The notorious mercenary group Wagner is apparently now operating in coordination with the Russian military. A Russian soldier apparently castrated a Ukrainian prisoner while he was fully conscious. All news about the war in Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.
Saturday, July 30, 8:51 a.m .: A video from Ukraine is currently causing horror. In it, two Russian soldiers can be seen holding a Ukrainian prisoner on the ground while a third Russian soldier cuts off the man’s testicles with a knife. The man is fully conscious during the process. According to “Times” journalist Maxim Tucker, the investigative platform “Bellingcat” classified the video as authentic. The Russian soldier had been identified.
According to the US portal “Vice”, which also classifies the video as genuine, a bounty was declared by Ukrainian fighters on the Russians. Amnesty International classified the incident as a war crime: “This horrific attack is another flagrant example of utter disregard for human life and dignity,” said Amnesty’s Eastern Europe director, Marie Struthers.
6:22 p.m .: After the attack on a prisoner of war camp in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian secret services assume a targeted demolition by Russian forces. There are said to be dozens dead. “The explosions occurred in a newly constructed building specially prepared for Azovstal prisoners,” Ukrainian military intelligence claimed in a statement on Friday. Azovstal is the steelworks in Mariupol where the Ukrainian soldiers holed up before they gave up and were taken prisoner by the Russians.
With the explosion in the town of Olenivka in the Donetsk region, the Russian mercenary group Wagner allegedly wanted to cover up traces of embezzlement during construction before an upcoming inspection, according to Kyiv. The Russian Ministry of Defense in Moscow knew nothing about it. The ministry had previously accused Ukraine of shelling the camp with the prisoners, which Ukraine denies.
The domestic secret service SBU also assumed a targeted demolition and presented an allegedly bugged phone call from the breakaway area. “Not one of the eyewitnesses heard that any missile flew to the correctional facility,” the agency said. There was no characteristic whistling. Russian claims that the Ukrainian army shelled the facility are “lies and provocation”.
The Russian-backed separatists, on the other hand, presented alleged fragments of US-made Himar missiles. According to them, the prisoner’s accommodation was targeted by the Ukrainian armed forces late Thursday evening. More than 50 prisoners were killed and over 100 injured. The information cannot be independently verified.
2:21 p.m .: According to local authorities, more than a dozen civilians have been killed and numerous people injured in the Ukrainian war zones within two days. Eight people were killed and 19 injured on Thursday, the military governor of the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on Friday. There were fatalities in the Russian shelling of the towns of Bakhmut, Torezk, Orliwka, Hirnyk and Soledar. On Friday, at least two people died and six were injured in the cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut.
Meanwhile, according to the regional administration, several rockets hit the eastern city of Kharkiv. Two people were killed and eight injured. Officials said at least five civilians were killed and seven others injured when a bus stop was shelled in Mykolaiv, a southern port city. Civilians also came under fire in the part of the Donetsk region occupied by Russian troops. Local media spoke of one dead and at least 28 injured. The authorities’ information on the number of victims could not be independently verified.
The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine began in late February. According to a United Nations count, at least 5,200 civilians have been killed since then.
10.15 a.m .: According to the pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk region, at least 40 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed by artillery fire from the Kiev troops. 130 were injured. “A direct hit in a barracks with prisoners of war,” said a representative of the separatist leadership in Donetsk on Friday, according to the Interfax agency. There is no confirmation from Kyiv of the shelling. The information cannot be verified independently.
The separatist representative warned that the number of victims could still increase. People are still being searched for under the rubble. According to him, the Olenivka detention center, where troops loyal to Moscow are holding Ukrainian prisoners of war, was fired on by Himar-type multiple rocket launchers.
The rocket launchers from the USA are considered precision weapons. So far, only photos from the city of Ilovaysk, around 40 kilometers east of Olenivka, where there were violent explosions in the night, have been circulating on social networks.
Many Ukrainian soldiers are being held captive in Olenivka, who fell into the hands of troops loyal to Moscow during the capture of the port city of Mariupol three months after the start of the Russian war of aggression. Among them are also fighters of the nationalist Azov regiment. The separatists have threatened them with the death penalty on charges of war crimes. According to media reports, prison conditions in Olenivka are inhumane.
Friday, July 29, 7:53 a.m.: The Wagner mercenary group is apparently operating in coordination with the Russian military in the Ukraine war. This is reported by the British Ministry of Defense in its daily update. The mercenaries were probably assigned responsibility for certain areas of the front line. “This is a significant change from the group’s previous deployment since 2015, when it typically conducted missions distinct from overt, large-scale regular Russian military activities.”
The problem for Russia: the cooperation undermines attempts by the country to deny ties between the private army and the Russian state. “Wagner’s role has probably changed because the Russian Defense Ministry has a major shortage of combat infantry. However, it is highly unlikely that Wagner’s forces will be sufficient to decisively influence the course of the war,” the ministry continued.
8:25 p.m .: According to media reports, several people died on Thursday as a result of Russian attacks in Ukraine. At least five people were killed and 26 others injured in a rocket attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kropvnitsky, Ukrainian media reported, citing the head of the local military administration, Andriy Rajkovich. Civilians are among the injured. According to the online newspaper Ukrajinska Pravda, at least 15 people were injured in further rocket attacks in the Kyiv region. Civilians are also affected here.
According to media reports, at least four people were killed by Russian shelling in the Donetsk region. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, fighting between troops from Kiev and Moscow in the eastern war zone of Donetsk is moving closer to the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar. The Ukrainian general staff announced that the enemy had achieved partial success near Werschyna, south-east of Bakhmut. The information cannot be verified independently. Ukraine has been repelling a Russian invasion for more than five months.
11:05 a.m .: According to their own statements, Russian units have arrested 21 “accomplices” of the Ukrainian army in occupied areas in southern Ukraine. During the deployment of the National Guard in the Cherson and Zaporizhia regions, 13 grenade launchers, large quantities of ammunition, 53 hand grenades and more than 24 kilograms of explosives were also confiscated, the Moscow-installed regional administration in Cherson said.
According to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, those arrested are a group of agents who provided the Ukrainian army with information about the deployment of Russian forces in Kherson in preparation for rocket and artillery attacks.
The Ukrainian army bombed a strategically important bridge in the city as part of its counter-offensive in Cherson on Wednesday. The Russian army had used the Antonivka Bridge over the Dnipro River as an important supply route.
In the fight against the Russian troops, the Ukrainian army can now fall back on missiles with a longer range as a result of western arms deliveries, which enable it to attack Russian supply routes deeper in the occupied territories.
9:52 a.m .: According to British estimates, the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Cherson region in the south of the country is picking up speed. “Your forces have most likely established a bridgehead south of the Inhulets River, which forms the northern border of Russian-held Kherson,” the Defense Ministry said in London on Thursday. The Inhulets is a tributary of the Dnipro River.
Using western-supplied artillery, Ukrainian forces damaged at least three bridges across the Dnipro River that Russia relies on to supply its occupied territories, sources said, citing intelligence information. One of them is the one-kilometer-long Antonivskyj Bridge near the city of Kherson, which was hit again on Wednesday and is now most likely unusable.
This makes the Russian 49th Army, which is stationed on the west bank of the Dnipro, “extremely vulnerable”. The city of Cherson, politically the most important city under Russian control, is now as good as cut off from the rest of the occupied territories. “Losing them would seriously undermine Russian attempts to portray the occupation as a success,” the UK MoD said.
9.30 a.m .: According to Ukraine, Russia has been attacking the city of Chernihiv in the north of the country since early in the morning. According to the Northern Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, nine missiles are said to have landed in the region. That explained the command on Telegram. So far there have been no reports of possible damage.
According to the report, the attacks came from Belarus. The city of Chernihiv is located just a few kilometers from the Belarusian border. As the operational base of the Northern Command, it is a strategically important city for the Ukrainian army. The information cannot be independently confirmed.
Other cities in Ukraine are said to have been fired at with rockets from Belarus. Kyiv is said to be among the cities that were hit. More than 20 rockets are said to have hit in total.
5:57 a.m.: Ukraine is said to have hit another important bridge over the Dinipro, according to reports. “The river crossing is now completely impassable,” it said. The bridge represents an important Russian supply route and is now cut off. Read more about this here.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
