Ukraine Update…795 Days of the Russian Conflict…Ukraine Hanging in There….

• Russian strikes on Kharkiv killed at least one person and wounded nineon Tuesday, the regional governor said. Russian bombardment of Kharkiv, which lies near the Russian border and is Ukraine’s second-largest city, has intensified in recent weeks. Ukraine’s railway company said the 24-year-old victim was one of its employees. “This is another targeted attack on civilian railway infrastructure by the enemy,” the company, Ukrzaliznytsia, said in a statement.

• The International Rescue Committee (IRC) on Tuesday described a worsening situation in Kharkiv, north-east Ukraine, with an increasingly anxious population subjected to regular air raids. It said the city now regularly suffers “severe power outages, interruptions in water and heating supply, and a complete halt of trams for public transportation”. The IRC said recent attacks had caused “extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and led to a sharp increase in casualties among the local population … air raid sirens sound day and night”, with people “experiencing heightened anxiety and distress”.

• A 98-year-old woman in Ukraine has escaped Russian-occupied territory by walking almost 10km (six miles) alone, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane. Lidia Stepanivna Lomikovska became separated from her family and continued alone after they decided to leave the frontline town of Ocheretyne. “Once I lost balance and fell into weeds. I fell asleep … a little and continued walking. And then, for the second time, again, I fell. But then I got up and thought to myself, I need to keep walking, bit by bit,” Lomikovska said. Eventually she was picked up by Ukrainian soldiers and taken to safety.

• Russian-occupied Crimea has come under Ukrainian attack, the Moscow-installed authorities said, from what they described as US-supplied Atacms missiles. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-backed head of Crimea, posted on Telegram a photo showing what he said were undetonated submunitions of Atacms missiles that had been shot down. The photo and the Russians’ version of events could not be verified.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed “a significant acceleration” in deliveries of weaponry. “We are very much counting on prompt deliveries from the United States,” he said. “These supplies must make themselves felt in disrupting the logistics of the occupiers, in making them afraid to base themselves anywhere on occupied territory and in our strength.”

• The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said he was encouraging countries with Patriot missile systems to donate them to Ukraine, which has appealed for more of the air defence systems. “There are countries that have Patriots, and so what we’re doing is continuing to engage those countries,” Austin told a congressional hearing. “I have talked to the leaders of several countries … myself here in the last two weeks, encouraging them to give up more capability or provide more capability,” he said, without identifying the countries by name. Various European Union countries possess the systems, including Spain, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. Zelenskiy has previously told Nato members that his country needs a minimum of seven additional Patriot or other high-end air defence systems.

• Poland will not “protect draft dodgers” who are on its soil avoiding Ukrainian military service, a Polish deputy foreign minister, Andrzej Szejna, has told state television. Warsaw had not received any formal request from Ukraine but “when Ukraine turns to Poland with a request, we will act in accordance with Polish and European law”.

• Norway is to accelerate its military and civilian aid for Ukraine for this year by 7bn kroner to a total of 22bn kroner (£1.6bn/US$1.97bn). The prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store, said it would be brought forward from 75bn kroner pledged to Ukraine covering 2023 to 2027. Of the 7bn kroner brought forward, 6bn kroner would go military aid, primarily desperately needed anti-air defence and ammunition.

• Shipping insurers who are “within the reach of the UK and the G7” are breaching the oil price cap imposed on Russia by the G7, a UK parliamentary hearing was told on Tuesday. “These are names that should be being added to the sanctions list and should be drawn to the attention of the international community that dealing with that particular insurance company is going to get you into hot water,” said Tom Keatinge, director of the Royal United Services Institute’s Centre for Finance and Security, without naming any firms.

• A group of western insurance firms, the International Group of P&I Clubs, complained to the same hearing that the oil price cap is being bypassed by Russia using its own fleet or switching to shipping companies that are outside the west’s influence.

• Kyiv authorities on Tuesday began taking down a Soviet-era monument celebrating friendship with Russia. The series of stone sculptures will be transferred to a Kyiv museum. Since the invasion began in 2022, Kyiv authorities had already taken down two bronze statues depicting a Ukrainian and a Russian worker at the same site. “It has to be done,” said Alyona Yavorivska, a 32-year-old psychologist and Kyiv resident. “I don’t understand how a monument like that can still stand here,” she said. But Oleksandr Severyn, a 32-year-old firefighter, said the removal was “inappropriate” and officials should instead be spending the money on the army….

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