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Russia tightens security where Ukraine launched an incursion as fighting persists
Russia on Saturday announced what it called a counterterrorism operation to increase security in the border region of Kursk, where an incursion this week by Ukrainian forces caught Russian troops off-guard and exposed its military vulnerabilities in the nearly 2½-year-old war.
The Russian Defense Ministry said fighting was continuing in the Kursk region and that the army has conducted airstrikes against Ukrainian forces, including using a thermobaric bomb that both causes a blast wave and creates a vacuum that suffocates its targets.
The measures announced for Kursk, and for the neighboring Belgorod and Bryansk regions that border Ukraine, allow the government to relocate residents, control phone communications and requisition vehicles.
The raid that began on Tuesday is the largest cross-border foray of the war and raises concerns about fighting spreading well beyond Ukraine.
In neighboring Belarus, where Russian troops are deployed but which hasn’t sent its own army into Ukraine, President Alexander Lukashenko said Saturday that its air defenses shot down unspecified objects launched from Ukraine that were flying over Belarusian territory.
“I do not understand why Ukraine needs this. We need to figure it out. As I said before, we made it clear to them that any provocations will not go unanswered,” Lukashenko said, according to state news agency Belta.
Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin later identified the objects as drones and said that Lukashenko has ordered troop reinforcements sent to border areas.
A Russian plane-launched missile slammed into a Ukrainian shopping mall on Friday, killing at least 14 people and wounding 44 others, authorities said.
The mall in Kostiantynivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, is located in the town’s residential area. Thick black smoke rose above it after the strike.
“This is another targeted attack on a crowded place, another act of terror by the Russians,” Donetsk regional head Vadym Filashkin said in a Telegram post.
It was the second major strike on the town in almost a year. Last September, a Russian missile hit an outdoor market there, killing 17.
July saw the heaviest civilian casualties in Ukraine since October 2022, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said Friday. Conflict-related violence killed at least 219 civilians and injured 1,018 over the month, the mission said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that reinforcements are being sent to Kursk to counter Ukraine’s raid, with Russia deploying multiple rocket launchers, towed artillery guns, tanks transported on trailers and heavy tracked vehicles.
The ministry reported fighting on the outskirts of Sudzha, about six miles from the border. The town has an important pipeline transit hub for Russian natural gas exports to Europe.
There has been little reliable information on the daring Ukrainian operation, and its strategic aims are unclear. Ukrainian officials have refused to comment on the incursion, which is taking place about 320 miles southwest of Moscow.
Asked about Ukraine’s incursion, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Friday the United States was “in touch with our Ukrainian counterparts,” but that he wouldn’t comment until “those conversations are complete.”
“There’s been no changes in our policy approaches,” Kirby said when asked about U.S. policy on use of weapons. “They’re using it in an area where we had said before that they could use U.S. weapons for cross-border strikes. The end goal here is to help Ukraine defend itself.”
Mathieu Boulegue, a defense analyst at the Chatham House think tank in London, said that the Ukrainians appear to have a clear goal, even if they’re not saying what it is.
“Such a coordinated ground force movement responds to a clear military objective,” Boulegue told The Associated Press. Also, the raid has spooked the Russian public and delivered a slap in the face to Russian President Vladimir Putin, offering Ukraine “a great PR coup,” he said.
The attack “is a massive symbol, a massive display of force (showing) that the war is not frozen,” he said.
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Husband of Russia’s richest woman arrested for murder after deadly shootout at offices of retail giant Wildberries
The estranged husband of Russia’s richest woman and CEO of retail giant Wildberries was arrested Thursday and charged with several crimes including murder, a day after a deadly armed raid at the company’s central Moscow offices.
Billionaire Tatyana Bakalchuk released a tearful message a day earlier, saying her husband Vladislav Bakalchuk, whom she is currently divorcing, led an armed raid into the Wildberries offices.
Vladislav Bakalchuk’s lawyers said in a message on his social media page that he was “detained for 48 hours” and charged with murder, attempted murder, assault of a law enforcement officer and vigilantism.
Two people, including a security guard, were killed in the shooting at the offices, which lie a few streets away from the Kremlin.
The incident came weeks after the company finalized a merger deal that Vladislav criticized and that strongman Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov vowed to stop.
Vladislav’s lawyers said he was on his way to a “pre-agreed meeting to settle a corporate conflict.” Vladislav alleges that it was staff at the office who fired the first shots, the Reuters news agency reported.
But Bakalchuk called her husband’s claims “absurd” and said “no one agreed to any negotiations.”
“Vladislav, what are you doing? How are you going to look in the eyes of your parents and our children?”
Wildberries is Russia’s largest online retailer. Tatyana Bakalchuk founded the company in 2004, growing it from an online clothes reseller into a major marketplace for countless other products, Reuters reported.
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index in 2021, she was the 40th richest woman in the world and the first self-made woman billionaire out of Russia.
Tatyana Bakalchuk is the majority oner of the company, while her estranged husband holds a one-percent stake.
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Eye Opener: More deadly explosions of communication devices in Lebanon
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Teamsters union doesn’t endorse a presidential candidate for the first time since 1996
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