blockade in the Black Sea on Sunday and anchored at one of Ukraine’s grain ports on the Danube Delta. Twenty-two days after Moscow canceled a deal with Kyiv—which had allowed Ukraine safely to export tens of millions of tons of grain—and then threatened to halt maritime traffic to Ukrainian ports, the world has called the Russians’ bluff. “Reports of three civilian ships sailing to Ukraine unhindered may suggest that Russia is either unwilling or unable to enforce such searches at this time,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. noted - Forbes
Intensive fighting continues in two sectors in the south of Ukraine - near the city of Orykhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region and in the area of Velika Novosilka in the Donetsk region, British intelligence reported. In the south, the general problems of the Russian command are a lack of ammunition, a lack of reserves and problems with securing the flanks of the defending units, the review says - Ukrainska Pravda
Doctors in Russia are in despair over how soldiers in Putin's war against Ukraine are returning home as 'aggressive zombies'. Fighters - many of them mobilised against their will - are coming back like 'animals', psychologically warped by the horrors they have experienced. Large numbers are now alcoholics or drug addicts embracing the violence and cruelty they have seen on the frontline, according to a shocking new report. ‘Aggressive zombies will soon fill the streets of our cities,' a senior health official - who is also a doctor treating disturbed returnees - told Novaya Vkladka news outlet. 'They will massively beat and even kill passers-by - Daily Mail