A Russian warship’s shooting of a Ukraine-bound cargo ship in the Black Sea on Sunday drew condemnation from Ukrainian officials, with one calling it a “flagrant violation of international law.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the Russian patrol vessel Vasily Bykov fired “warning” shots at the Palau-flagged bulk carrier using automatic weapons after its captain failed to respond to requests to stop for inspection. It is the first such incident since Russia withdrew from the UN-brokered grain deal last month.
Ukrainian forces Report Overnight drone and missile strikes in Odesa region. Defense forces in southern Ukraine said three people were injured by debris from a fired rocket.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ramifications around the world.
Wagner’s Prisoner of War: A Ukrainian Soldier’s 46-Day Nightmare. Mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group captured Ilya Mikhalchuk outside the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. They cut off his arms in a dark basement, he says, and subjected him to mind-bending mental torture as part of the alleged brutality of his captors and an attempt to break the will of Ukrainian soldiers, who fled the battlefield, Alex Horton reports.
Wagner’s tactics, Mykhalchuk said, were designed to undermine Ukrainians’ values and make them question how their countrymen would view them after they were released 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 playing with us, the way a cat plays with a mouse – when he catches it before it kills it.”