After attacks on Sloviansk, all residents are called to flee. Russia reports the destruction of American Himar missiles. The city of Lysychansk has been taken, but Luhansk is not yet under Russian control. All news about the war in Ukraine can be found in the ticker.
6:53 p.m .: Russian troops have again caused massive destruction in their unabated attacks in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk region. At least one person was killed and several others injured in an airstrike on the city of Kramatorsk on Thursday. According to Ukrainian sources, seven people were killed and several others injured in the region within 24 hours. The nearby city of Sloviansk was again attacked by Russian troops.
During the attacks on Kramatorsk, among other things, according to reports by AFP journalists, an explosion tore a large crater between a hotel and a residential building. The journalists saw one dead and several injured. Several houses and cars went up in flames. The city’s mayor wrote on Facebook: “Air raid on the center of Kramatorsk. There are victims.”
Kramatorsk is the capital of the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk region. Only about 15 kilometers away is the city of Sloviansk, which is apparently the next target for Russian troops in their advance in eastern Ukraine. Sloviansk and Kramatorsk are the two largest cities in the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control.
According to Russia, it has taken control of the entire neighboring Luhansk region and is now trying to conquer the Donetsk region. The goal is to occupy the entire Donbass region, parts of which have been controlled by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.
The Ukrainian authorities again urged residents of the Donetsk region to flee. “The evacuation is underway. We get people out every day,” Sloviansk Mayor Vadym Liakh said on Wednesday. Of the approximately 110,000 residents of the city before the start of the war, around 23,000 are still in the city. On Wednesday, among other things, rockets hit a market square and surrounding streets in the center of Sloviansk, killing at least three people.
12:46 p.m .: According to the Ukrainian secret service, Russian occupiers are burning corpses in Cherson to hide the extent of their own losses. The secret service writes on Twitter that places with charred remains of people are being discovered time and again on the outskirts of the city. “Due to the considerable fire damage, it is difficult to identify the objects precisely,” it said.
11:34 a.m .: Ukrainian soldiers raised the Ukrainian flag again on the symbolic Snake Island in the Black Sea, which had been abandoned by Russian troops. The spokesman for the military administration of the Odessa region Serhiy Brachuk published several photos in the Telegram news service on Thursday. The flag was also signed by Odessa’s military governor, Maxym Marchenko. It also has the inscription: “Remember, “Russian warship”, the island belongs to Ukraine!!!”
The island is about 35 kilometers from the Ukrainian part of the Danube Delta. Snake Island became widely known a few days after the start of the war in late February through an incident involving a Russian warship. The ship’s crew then asked the Snake Island garrison to lay down their arms. The Ukrainian marine infantryman Roman Hrybow replied: “Russian warship, fuck off!” The almost 32-year-old then became a folk hero in Ukraine.
A little later, the Russians occupied Snake Island, but withdrew a week ago after sustained Ukrainian air and artillery attacks.
According to Ukrainian sources, the island’s jetty was “severely damaged” by two Russian missiles on Thursday morning.
Thursday, July 7, 9:16 a.m .: According to information from Kyiv, Russian troops continue to fight for complete control of the already largely conquered Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine. To this end, the Russians have relocated some of their units, the Ukrainian general staff announced on Thursday.
Luhansk governor Serhiy Hajday had previously stated that even after the fall of the strategically important city of Lysychansk, fighting would continue in the outskirts. Moscow, on the other hand, has been saying for days that its own troops have taken complete control of Luhansk.
The Ukrainian General Staff also reported further Russian attacks in the neighboring Donetsk region. Around the cities of Kramatorsk and Bakhmut, several settlements were shelled with artillery, it said. Two rocket attacks were also reported from the southern Ukrainian region of Odessa during the night.
5:05 p.m .: After just one day, the Ukrainian military lifted domestic travel restrictions for conscripts. This was announced by the supreme commander Valeriy Saluschnyj on Wednesday in the Telegram news service after massive criticism.
The day before, the order for conscripts to obtain permission from the district military replacement office to leave the reporting point triggered a nationwide wave of outrage. Even President Volodymyr Zelenskyj had distanced himself from the military on the issue and called for the order to be withdrawn.
4:05 p.m .: Putin’s army is not only supported by the Wagner mercenary force in the war of aggression in Ukraine, but also by Russian prisoners, according to human rights activist Olga Romanov. In an interview with “Bild”, the activist explains: “We received information from three Russian prisons near St. Petersburg that uniformed officers showed up there and offered the prisoners to go to the front to fight against the to fight the Nazis.” Who are these uniformed men? According to Romanova, the Wagner mercenary group is currently trying to recruit soldiers in Russian prisons.
Romanov is the director of Russia Behind Bars. For years she has been taking care of the inmates in Russia’s prisons. A partner of a prisoner told Romanov that her husband had signed up for the troops and would soon be going to Ukraine. According to the partner, 40 men from the prison in question would soon be fighting in Ukraine.
First, the Wagner mercenaries tried to recruit prisoners who already had military experience. In the meantime, however, they are also supposed to address prisoners who do not have them. So far, inmates who have been convicted of assault, theft or drug-related crime have been addressed, Romanow told Springer-Medium. So far she has no knowledge of convicted murderers who are sent to Ukraine.
The occupants should be offered several advantages at the same time:
2:00 p.m.: The mayor of Mykolaiv reports heavy shelling of the city in southern Ukraine. “There are no safe zones in Mykolaiv,” says Olexander Senkevych. “I’m telling the people of the city to get out of here.” Russian troops used multiple missile systems to shell the port city. Before the war about 500,000 people lived in Mykolaiv, now there are only half as many.
12:46 p.m .: According to the Russian military, it has destroyed two US rocket launchers of the Himar type. “Near the village of Malotaranovi in the Donetsk People’s Republic, two launch pads for the Himar multiple rocket launcher from the US and two associated ammunition dumps were destroyed by high-precision air-launched missiles,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Wednesday. The information could not be verified independently. According to media reports, Ukraine has received four Himars systems so far.
In addition, Konashenkov reported on the destruction of a large artillery ammunition depot near the front-line town of Soledar. 1,500 artillery shells of various calibers and more than 100 “foreign-made” anti-tank missiles went up in the air, he said.
In a dogfight in southern Ukraine, a Russian Su-35 fighter shot down two Ukrainian Mi-24 attack helicopters and a Mi-25 fighter jet. The Russian Defense Ministry claims to have shot down 232 Ukrainian planes and 137 helicopters since the start of the war. According to media reports, however, Ukraine only had around 100 aircraft and 90 helicopters in its fleet before the war.
12:06 p.m .: Hungary will not participate in arms deliveries to Ukraine. This was stated by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto in an interview with “CNN”. This was to protect Hungarian citizens from Russia. Budapest does not want to risk the lives of the 150,000 Hungarians who live in the west of the country. “When you have a war in the neighboring countries, you also face a security threat,” Szijjarto said. “The main goal is not to be drawn into this war.” In addition, the Ukrainian-Hungarian border crossing is the safest of all, and the International Red Cross also operates nearby.
Hungary was recently criticized for its Russia policy. The country had repeatedly initially blocked or delayed sanctions against Russia.
8.50 a.m .: In view of the massive Russian attacks on the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, the regional government has called on residents to flee. “My main advice is evacuation,” Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Tuesday evening. “There hasn’t been a day this week without shelling.” The city is now within range of Russian multiple rocket launchers. “The enemy is chaotically shelling the city, the attacks are aimed at annihilating the local population,” the governor added.
AFP journalists in Sloviansk saw rockets hit the market square and surrounding streets and firefighters tried to put out the fires that had started.
Slovyansk’s mayor Vadym Liakh reported on Tuesday that the city had been shelled “massively” by the Russian army. According to Kyrylenko, two people were killed and seven others injured.
The city has been under rocket fire for days. After capturing the nearby city of Lysychansk, Russian forces are advancing in the Donbass toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the two largest cities in the region still under Ukrainian control.
7:44 a.m .: According to their own statements, the Ukrainian troops have repulsed an attack by the Russian military in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. “Ukrainian militants inflicted significant casualties on the enemy during an attempted attack around the villages of Verkhnyokamkanka, Bilohorivka and Hryhorivka. The occupiers have retreated,” the general staff said in Kyiv on Wednesday. The villages are 10 to 15 kilometers west of the former city of Lyssychansk, which Russia’s troops conquered at the weekend.
Also south of it in the area of Bakhmut it was possible to stop the Russian advance and to cause “losses” among the attackers, the report said. The information cannot be verified independently. After the fall of the Sievarodonetsk-Lysychansk conurbation, the Ukrainian army built a new defensive wall along the line of the three small towns of Siversk, Soledar and Bakhmut. This is intended to stop the Russian offensive on the Slovjansk-Kramatorsk industrial area, the headquarters of the Ukrainian military in Donbass, from the east. Fighting is currently underway for the front lines of defense.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
