Internally displaced from Sloviansk, 26-year old Nataliia Tkachenko, holds her 8-month old son ... [+]
Dispatches from Ukraine, provided by Forbes Ukraine’s editorial team.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes Ukraine’s reporters gather information and provide updates on the situation.
Wednesday, July 13. Day 140.
Zaporizhzhia. According to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, 14 injuries have been reported following a Russian rocket strike on Zaporizhzhia which has been reported to have destroyed an industrial facility within the city. The office states that the injured are receiving medical care.
The U.N. has registered a total of 9,136,006 border crossings from Ukraine, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Additionally, 65% of the more than 5.6 million refugees that are currently residing in European countries say they do not intend to return to Ukraine in the immediate future, raising fears that the war could result in a large-scale drain of human capital, which would be a severe handicap to a post-war Ukraine that seeks to rebuild and modernize.
According to the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia has deported over 2 million people from the occupied territories of Eastern and Southern Ukraine. Speaking at the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul on July 13, Zelenskyy once again reiterated his calls for developed nations to recognize Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has announced that talks between Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, and the U.N. on the topic of grain exports have concluded with an agreement between the negotiating sides on the creation of a coordination center aimed at ensuring the safety of trade routes. While it is far too early to claim that this agreement could resolve the blockade of the Ukrainian port city of Odesa and solve the resulting global food crisis, the news offer some hope after months of no progress on the issue of grain exports.
Speaking to The Financial Times, Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Oleh Ustenko says that in order to make up for budgetary shortfalls and be able to ensure that people internally displaced as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine have access to at least a basic standard of living, Ukraine requires external aid of at least $9 billion a month. Falling revenues and delays in financial support from allies have put Ukraine’s economy in a relatively unstable position, leading some to fear that a request to delay payments on international bonds from the state-owned energy company Naftogaz could only be the first in a chain of defaults of state entities.
Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba has reiterated that Ukraine is not willing to accept any peace deal that threatens its territorial integrity, telling a briefing that "The objective of Ukraine in this war... is to liberate our territories, restore our territorial integrity, and full sovereignty in the east and south of Ukraine."
Following a decision by the EU that allows the transit of sanctioned goods through EU member states into the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad as long as they are meant for internal consumption and not exports, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry has announced that Lithuania will comply with the directive and allow transit of goods through its territory into Kaliningrad, potentially solving a weeks-long incident that led to increased tensions between Russia and the EU.
Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, has announced that following North Korea's decision to recognize the statehood of the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics within Ukraine’s borders, Ukraine has cut all diplomatic ties with the nation. Since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, Ukraine has cut diplomatic ties with three nations: Russia, Syria and North Korea.
