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Russia Confesses Striking Ukraine's Kyiv During UN Secretary-Visit General's
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Russia affirmed on Friday that it carried out an airstrike on Kyiv during the UN Secretary General’s visit, the first such attack on the Ukrainian capital in nearly two weeks, in which a journalist was also killed. Vera Gyrych, a manufacturer for the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was killed when a Russian missile struck her Kyiv apartment building, according to the media group.
Russia’s defense ministry stated that it had used “high-precision, long-range air-based weapons” to “demolish the production buildings of the Artyom missile and space enterprise in Kyiv.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes, which came immediately after his meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, were an attempt by Russia “to humiliate the UN and everything that the organisation stands for.”

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Guterres had visited Bucha and other Kyiv suburbs where Moscow is accused of war crimes earlier that day. Russia denies murdering civilians.

Germany stated that the “inhumane” attack demonstrated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “lack of regard for international law.”

The large explosion had ripped out walls and doors, leaving rubble piles on the ground.

“I don’t think Russians are afraid of anything, not even the world’s judgment,” Anna Hromovych, deputy director of a badly damaged clinic, told AFP on Friday as she and others cleaned up the devastation.

Putin is still scheduled to attend the G20 summit in November, according to Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Zelensky has been invited as well.

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‘Terrorists’ remark

Prosecutors in Ukraine said they had identified over 8,000 war crimes and were investigating 10 Russian soldiers for alleged atrocities in Bucha, where dozens of bodies in civilian clothing were discovered following Moscow’s retreat.

Britain announced in May that it would send a team of war crimes experts to assist Ukrainian investigators.

Three months into an invasion that failed to capture Kyiv in the short term, Russia is now stepping up operations in the eastern Donbas region and tightening its grip on the devastated southern port city of Mariupol.

Ukrainian authorities said they planned to leave the area civilians from the besieged Azovstal steel plant on Friday, the last holdout in Mariupol where hundreds of civilians have taken refuge with Ukrainian troops.

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However, Denis Pushilin, the leader of Donetsk’s breakaway eastern region, accused Ukrainian forces of “acting like outright terrorists.”

He claimed that Ukraine was holding civilians hostage in the steel plant and that they were free to leave at any time.