WAR IN UKRAINE: July 23, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 514
Russia fired 19 missiles at Odesa overnight, most of them anti-ship cruise missives. The main Orthodox cathedral and Odesa’s historic center both sustained direct hits.
In Odesa: New damage to the port infrastructure, at least 6 residential buildings. There are several craters in the city, power outages. 1 dead. Another 19 people were injured, including 4 children
Andriy Palchuk, the archdeacon of the Cathedral, said he was the first person to arrive at the scene. "The destruction is enormous; half of the cathedral was left without a roof, and the central piles and foundation were destroyed," he said. "All the windows and stucco moulding were blown out. There was a fragmentary fire, the part where icons and candles are sold in the church caught fire. It was all on fire, burning." - BBC
At least 25 architectural monuments have been damaged in Odesa by Russia's missiles overnight, Oleh Kiper, head of the Regional Military Administration, reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Twitter: “Missiles against peaceful cities, against residential buildings, a cathedral... There can be no excuse for Russian evil. As always, this evil will lose. And there will definitely be a retaliation to Russian terrorists for Odesa. They will feel this retaliation. All those who suffered from this latest terrorist attack are being provided with assistance. I am grateful to everyone who is helping people and to everyone who is with Odesa in their thoughts and emotions. We will get through this. We will restore peace. And for this, we must defeat the Russian evil.”
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday that the Wagner fighters who are in the country have begun to "stress" him, because they want to "go to the West" on "an excursion." “Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but I will. The Wagnerites began to stress us. ‘We want to go to the West. Let us,’ they tell us,” Lukashenko told Putin during a meeting in St. Petersburg. “Why do you need to go to the West? 'Well, go on an excursion to Warsaw, to Rzeszow,'” Lukashenko said. “I keep them in the center, as agreed, of Belarus." Lukashenko is an ally of Putin and he was apparently joking with him. A video showed Putin smiling at the comments - CNN
In a rant to the Russian security council, President Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed, NATO arsenals are depleted, and that "the whole world sees that the praised Western equipment is on fire." After that, he claimed that Ukraine suffers huge losses, and there is no one left to mobilize. Finally, he concluded that Ukrainians increasingly question whether it is worth dying to defend Ukraine. Quote: "sobering is gradually coming"
Poland's Foreign Ministry issued an "urgent" summons to the Russian ambassador to protest what Warsaw termed "provocative declarations" by President Vladimir Putin - RFE/RL
The Bulgarian parliament has voted to send additional military and technical supportto Ukraine, including some 100 Soviet-era armored vehicles from the NATO country’s reserves.