LIVE – War in Ukraine: kyiv says Russian attack on Kharkiv killed two people and injured 30

Ukraine says this Tuesday evening that a Russian attack on Kharkiv left two dead and thirty injured.

Ukraine could face its harshest winter since the Russian invasion of the country on February 24, 2022, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned on Tuesday, who called on Allies to step up their support.

“Russia continues to carry out missile strikes against the essential energy infrastructure of Ukraine (…) which could face its harshest winter since the start of the invasion” Russian, declared to the press Mr. Rutte, who took office earlier this month.

Ukraine announced Tuesday the arrest of a Russian-Ukrainian collaborating with the Russian secret services and considered an agent of influence of the Kremlin, extradited from Moldova where he had been arrested. He is being prosecuted for “high treason” in Ukraine for having been, according to kyiv, one of the “ideologues” of the Russian invasion in the service of the Kremlin.

The Ukrainian security services (SBU) identified the man as Dmytro Tchystilin, an “assistant” to former Kremlin advisor Sergei Glaziev, known for his anti-Western positions.

The authorities of several Russian regions have announced in recent weeks considerable increases in salaries and bonuses paid to Russians who volunteer to fight in Ukraine.

The Kremlin, which wants to avoid an unpopular mobilization like that of some 300,000 men in September 2022, assures that it only wants to send volunteers under contract to the front.

The United Kingdom sanctioned General Igor Kirillov, in charge of radioactive, chemical and biological substances in the Russian army, as well as his entire unit, “for the deployment of barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine “.

“The United Kingdom denounces Russia’s flagrant violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and urges Russia to immediately cease any such activity,” the Foreign Office statement added.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will receive American Presidents Joe Biden, French Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday morning in Berlin to take stock of the war in Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East, said Tuesday a German government source.

This meeting will take place as part of Joe Biden’s visit to Germany where he is expected from Thursday evening. The leaders are then scheduled to attend a meeting of Ukraine’s allies on Saturday afternoon at the US military base at Ramstein in southwest Germany.

The Russian army claimed Tuesday the capture of two new villages in eastern Ukraine where Russian forces have been encroaching on ground for weeks, in particular gradually approaching the strategic town of Pokrovsk.

“The units of the Southern group continued to advance (…) liberating the locality of Zoryane”, in the Donetsk region, the Russian army said in a press release. Furthermore, “the units of the Vostok group improved their tactical situation, by liberating the locality of Zolota Nyva”, in the same region, according to the same source.

A Ukrainian was killed and five foreigners were injured in a Russian missile strike on the Black Sea port of Odessa that hit a civilian boat, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The missile attack took place Monday evening, hitting a boat flying the flag of Palau, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement. A 60-year-old employee of a logistics company was killed and five foreigners, members of the boat’s crew, were injured, added the prosecution, which did not specify the nationality of the injured.

The Mirage 2000-5 combat planes that Paris intends to supply to Ukraine will be delivered “in the first quarter of 2025”, the time to modify the aircraft and train pilots and mechanics, announced Tuesday the French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu.

The number of aircraft currently in service with the French Air Force has not been specified. Equipped for air combat, the Mirage 2000-5s which will fly in Ukrainian colors must first be equipped with “new equipment”, affirms the minister on airstrikes and “anti-electronic warfare defense” operations to resist powerful Russian jamming, he specifies.

North Korean soldiers were most likely killed in Ukraine after being sent there to help Russia, South Korea’s new defense minister said Tuesday. “We assess it as very likely that there were casualties among North Korean officers and soldiers in Ukraine, given various circumstances,” Kim Yong-hyun said during a parliamentary hearing.

A Ukrainian media outlet claimed this weekend that six North Korean officers died in a Ukrainian missile attack on Thursday near Donetsk, in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. Seoul also expects Pyongyang to send more soldiers to the Ukrainian front to support its Russian ally, which launched a military operation on February 24, 2022.