WAR IN UKRAINE: July 8, 2022
Local residents view smoke rising after shelling in Donetsk on July 7.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 135
Putin threatens Ukraine, saying that Russia hasn’t ‘started anything yet.’ Russian dictator Vladimir Putin once again blamed the West for the war Moscow launched against Ukraine saying that “the West wants to fight with us until the last Ukrainian,” adding that “everything is coming to that,” the Russian state-controlled RIA Novosti news site reported on July 7. Putin also said that Russia does not refuse to hold peace talks, “but those who refuse should know that the further, the more difficult it will be for them to agree with us.” - Kyiv Independent
More than forty towns and villages in Donbas have come under attack in the last 24 hours, the Ukrainian military has reported, as the Russians push into the Donetsk region. Meanwhile, Russian military warehouses in Kherson have come under attack by Ukrainian forces. Three people were killed and five wounded in the Kharkiv region in one of the air strikes, authorities in the region said on July 7, RFE/RL reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Thursday that Ukraine is unwilling to cede any of its land to Russia, standing firm that a concession of Ukrainian territory won't be part of any diplomatic negotiations to end the war. "Ukrainians are not ready to give away their land, to accept that these territories belong to Russia. This is our land," Zelensky said in an exclusive interview aired Thursday on CNN's "The Situation Room….We always talk about that, and we are intending to prove it.”
The news of the resignation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was met "with sadness" in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office said in a statement that also said Kyiv expects the support Johnson showed for Ukraine to continue. Although Johnson - a Brexit cheerleader - had rarely, if ever, voiced support for Ukraine’s aspirations to become a full member of the European Union.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has told the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting via video link that Russia has embarked on a "a well-thought and cynical strategy" to destroy Ukraine's agriculture. "The Russian naval blockade of Ukrainian ports has already shredded global chains of food supply and has a detrimental effect on global food security. Adding insult to injury, Russia steals Ukrainian grain and bombs Ukrainian granaries," he said. "Russia is essentially playing hunger games with the world by keeping the naval blockade of Ukrainian ports with one hand and shifting the blame for it on Ukraine with the other hand. Russia sees dependence of other countries on any type of resources as weakness and an invitation to use this dependence as a leverage to Russia’s gain” - CNN
Separately, at the G20 foreign ministers’ summit, Der Spiegel reported that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov left due to a boycott. The foreign ministers at the Indonesian summit decided to ignore their Russian counterpart. First, the diplomats refused to take a photo with him, and then the ministers of the G7 countries missed the official dinner.
While the war in Ukraine has upended the global supply of grain, a Wall Street Journal investigation reveals how Russia has quietly institutionalized the theft of hundreds of thousands of metric tons of it out of newly occupied areas of Ukraine and into Russian-allied countries in the Middle East. Link to video investigation here
Ukraine opposes Canada handing over a turbine to Russia's state-controlled Gazprom for natural gas supplies to Germany as the move would contravene sanctions on Russia, a Ukrainian energy ministry source told Reuters on Thursday.
Ukraine-Russia: Hidden tech war as Slovyansk battle looms. Volunteer techies are helping Ukraine win its battle against Russia. Full BBC story here
