Shots from a Russian warship at a Ukraine-bound cargo vessel in the Black Sea on Sunday drew condemnation from Ukrainian officials, with one calling it a “clear violation of international law.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the Russian patrol ship Vasily Bykov used automatic weapons to fire “warning” shots on a Palau-flagged bulk carrier after its captain failed to respond to a request to halt for an inspection. It was the first such incident since Russia withdrew from a U.N.-brokered grain deal last month.
Ukrainian forces reported drone and missile attacks in the Odessa region overnight. Three people were injured by debris from the rockets being shot down, according to the Defense Forces of Southern Ukraine.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Wagner’s prisoner of war: A Ukrainian soldier’s 46-day nightmare. Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries captured Ilia Mykhalchuk outside the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. They amputated his arms in a dark basement, he says, and subjected him to mind-bending psychological abuse as part of his captors’ alleged barbarism and efforts to break the will of Ukrainian soldiers they had taken off the battlefield, Alex Horton reports.
Wagner’s strategy, Mykhalchuk said, appeared designed to undermine the Ukrainians’ values and to make them question how their countrymen would view them after release from captivity. “They tried to make us believe that we couldn’t trust each other, and that it was a kill-or-be-killed situation,” he said. “They were just playing with us, the way a cat plays with a mouse — when he catches it before he kills it.”