Ukrainian forces have reportedly fired cluster munitions into Donetsk city, striking a private residence, a university and other civilian targets.
Four rounds of 155mm cluster bombs were fired into the center of the city on Saturday night, triggering fires in three districts, the Joint Center of Control and Coordination (JCCC) for the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said. The cluster munitions reportedly exploded in the air.
The Donetsk University of Economics and Trade was on fire after the shelling, the Mayor of Donetsk Aleksey Kulemzin said in a Telegram post. Fires also were reported in apartment buildings.
The shelling comes after at least three people were killed and ten injured by a Ukrainian bombardment on Monday. The shelling killed another civilian in a nearby town, the JCCC said.
Cluster munitions have been banned by more than 100 countries because of their devastating effects on civilians. Cluster shells are typically designed to open up in midair and release tens or even hundreds of submunitions that can saturate a large area with explosives. They tend to have a high failure rate, creating risks to civilians from unexploded munitions for potentially decades after a conflict ends.
Donetsk and other Donbass cities have been under constant Ukrainian attacks which have claimed numerous civilian lives since 2014, when the region broke away from Kiev after a Western-backed coup in the Ukrainian capital. Over the years, Ukraine’s military established heavily fortified positions around the cit. The attacks intensified after the launch of Moscow’s military operation against Kiev in February 2022, leaving scores of civilians killed and delivering major damage to infrastructure.
The Donetsk People’s Republic became part of Russia last October together with the People’s Republic of Lugansk and Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, following referendums in which the local populations voted overwhelmingly in favor of the move.
Russia Repels Drone Attack in Bryansk Region
Russian air defense has destroyed two aircraft-type drones over the Karachevsky district of the Bryansk region, governor Alexander Bogomaz said on Sunday, adding that there were no casualties.
"The Russian Armed Forces' air defense system destroyed two aircraft-type UAVs over the Karachevsky district. There is no destruction and no casualties," Bogomaz wrote on Telegram.
Emergencies services are working on the site, he added.
Kiev’s Western Allies ‘Getting Tired of Ukrainian Counteroffensive
Ukraine’s much-hyped summer counteroffensive that kicked off in early June has brought no tangible results and is unfolding more slowly than expected, a point of view that is supported even by Ukrainian and Western officials.
Kiev’s allies from the Western countries are “getting tired of the Ukrainian counteroffensive,” US analyst Johnston Harewood has argued.
In an article for an American media outlet, he noted that it is becoming “increasingly difficult” for Western officials to conceal their irritation when it comes to the issues regarding Ukraine, not least its counteroffensive, which is “not progressing as originally envisioned.”
As an example, the author cited Marcin Przydacz, head of the International Policy Bureau in Poland and British Defense Minister Ben Wallace as recently saying that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should have been more grateful to Warsaw and London for their military aid to Kiev.
The analyst recalled in this regard that since the beginning of the Russian special military operation, the Zelensky administration has already received more than $77 billion in Western military aid alone, “which is almost half of Ukraine's GDP last year.”
According to Harewood, those foreign partners of Ukraine who previously expressed strong support for Kiev, “are gradually changing their rhetoric, backing it up with difficult decisions for the Ukrainian government."
The author again referred to Poland, which became one of the countries that had signed a declaration to extend the ban on grain imports from Ukraine, in what Harewood wrote was “a low blow” for the Ukrainian president.
“Such a reaction from partner states may indicate that the countries, if not tired of supporting Zelensky, are already very close to such a state,” the analyst pointed out.
He was echoed by former British Army colonel Bretton-Gordon, who wrote for a UK newspaper that Kiev “has unsettled its friends in rare missteps and admonishments.”
Bretton-Gordon mentioned the incident that took place on August 1, when the Polish ambassador to Ukraine was summoned to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry over recent remarks by Poland’s International Policy Bureau head Marcin Przydacz. He said, in particular, that "it would be worth them [Ukrainian authorities] starting to appreciate the role that Poland has played for Ukraine in recent months and years."
The remarks come amid Kiev’s efforts to go ahead with its counteroffensive, which both Ukrainian and Western officials admit is going “slower than desired,” and is “behind schedule.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, for his part, recently told reporters that “It is obvious that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is not working out the way it was intended in Kiev.”
"The multibillion-dollar resources that were transferred by NATO countries to the Kiev regime are actually spent pointlessly, and this also raises big questions for Western capitals (…),” Peskov added.
He spoke as the Russian Defense Ministry said that since the start of Kiev’s counteroffensive on June 4, the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) lost over 43,000 soldiers and over 4,900 units of various weaponry, including 26 aircraft, nine helicopters, and 747 field artillery guns and mortars.
This followed Russian President Vladimir Putin telling the country’s Security Council meeting that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had yielded “no results” and that the UAF had suffered extensive losses, with "tens of thousands" of soldiers killed.
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