President Volodymyr Zelenskyy poses with military personnel at a gas station during a visit to the Donetsk region amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine
While Russia is trying to stabilize after suffering a setback at the end of the week due to the Wagner group uprising Ukraine continues to be successful with the counteroffensive launched in early June. According to the Ukrainian army, they liberated Rivnopil, a city in the Donetsk region on the southern front, in the area where Kiev troops had been advancing in recent weeks. “The defense forces retook Rivnepil. We’re making progress,” Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar told Telegram. A video posted to Facebook shows soldiers from Ukraine’s 31st Mechanized Brigade posing with their country’s flag in front of a ruined farmhouse. About three weeks ago, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in at least three different frontline areas in the partially Russianheld provinces of Donetsk (east) and Zaporizhia (southeast). Until now, Kyiv Nine cities and 130 square kilometers have been recaptured since the beginning of offensive operations in Donetsk and Zaporizhia in eastern and southeastern Ukraine on June 4. The announcement of the capture of Rivnopil comes two days after the failure of the armed uprising by the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Shortly after Ukraine’s Defense Ministry announced it had regained control of the city in the southeast of the country, Russia said on Monday the 26th that it had repelled four attacks from Ukraine in the Rivnopil area. “In the direction of southern Donetsk, in the area of the Vremevski ledge (Velika Novosilka), artillery fire and heavy flamethrower systems of the Vostok Forces repelled four enemy attacks in the area of the “Rivnopil settlement of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” explained the Russian Defense Ministry.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar reported that Ukrainian forces had simultaneously launched counteroffensives in several directions to take advantage of the unrest in Moscow. At the time, she had reported progress in all directions, but did not give any further details. She had reported that fierce fighting was raging in the south of the country, adding that Russian forces were “on the defensive and making great efforts to hamper our offensive actions”. The conflict in Ukraine, entering its second year, is expected to leave about 25% of the world’s children destitute by 2023. The war has pushed up food and energy prices, the NGO KidsRights warned on Monday. Based on figures from UN agencies, the KidsRights Ranking also shows that children are at risk from climate change and the health impacts of the Covid19 pandemic. “All of this amounts to a ‘polycrisis’ of extreme severity as global tensions continue to destroy children’s rights and livelihoods,” said the Netherlandsbased NGO KidsRights. Sweden, Finland and Iceland are the countries with the highest ranking on the list of 193 states. Chad, South Sudan and Afghanistan are the worst countries for children, according to the NGO.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, has been added to a list of crises affecting children’s rights, the organization said. “One in four children is expected to be living below the poverty line this year due to the war in Ukraine, which has sent energy and food prices skyrocketing around the world,” the KidsRight report said. The 7.5 million Ukrainian minors were “disproportionately affected by the war” and a significant number of them had to be displaced, the document said. According to the same source, postpandemic inflation and a global weakening of healthcare systems due to Covid19 are also having a negative impact, particularly on immunization programs. In total, 67 million children were improperly vaccinated between 2019 and 2021 due to disruption from the pandemic. Climate change is also a danger, especially in some Asian countries where minors are “particularly exposed to unforeseen weather phenomena”. Ukraine has liberated nearly three cities a week since the beginning of the month while Russia tries to stabilize
*With information from international agencies