WAR IN UKRAINE: June 13, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 475
The number of dead from a Russian missile strike in Kryvyi Rih - the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky - has increased to six, the head of the Defense Council of the city of reported. More than two dozen injured in the overnight missile attack early this morning. Rescuers continue to work at the site. Kyiv and Kharkiv also came under attack
Ukraine has lost 16 US-supplied armored vehicles in the past several days, according to open-source intelligence analysis, as the country’s military announced its forces had captured three villages from Russia in an offensive in the eastern Donetsk region. The 16 US Bradley infantry fighting vehicles either destroyed or damaged and abandoned in recent days represent almost 15% of the 109 that Washington has given Kyiv, according to Jakub Janovsky of the Dutch open-source intelligence website Oryx, which has been collecting visual evidence of military equipment losses in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began on February 24, 2022. The Bradley fighting vehicle, which moves on tracks rather than wheels, can hold around 10 troops and is used to transport personnel into battle while providing supporting fire - CNN
Ukraine says it has liberated seven settlements in the south and eastern regions of the country and made further advances in Bakhmut amid heavy fighting, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was confident the counteroffensive would make progress and that it was maximizing its support to insure Kyiv’s "success on the battlefield."
The UN's emergency relief co-ordinator has been speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme about the impact of major flooding from last week's Kakhovka dam breach. "We're still very much in the emergency response phase," Martin Griffiths says, adding that "we've reached now about 180,000 people". He says there's a "massive worry about the environmental destruction". Griffiths says the flooded area in Ukraine is a "bread basket - not just for Ukraine but for the world". It is almost inevitable that "we're going to see huge problems in harvesting and in sowing", he says, which will cause "a huge impact on global food security". He also says there are concerns over mines floating in the flood water and a lack of drinking water available as a result of the dam's collapse - BBC
The head of Ukraine's Enerhoatom nuclear generating company says he is concerned that Russian forces still occupying Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant may "worsen the situation even further" after last week's destruction of a dam that put Europe's largest nuclear station in peril - RFE/RL
Privately-owned low-cost Moldova airline FlyOne cancelled several flights out of Chișinău International Airport Monday - and reportedly Sunday as well. The airline blames a “plane malfunction” - and indeed one of Airbus A320s was spotted parked on the tarmac with the right engine partially dismantled. I also saw long queues of frustrated passengers on Monday with nowhere to go. Many Ukrainians use the airline to travel to Europe.