Emergency services comb through smoldering ruins after a deadly Russian missile attack on Vinnytsia in central Ukraine, July 14, 2022

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Thursday’s Coverage: “Critical Step Forward” on Ukrainian Grain Exports

Source: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1603 GMT:

The UK Foreign Office has summoned Russian Ambassador Andrey Kelin to lodge its “deep concern” over the death in detention of British aid worker Paul Urey (see 1034 GMT), held by Russian proxy forces in eastern Ukraine.

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said. “I am shocked to hear reports of the death of British aid worker Paul Urey while in the custody of a Russian proxy in Ukraine. Russia must bear the full responsibility for this.”

UPDATE 1340 GMT:

Ukraine police have updated on the civilian victims of the Russian missile strike on Vinnytsia in southern Ukraine.

Officials said all but four victims have now been identified, including 4-year-old Liza Dmitrieva (see Original Entry) and two boys aged and 8.

Eight people are still missing.

UPDATE 1304 GMT:

Canada has expanded sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas sector and chemical industry.

Ottawa prohibited the provision of manufacturing services to the sectors, citing eight companies.

Canadian firms are banned from providing any service incidental to manufacturing of fabricated metal products; motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers; computer, electronic and optical products; and electrical equipment.

UPDATE 1034 GMT:

British aid worker Paul Urey has died in detention in a Russian proxy area of Ukraine.

Darya Morozova, a representative of the Russian proxy “Donetsk People’s Republic” said he died on Sunday from “illness and stress” while suffering from diabetes.

Urey and fellow Briton Dylan Healy were seized by Russian proxy forces at a checkpoint in late April. The two men were charged with “mercenary activities” by the DNR.

Urey’s mother Linda wrote on Facebook:

I’m truly angry. I told you he was a very sick man, I told [you] he was diabetic, I begged on Sky News to give me my son back. Why did you let him die? I want answers. Why didn’t you release him?

I hate you all. I’m absolutely fuming, I really am. I’m angry, very very very very angry. Murderers, that’s what you are.

A spokesperson for the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office said, “We are urgently seeking clarification from the Russian government on media reports that a British aid worker has died in Ukraine.”

UPDATE 0853 GMT:

Ihor Zhovkva, deputy head of the Ukraine Presidential Office, has updated figures on the toll from Russia’s missile strikes on Vinnytsia in center of the country.

Zhovkha said 11 of 23 victims, including two children, are still unidentified. More than 70 people are in hospital, and 18 people are missing.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has now claimed, without any evidence, that the missiles “hit the building of the garrison house of officers in the city of Vinnytsia”. They said that the target was “a meeting of the command of the Ukrainian air force with representatives of foreign arms suppliers” that the “participants were destroyed”.

UPDATE 0844 GMT:

Russia has not paused after its latest mass killing of civilians. This morning, Moscow’s forces fired missiles on Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, a regular target of Russian strikes.

Five S-300 missiles struck the National University of Shipbuilding and four hit the National University of Mykolaiv. Four people were injured

Governor Vitaliy Kim tweeted:

ORIGINAL ENTRY: In their latest missile strike on Ukraine’s civilians, Russian forces have killed at least 23 — including three children — and injured 66 in Vinnytsia in the center of the country.

Another 39 people were missing as of Thursday night. Five of the wounded are in critical condition with 34 victims sustaining severe injuries.

Three Kalibr cruise missiles, among seven fired from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea, struck a packed city center in mid-morning. They damaged 55 buildings, including a business center, and 40 cars.

Eleven of the victims, some of whom were burnt alive, have not been identified. Investigators have asked relatives to submit DNA samples to help with confirmation.

Videos and photographs documented the murder and devastation. Among them was an image of 4-year-old Liza Dmitrieva, dead in her pram. Nearby was the severed foot of her mother, who survived but lost her leg.

Her mother was taking Liza to an education center, for a speech therapy session, when the missiles landed.

Olena Zelenska, the wife of President Zelenskiy, recognised Liza from a Christmas video she made to celebrate the holidays. She posted the clip, showing Liza painting Christmas ornaments: “She managed to paint not only herself, her holiday dress, but also all the other children, me, the cameramen and the director with paints. Look at her, alive, please.”

It is Russia’s second mass killing of dozens of civilians this week. On Sunday, 48 people were slain in a missile strike on Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine when a five-story apartment block was levelled.

See also Ukraine War, Day 139: Death Toll Rises to 45 from Russia’s Rocket Strike on Donetsk Apartment Block

The Kremlin and Russian Defense Ministry have not yet pushed any disinformation to excuse the mass killing, with Vinnytsia far from the frontlines of the invasion and with no Ukrainian military presence in the city center. However, Margarita Simonyan, head of Russian State outlet RT, said military officials told her a building was targeted because there were “Nazis” inside.

Vinnytsia, with a pre-invasion population of 370,000, is four hours southwest of Kyiv and north of Moldova. The city has taken in thousands of Ukrainians displaced by the Russian assault on the east of the country.

Zelenskiy Calls for War Crimes Tribunal

The Russians struck as foreign and justice ministers, at the Ukraine Accountability Conference in The Hague, were discussing war crimes during the invasion.

Addressing the ministers, Zelenskiy led a moment of silence and then said via videolink:

Existing judicial institutions cannot bring all the guilty parties to justice. Therefore, a special tribunal is needed to address the crime of Russian aggression against Ukraine….

There must be a mandatory and principled punishment for all Russian criminals.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba spoke of “a war crime” in Vinnytsia and said, “All we want is the crime of aggression to not remain unpunished.”

Representatives of 45 countries — including European Union states, the UK, the US, Canada, Mexico, and Australia — agreed to coordinate investigations, with about 23,000 claims of war crimes against Russian forces.

The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said, “The simple truth is that, as we speak, children, women and men, the young and the old, are living in terror.”

Earlier, as news of the attack was beginning to circulate, Zelenskiy wrote:

Vinnytsia. Rocket strikes in the city centre. There are wounded and dead, among them a small child.

Every day, Russia destroys the civilian population, kills Ukrainian children, directs rockets at civilian objects. Where there is nothing military. What is this, if not an open act of terrorism?

Inhumans.

A killer country. A terrorist country.

At a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Indonesia, Canada’s Chrystia Freeland directly addressed Russian officials: “It is not only generals who commit war crimes, it is the economic technocrats who allow the war to happen and to continue.”

She noted that Vladimir Putin’s invasion is the “single biggest threat to the global economy right now”.