Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian emergency workers recovered three bodies from a school hit by a Russian strike in the east of the country, officials said Friday, as attacks continued in several parts of the nation.

The reported casualties follow a barrage Thursday on a densely populated area of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, that killed at least three people and wounded 23 others.

KIEV, July 21. /TASS/: Ukraine’s leadership seeks to turn the tide of the military campaign against Russia by the winter, chief of the Ukrainian presidential office Andrey Yermak announced on Thursday.

"It’s crucial not to let the Russians protract the war (Kiev’s term for Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine - TASS) with us until this winter. President [of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky] is in a serious mood and is ready to do his utmost so that we liberate our territories as soon as possible," Yermak wrote on his Telegram channel.

(AP) --- The message to U.S. lawmakers from Ukraine’s first lady, delivered amid stark and graphic images of civilian bloodshed, couldn’t have been clearer: After nearly five full months since Russia launched its invasion, Olena Zelenska said that her country needs more Western weapons.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent her to Washington to appeal directly to U.S. Congress for air defense systems.

KYIV/LONDON, July 20 (Reuters) - Ukraine has asked its international creditors, including Western powers and the world's largest investment firms, to freeze its debt payments for two years so it can focus its dwindling financial resources on repelling Russia.

Facing an estimated 35% to 45% crash in GDP this year following Moscow's invasion in February, Ukraine's finance ministry said on Wednesday it was hoping to finalise the deferral on its roughly $20 billion of debt by Aug. 9.

KIEV, July 18. /TASS/: Ukraine will sever diplomatic relations with Belarus, if its army crosses into Ukrainian territory, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said in an interview with the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine on Monday.

Kiev considers Minsk as an active participant of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Kuleba stressed.

VINNYTSIA, Ukraine (AP) — Beautiful and serene in a crown of white flowers, 4-year-old Liza who was killed by a Russian missile strike, was buried Sunday in central Ukraine as an Orthodox priest burst into tears and told weeping relatives that “evil cannot win.”

Liza, who had Down syndrome, was en route to see a speech therapist with her mother when Russian missiles struck the city of Vinnytsia on Thursday, far from the front lines. At least 24 people were killed, including Liza and two boys aged 7 and 8, and more than 200 were wounded, including Liza’s mother.

KYIV, July 16 (Reuters) - Russia said on Saturday its forces would step up military operations in Ukraine in "all operational areas" as Moscow's rockets and missiles pounded cities in strikes that Kyiv says have killed dozens in recent days.

Rockets hit the northeastern town of Chuhuiv in Kharkiv region overnight, killing three people including a 70-year-old woman and wounding three others, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said.

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP) — The children flicker like ghosts on the empty playgrounds in weedy courtyards deep in a city whose residents have been told to get out now.

Six-year-old Tania has no more playmates left on her street in the eastern Ukraine city of Kramatorsk. She sits on a bench only steps away from the city’s train station that was attacked by Russia in April, killing more than 50 people who had gathered there to evacuate. The remnants of a rocket from that attack bore the inscription in Russian: “For the children.”

VINNYTSIA, Ukraine (AP) — Rescue teams with sniffer dogs combed through debris in a central Ukrainian city on Friday looking for people still missing after a Russian missile strike a day earlier that killed at least 23 people.

Russian forces, meanwhile, pounded other sites in a painstaking push to wrest territory from Ukraine and try to soften unbending morale of its leaders, civilians and troops as the war nears the five-month mark.

MELITOPOL, July 14. /TASS/: A referendum on the Zaporozhye Region’s accession to Russia will be organized in early autumn this year, Yevgeny Balitsky, the head of the region’s military-civilian administration, told journalists on Thursday.

"The referendum will be organized in early autumn," he said. "I have received numerous requests from labor forces, trade union organizations and public activists requesting to determine the status of our region as soon as possible."