Ukraine Update…845 Days of the Russian Conflict…The North Korea Arms Store….

• Ukraine has bid farewell to one of its fighter pilots counted among the fabled “Ghosts of Kyiv”. Lt Col Valentin Korenchuk, referred to in the military as Beekeeper, piloted a MiG-29 fighter jet in the 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade. He was lauded as Ukraine’s “best pilot” in an air force statement that this week confirmed his death in combat.

• In the opening days of the Russian invasion in February 2022, social media followed the embellished exploits of the Ghost of Kyiv, a fighter pilot said to have downed six Russian warplanes. Ukrainian officialdom encouraged the myth and for a time, the title was lent to Lieutenant Colonel Vyacheslav Yerko, who went down fighting on the first day of the war, earning him the Hero of Ukraine medal.

• Eventually, the military conceded “the Ghost of Kyiv is a legend created by Ukrainians … a collective image of the pilots of the 40th tactical aviation brigade”. In reality, Beekeper, having flown from the very first day of Russia’s invasion, shot down a dozen targets including a Russian bomber, the air force said. Andriy, a mourner at Korenchuk’s funeral in Kyiv, insisted: “The Ghosts of Kyiv were real, and they were Vyacheslav Yerko and Valentin.”

• A senior Ukrainian presidential aide on Wednesday said North Korea was helping Russia kill Ukrainian civilians and called for greater international isolation of both countries. Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un on Wednesday signed a partnership deepening military and political ties. Kim “deliberately provides resources for the mass murder of Ukrainians”, said Mykhailo Podolyak, blasting the “absolute incapacity” of current sanctions. “We need a more rigorous approach to real isolation.

• Russian forces have escalated attacks near Toretsk, a frontline town in the Donetsk region that had remained relatively calm over recent months of fighting, officials and AFP journalists reported on Wednesday. The head of the region, Vadym Filashkin, said on Wednesday that Russian fire near the town of Pokrovsk farther south had killed one person and wounded another over the last 24 hours.

• Ukraine’s SBU security service said it had detained a man recruited by Russian agents on an online dating platform who had tried to provide Moscow with sensitive details about Ukrainian troops. The arrest took place in Kharkiv. “The SBU seized the man’s phone, used by the suspect to communicate with his Russian ‘friend’ and take photos of military facilities,” said an SBU statement.

• Ukraine has set up a national registry for sexual violence allegedly committed by Russian forces. Viktoriia Litvinova, the Ukrainian deputy prosecutor general, said there had already been five convictions in absentia. Litvinova said 303 cases of conflict-related sexual violence have been registered since the start of the full-scale invasion in early 2022, with 112 involving male and 191 involving female victims. The actual number is likely to be much higher.

• A man and a woman were killed by Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk on Wednesday morning, the Russian occupation’s mayor, Alexei Kulemzin reported. Two other people, including a child, were wounded and in a serious condition, Denis Pushilin, the Russian-appointed governor of Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk region, added. Ukraine denies targeting civilians and targets that do not have a military connection.

• Russia has “significant amounts” of western assets and property on its territory that could be targets for retaliation by Moscow if the west seizes income from Russian assets, its foreign ministry said on Wednesday. Leaders of the G7 agreed at a summit in Italy last week to use interest from Russian assets frozen in the west to provide a US$50bn loan to Ukraine.

• An oil terminal in Russia’s port city of Azov continued to burn for more than a day and a half after a Ukrainian drone strike on Tuesday, the Rostov regional governor said.

• Two beluga whales were evacuated from an aquarium in Ukraine to Spain by road and plane in a “high-risk” operation, officials at their new home said Wednesday. The whales, a 15-year-old male named Plombir and a 14-year-old female named Miranda, arrived “in delicate health” at the Oceanagrafic aquarium in Spain’s Mediterranean port of Valencia on Tuesday evening, officials there said. They were taken overland from Kharkiv in north-eastern Ukraine to the southern port of Odesa, a 12-hour drive, then across the border to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, from where they were flown to Valencia…..

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