Diplomats with a Ukrainian boy at a center in Novopolotsk, Belarus, October 4, 2023

Saturday’s Coverage: Russia Kills Woman and 10-Year-Old Grandson in Kharkiv Strike

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1438 GMT:

Four civilians, including a 9-year-old girl, suffered minor injuries in a Russian rocket strike on Konstantinivka in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on Sunday morning.

Acting Governor Ihor Moroz said 19 private homes, 10 multi-story buildings, a boiler, a gas pipeline and a car were damaged. Moroz said the four civillians’ injuries were minor and had been treated.

Moroz said the city, close to the frontline, is “constantly experiencing enemy shelling” and warned people to evacuate as “it is dangerous to stay in the city!”

UPDATE 1418 GMT:

A UN monitoring mission has reached a preliminary conclusion that almost all of the 52 fatalities from Thursday’s Russian missile strike on Hroza in northeast Ukraine were civilians.

Victims were gathered in a cafe in the village for a reburial ceremony for a Ukrainian soldier. Only six people survived.

Among the victims were all of the immediate family of the slain soldier, including his widow, son, and daughter-in-law, who was just short of her 21st birthday.

Danielle Bell, who led the UN monitoring mission, said:

My initial conversations with local residents and survivors indicate that virtually all those killed were civilians and that the target itself, a busy village cafe and store, was also clearly civilian.

What happened here is yet another tragic reminder of the deadly impact Russia’s invasion has had on Ukraine’s civilians.

On Saturday, residents buried their slain friends.

UPDATE 0733 GMT:

Moldova President Maia Sandu says Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries oversaw a coup attempt against the Government in February 2023.

Sandu said Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin led the plot to turn anti-Government protests into a violent uprising: “The information that we have is that it was a plan prepared by his team.”

Prigozhin and two other Wagner commmanders were killed — and possibly assassinated by the Kremlin — in a jet crash on August 24. However, Sandu says there is an ongoing threat from Moscow:

The situation is really dramatic and we have to protect ourselves….

Russia is going to increase its pressure on Moldova. They tried energy and they failed. They tried to overthrow the government and they failed. And now they are trying massive interference in our elections, using a lot of money.

Last week the Moldovan Parliament approved measures for the approval of candidates of the pro-Kremlin Shor Party, led by fugitive businessman Ilan Shor, by the Central Election Commission.

Sandu said Moldovan intelligence services had discovered at least 20 million euros ($21.2 million) in Russian finance coming into the country and suggested the true figure is higher.

She explained that Moldovans are entering the country with “bank cards that were issued in Dubai…[the Russians] just distribute thousands of cards …bank cards to people they wanted to bribe”.

Moldovan police say they have seized thousands of bank cards issued in Dubai, to be given to Shor’s allies.

“This is using bank cards instead of suitcases or black bags full of cash,” Veronica Dragalin, head of Moldova’s Anti-corruption prosecutors, told reporters.

UPDATE 0712 GMT:

Overnight Russian attacks have injured 12 civilians, including a 27-year-old woman and her 9-month-old baby, in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine.

Both the mother and child were hospitalized with moderate wounds. A 33-year-old Red Cross medic was injured.

Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said several houses and gas pipelines were damaged amid 59 attacks across the region.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Russia and Belarus have tried to defend the mass deportation of Ukraine’s children by presenting a group of 44 juveniles to diplomats from other countries.

On Wednesday, the diplomats visited the minors, from Lysychansk and Severodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, in an accommodation center in Novopolotsk, Belarus. The delegation included representatives from Zimbabwe, India, Qatar, China, Cuba, Mongolia, the UAE, Palestine, Russia, Syria, and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Russian and Belarusian State media said the diplomats saw the children’s dormitory and educational and medical services. The outlets proclaimed:

The diplomats praised the accommodation conditions as highly comfortable. The children have at their disposal cozy rooms, kitchens, common halls and many more. The children can spend their free time here playing checkers, chess, or table tennis.

Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, in the Luhansk region, were overrun last summer in Russia’s last advance in the 19 1/2-month invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials say they have confirmed the deportation of almost 20,000 children to Russia or Russian-occupied territory. They note that the number is likely to be far higher, given the inability to establish the situation in Russian-held areas of Ukraine.

In March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Russian “Children’s Rights” Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. While there is no prospect of enforcing the warrant with Putin remaining in Russia, it has limited his movement outside the country, preventing attendance at the BRICS meeting and the G20 summit last month.

On September 13, the European Parliament passed a resolution recognizing the complicity of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in the deportations.

Portraying the children’s stay as a visit so they will return to the Russian-occupied area of eastern Ukraine with a positive view of Belarus, the head of the Novopolotsk city committee, Dmitry Demidov, said:

Of course, I heard about accusations against Belarus and Russia about the illegal evacuation of children. I think this is absolutely wild speculation.

Our country has always been distinguished by its peacefulness. These accusations cannot be commented on. We will try to show the truthful situation and confirm the nobility of our intentions and actions.