Demonstrations in Ukraine, including in kyiv, against the departure of the defense minister
Demonstrators gathered in several major cities in Ukraine this Thursday, July 16, including several hundred people in kyiv, to protest against the resignation of Ukrainian Defense Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, a popular figure in the country.
In kyiv, several hundred people gathered in a square in the city center, waving Ukrainian and European flags and chanting “shame” and “give back Fedorov”, the day after the announcement of his resignation as part of a vast government reshuffle decided by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In Russia, three dead in Ukrainian strikes
Three people were killed in Russia in Ukrainian strikes, local authorities said. In the Bryansk region, bordering Ukraine, a 15-year-old girl and her grandmother were killed in a rocket attack, regional governor Iegor Kovalchuk said.
And in the Yaroslavl region, 300 km northeast of Moscow, a man was killed in “a massive attack by enemy drones,” according to Governor Mikhail Evraïev. The Russian Defense Ministry announced Thursday that it had shot down 375 Ukrainian drones overnight over around fifteen Russian regions and annexed Crimea.
Nighttime Russian attack kills two in kyiv
A Russian air attack killed two people in eastern kyiv, Ukrainian emergency services said, after a ballistic missile alert issued by the army followed by explosions. This bombing took place a few hours after the visit to kyiv of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who came to strengthen the defense partnership between the European Union and Ukraine.
A series of explosions rang out shortly after midnight in kyiv on Wednesday, after an alert from the Ukrainian Air Force reporting the approach of several ballistic missiles. Several flashes of light were seen in the sky over the capital, followed by half a dozen detonations.
Moscow accuses kyiv of assassinating Zaporizhzhia’s chief engineer
Russia on Wednesday accused Ukrainian forces of using a drone to kill the chief engineer of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, controlled by the Russian army in southern Ukraine.
“Today, Alexander Yakovlev, the chief engineer of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, was killed during a targeted terrorist attack perpetrated by the kyiv regime,” said Alexei Likhachev, the head of Rosatom, the Russian nuclear giant. According to him, a “drone of the Ukrainian armed forces” hit a service car which was near the power plant, resulting in the death of this engineer, as well as that of the driver of the vehicle.
