To divide
In the war in Ukraine, fighting continues, mainly in the east and south of the country. The news ticker.
- Kremlin for fighter jet delivery: F-16 represent “nuclear threat”.
- losses for the Ukraine: Kremlin announces new figures
- The information processed here comes from the international media and news agencies, but also from the warring parties Russia, Ukraine and their allies. In particular, information about the losses suffered by the armies involved in the Ukrainian war cannot be independently verified.
Update on July 13, 12:55 PM: According to the Ukrainian army, it gained ground in the southern region of Zaporizhia, southeast of the city of Orikhiv. Ukrainian units are settling into the new positions, General Staff spokesman Andriy Kovalyov said on Thursday. However, the Russian opponent continues to show “strong resistance” and resort to reserves. He did not give any more detailed information.
Ukrainian War: “Incredible Resistance” of Russian Troops
Update on July 13, 11:20 am: Intense fighting continues on the front in eastern and southern Ukraine. Ukraine’s armed forces say they are making progress in their counter-offensive launched last month. They scored partial successes on the southern flanks of the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Russia won after months of fighting, said eastern military command spokesman Serhiy Cherevatyy.
Russian soldiers in a trench in the Zaporizhia region (April 2023) © Valentin Sprinchak/Imago
Ukrainian troops would continue to retain the strategic initiative there. However, the Russian armed forces put up “incredible resistance”. However, they failed in an attempt to break through the Ukrainian lines near the strategically important cities of Lyman and Kupiansk, which lie between the eastern regional capitals of Luhansk and Kharkiv.
Heavy losses for Russia: Kiev publishes current figures
Update on July 13, 10:05 am: Ukraine updated information on Russian losses in the Ukraine war. According to Kiev, another 510 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded within 24 hours. This brings the number since the start of the war to over 236,000. This information (changes from the previous day in square brackets) comes directly from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and has not been confirmed by Russia or any independent body. Therefore, they cannot be independently verified.
- soldiers: 236,040 (+510)
- tank: 4092 (+2)
- armored fighting vehicles: 7999 (+9)
- artillery systems: 4425 (+23)
- Vehicles and tanks: 6995 (+17)
- drones: 3752 (+26)
- Source: Excerpt from General Staff data of Ukraine dated July 13, 2023
- Observation: According to independent Russian media calculations, at least 47,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the Ukraine war so far. This was the result of a data analysis based on the number of open inheritance cases and statistics on excess mortality in the past year, reported the Internet portal Meduza involved in the evaluation on Monday (July 10). These figures differ greatly from those published by the Ukrainian side.
War in Ukraine: New Details on Kiev Attacks
Update on July 13, 7:50 am: Ukrainian authorities have released more details about Russia’s overnight attack. Defense forces shot down 20 Russian strike drones and two cruise missiles on the Ukrainian capital in the attack, which killed one person and wounded at least four.
Tanks, drones, air defenses: weapons for Ukraine
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“We carried out a successful air defense operation,” air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat told state television. “Twenty Shaheds were destroyed – all those flying were shot down.” The 20 Iranian-made Shahed attack drones were destroyed “mostly in the Kiev region”, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a separate statement on Telegram. The drones “entered the capital from different directions,” Kiev’s military administration previously told Telegram, adding that anti-aircraft defenses destroyed “about a dozen” in the city’s airspace.
War in Ukraine: Debris hits residential building in Kiev
Update on July 13th, 5:45 am: According to Ukrainian reports, Russia is carrying out drone strikes in the capital Kiev for the third night in a row. Debris from the downed drones hit the Solomjanskyj district in the center of the city, the number of casualties and the extent of damage are not yet clear, Kiev’s military administration said.
At least two people were injured. One floor of a residential building in the Darnytskyi district in the east of the city was damaged, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. In the Shevchenkivsky district, further west, a balcony caught fire. Explosions could also be heard in other Ukrainian regions, including Khmelnytskyi in the west, Mykolaiv in the south and Zaporizhia in the southeast, according to Portal witnesses.
War in Ukraine: Delivery of fighter jets to Kiev would be ‘nuclear threat’
KIEV/Moscow – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the West of creating a nuclear threat to Russia by supplying Ukraine with modern fighter jets. “The United States and its NATO satellites create the risk of a direct military conflict with Russia, and this could have catastrophic consequences,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian internet portal tarde.ru. Russia cannot ignore the fact that the F-16 fighter jets the West wants to supply Ukraine can carry nuclear weapons, the Russian diplomat said.
“We will consider the very fact of the emergence of such systems in the Ukrainian armed forces as a nuclear threat from the West,” said Lavrov. At the same time, the minister denied that Russia was planning a nuclear attack on Ukraine. The conditions for using such weapons are well known, Lavrov said.
Russia’s nuclear doctrine states that Moscow can only use nuclear weapons in response to two cases: a nuclear attack on Russia or an attack on Russia with conventional weapons that threatens the country’s very existence.
Kremlin sacks army general involved in Ukraine war
Russia’s military leadership reportedly sacked the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian 58th Army stationed in southern Ukraine, Ivan Popov. Addressing soldiers in a voice message distributed on the Telegram channel by Duma deputy Andrei Gurulev on Wednesday, Popov said he had been relieved of his post because of his criticism of the inefficient conduct of the war. “I drew attention to the greatest tragedy of modern warfare – the lack of reconnaissance and artillery countermeasures and the multiple deaths and injuries of enemy artillery.” After that, the Ministry of Defense got rid of him.
Popov, whose army was fighting in the Zaporizhia region of southern Ukraine, sharply criticized his superiors: “The soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not manage to break through our front, but the Commander-in-Chief gave us a treacherous blow from behind, attacking the army in the hardest moment of the highest tension beheaded.” Earlier, other Telegram channels reported that Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov called Popov a “panic seller” and replaced him.
Popov’s dismissal and criticism fit the picture military experts are painting of the Russian army 16 months after the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine ordered by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. Accordingly, large parts of the Russian military are dissatisfied with their own military leadership and their embellished situation reports. The unsuccessful uprising of Wagner’s private army, which had been fighting for Moscow for a long time, was also explicitly directed against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who accused mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin of corruption and incompetence. (With agency material)