Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 573 of the invasion
Two people have been killed by Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities overnight, according to local authorities in Lviv and Kherson. Russia struck three industrial warehouses in a drone strike on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv early on Tuesday, causing a huge fire and killing at least one person.
Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi said the body of a man who worked at one of the warehouses had been found under the rubble. Reuters reports Sadovyi said the warehouses stored windows, household chemicals, and humanitarian aid.
Russian forces also shelled the southern city of Kherson, killing a policeman and wounding two civilians on a trolleybus, the head of the city’s military administration said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched a total of 30 drones and one Iskander ballistic missile in attacks on Ukraine overnight, and that 27 of the drones had been shot down.
A high-rise building was on fire due to a hit in the city of Kryvyi Rih, and the facades of three buildings were damaged. Slovyansk was also struck, with no casualties reported.
Yevgeny Balitsky, head of the Russian-imposed administration of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, has claimed this morning Russian forces destroyed a column of armored vehicles and Ukrainian troops that was moving towards the village of Robotyne.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy is set to address the UN general assembly in-person on Tuesday for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, telling reporters: “For us it’s very important that all our words, all our messages will be heard”. The Ukrainian president made the remarks during a visit to Staten Island university hospital, where Ukrainian soldiers have been treated for amputations.
Ukraine told the UN’s highest court in The Hague on Tuesday that Russia justified waging war against Ukraine by invoking “a terrible lie”, namely that Moscow’s invasion was to stop an alleged genocide. “The international community adopted the Genocide Convention to protect; Russia invokes the Genocide convention to destroy,” Ukraine’s representative Anton Korynevych told judges. He called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to decide that it has jurisdiction to hear the case fully and eventually rule that Russia must pay reparations for invading under a false pretext.
Russia has ramped up the production of some military hardware by more than tenfold to supply its army in Ukraine, significantly increasing the output of missiles, drones, combat vehicles and artillery, Russia’s biggest weapons producer claimed on Tuesday.
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin will travel to Beijing in October for direct talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
Denmark’s defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen has said that his country is to donate another 45 tanks to Ukraine. The donation will consist of 30 Leopard 1 tanks and 15 T-72 tanks.
One cargo vessel carrying grain has left the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Chornomorsk for the first time since the grain deal collapsed, in a test of Ukraine‘s ability to unblock its seaports for grain export.
The commander of Ukrainian ground forces hailed the recent recapture of two eastern villages, Andriivka and Klishchiivka, as an important breakthrough. Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said it had enabled Kyiv’s troops to breach Russian lines near the shattered city of Bakhmut.
Ukraine said it has filed lawsuits at the World Trade Organization against its three EU neighbours – Poland, Slovakia and Hungary – over their bans on Ukrainian grain imports. The central European countries went against a decision by the European Commission last week to end the import ban.