A Russian war reporter was killed and three were wounded in Ukraine on Saturday in what the defence ministry said was a Ukrainian attack using cluster munitions, prompting outrage from Moscow.
In a separate incident, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle said one of its journalists, Yevgeny Shilko, had been wounded elsewhere in Ukraine in a Russian attack with cluster munitions that killed a Ukrainian soldier. It said his life was not in danger.
Rostislav Zhuravlev, correspondent for Russia’s RIA news agency, poses for a picture at an unknown location in this picture released on 22nd July, 2023. PICTURE: RIA Novosti/Handout via Reuters
RUSSIA’S ATTACK ON ODESA KILLS ONE, INJURES 18, UKRAINE OFFICIALS SAY
Russia launched another wave of overnight attacks on the Black Sea port of Odesa early on Sunday, killing one and injuring 18 people including four children, and damaging residential and religious infrastructure, Ukraine’s officials said.
“Odesa: another night attack of the monsters,” said Oleh Kiper, Governor of the broader southern Ukraine’s Odesa region of which the city of Odesa is an administrative centre, on the Telegram messaging app. “Unfortunately, we have one civilian who was killed.”
Kiper earlier said that according to preliminary information, 14 people were hospitalised, including three children.
Russia has been pounding Odesa and other Ukrainian food export facilities nearly daily over the past week after Moscow withdrew from a United Nations-brokered sea corridor agreement that allowed for the safe shipment of Ukrainian grain.
Ukraine’s Air Force said on its Telegram messaging app that Russia launched high-precision Onyx missiles and sea-to-shore Kalibr cruise missiles on Odesa after midnight on Sunday. The scale of the attack was not immediately known.
The RBC-Ukraine news agency reported that the city’s largest Orthodox church, the Spaso-Preobrazhenskyi Cathedral consecrated in 1809, had been severely damaged in the attacks.
Social media videos showed rubble inside a dark church-like structure lit up by a fire and a distressed man walking and repeating, “The church is no longer.”
Reuters could not immediately independently verify the video or the reports of potential damage. Russia had no immediate comment on the attacks.
Moscow had described the attacks as revenge for a Ukrainian strike on a Russian-built bridge to Crimea – the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula seized by Moscow in 2014. It has accused Ukraine of using the sea corridor to launch “terrorist attacks.”
Meanwhile, a drone attack on an ammunition depot in Crimea prompted authorities to evacuate a five kilometre radius and briefly suspend road traffic on the bridge linking the peninsula to Russia, the region’s Moscow-installed Governor said on Saturday.
Ukraine said its army had destroyed an oil depot and Russian army warehouses in what it called the “temporarily occupied” district of Oktiabrske in central Crimea.
The attack caused an ammunition depot to explode, said Russian-installed Governor Sergei Aksyonov, adding there was no reported damage or casualties. Footage shared by state media showed a thick cloud of grey smoke at the site. Aksyonov later said that all rail traffic in the affected area, temporarily disrupted, was back to normal operation.
Russian news agencies quoted the Health Ministry as saying 12 people required medical assistance and four were taken to hospital.
– GLEB GARANICH, VALENTYN OGIRENKO and LIDIA KELLY with CALEB DAVIS, MARK TREVELYAN, OLENA HARMASH and RON POPESKI
Cluster bombs are in the spotlight after Ukraine received supplies of them from the United States this month. Many countries ban them because they rain shrapnel over a wide area and can pose a risk to civilians. Some bomblets typically fail to explode immediately, but can blow up years later.
Reuters could not independently verify the use of such weapons in either incident on Saturday. Both sides have used them in the course of Russia’s 17-month invasion of Ukraine.
The dead Russian journalist was named as Rostislav Zhuravlev, a war correspondent for state news agency RIA. His three colleagues were evacuated from the battlefield after coming under fire in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, the defence ministry said.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced what she called “criminal terror” by Ukraine and said, without providing evidence, that the attack appeared deliberate.
“Those responsible for the brutal reprisal against a Russian journalist will inevitably suffer well-deserved punishment. The entire measure of responsibility will be shared by those who supplied cluster munitions to their Kyiv protégés,” she said.
No comment was immediately available from Ukraine on the incident.
Ukraine has pledged to use cluster munitions only to dislodge concentrations of enemy soldiers. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said this week that Ukrainian forces were using them appropriately and effectively against Russian formations.
Konstantin Kosachyov, deputy speaker of the Russian upper house of parliament, said the use of the weapons was “inhuman” and the responsibility lay both with Ukraine and the United States. Leonid Slutsky, a party leader in the lower house, called it a “monstrous crime”.
Their reactions ignored the fact that Russia’s own use of cluster bombs in the war has been documented by human rights groups and by the UN
US-based Human Rights Watch said in May that Russian forces had used the weapons in attacks that had caused hundreds of civilian casualties and damaged homes, hospitals and schools.
