Rescuers search the rubble of an apartment block destroyed by Russian rocket fire on Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine

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Monday’s Coverage: Russia Kills 26+ Civilians in Donetsk Apartment Building

Source: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1708 GMT:

Video supports the claim of the Ukrainian military that it struck a Russian ammunition depot in the Kherson oblast in southern Ukraine on Monday night (see 0856 GMT).

Russian occupation officials say at least seven people were killed and 70 wounded.

UPDATE 1612 GMT:

The UN refugee agency OHCHR says it has confirmed the killing of 5,024 people and wounding of 6,520 in Russia’s invasion.

The agency says the actual toll will be far higher.

UPDATE 1117 GMT:

Ukraine’s emergency services have announced a rise in the death toll to 45, as bodies are recovered from rubble, from Sunday’s Russian strike on an apartment building in Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

UPDATE 0856 GMT:

Russian outlets say at least seven people were killed and 70 injured by a Ukrainian strike on Novaya Kakhovka in the Russian-occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine on Monday night.

Russian occupation officials report that seven people are missing.

The Ukrainian military says it struck a Russian ammunition depot, causing significant casualties and damage.

Vladimir Leontyev, a local Russian proxy official, said:

Unfortunately, there are casualties, a large number of injured, dozens of people were left homeless. The victims were admitted to both the city hospital and the military hospital. We still have to assess the damage, because the situation is still ongoing.

He said the strike “led to an explosion in warehouses with mineral fertilizers”, with damage to the market, hospital, and houses.

UPDATE 0736 GMT:

About 150 soldiers from a Siberian region have refused deployment to Ukraine, according to a prominent Russian anti-war activist.

The men returned home to the republic of Buryatia over the weekend after their wives pleaded for their return in a video appeal last month, said Alexandra Garmazhapova, the head of the Free Buryatia Foundation.

Garmazhapova estimates that a total of 500 Buryat men have refused military service since Russia invaded Ukraine. They have reportedly been threatened with lawsuits.

The pro-Russia Telegram channel Moscow Calling has published an image of a billboard listing 300 servicemen, of the 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 49th Combined Arms Army, who refused involvement in the invasion.

The 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade was deployed to the Mariupol and Zaporizhia areas in southern Ukraine on March 3.

UPDATE 0723 GMT:

Ukrainian partisans have assassinated another Russian proxy official.

Both Ukrainian and Russian sources confirmed the killing on Monday of Yevgeniy Yunakov, a Moscow-appointed official in the Russian-occupied part of the Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine, by an explosive device planted under his car.

Last Thursday, Russian occupation authorities announced the creation of an administration in their areas of Kharkiv.

Partisans have carried out a series of sabotage operations, assassinations, and attempted assassinations in Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of southern Ukraine. Russian military bloggers wrote on Monday of an attempted assassination of Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed head of the Kherson regional administration, with an improvised explosive device.

Russian media said “Ukrainian regime militants” also attempted to kill Melitopol District Head Andrey Sigutu.

UPDATE 0713 GMT:

Russian shelling of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine injured at least 12 people on Tuesday morning.

Mayor Oleksandr Syenkevych said rockets struck two medical facilities and residential buildings.

UPDATE 0707 GMT:

Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko has announced a 34th victim of the Russian rocket strike on the apartment building in Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region.

Kyrylenko said emergency workers have cleared about 70% of the rubble as of 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday.

“The Russians will bear responsibility for every destroyed and mutilated life!” he tweeted.

UPDATE 0632 GMT:

The Biden Administration says Iran plans to supply Russia with several hundred weapons-capable drones.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the plan supports assessments that Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine, with its intense bombardment, is “coming at a cost to the sustainment of its own weapons”.

Sullivan said it is unclear if Iran has delivered any drones yet; however, “our information further indicates that Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use these UAVs, with initial training sessions slated to begin as soon as early July”.

Iran has provided the drones to Yemen’s Houthi insurgency, which has used them in attacks not only in the Yemeni civil war but on Saudi Arabia, including attacks on oil facilities and airports.

UPDATE 0623 GMT:

Ukraine has protested Canada’s decision to return a turbine for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline.

The Foreign Office summooned Canada’s Ambassador in Kyiv, Larisa Galadza, to explain the decision.

With Russia’s Gazprom scheduling 10 days of pipeline maintenance from Monday, Germany pressed for the return of the turbine from a Siemens plant in Canada. The Biden Administration supported the decision.

But Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly address to the nation:

It’s not just about some Nord Stream turbine that Canada shouldn’t have, but still decided to hand over….This is about common rules.

If a terrorist state can squeeze out such an exception to sanctions, what exceptions will it want tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?…The decision on the exception to sanctions will be perceived in Moscow exclusively as a manifestation of weakness.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: The death toll has risen to 33 from Russia’s rocket strike on an apartment block in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.

Russia fired Soviet-era Uragan rockets on the five-story block in Chasiv Yar on Sunday, levelling it and trapping dozens of residents in the rubble.

Emergency crews are working through the devastation for a third day, searching for bodies after nine people were rescued. The 33rd victim, a 9-year-old child, was found on Monday evening.

Chasiv Yar is about 20 km (12 miles) southeast of the city Kramatorsk, the capital of the Donetsk oblast after Russian proxies seized Donetsk city in 2014.

Having occupied all of the neighboring Luhansk region, the Russian offensive is now targeting Ukrainian-held parts of Donetsk. About 80% of residents have fled, leaving about 340,000 to face the Russian attempt to overrun the area.

In northeast Ukraine, Russian rockets killed at least six people in Kharkiv on Monday morning. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the attacks hit civilian infrastructure with “no military significance”, including a commercial property and a tire repair shop.

Among those killed were a father and his 17-year-old son, driving to pick up a certificate for his university admission.