#Kyiv #Ukrainian #soldiers #killed
Nearly 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia invaded, the country’s top military officer said Monday, as Moscow accused Kyiv of killing the daughter of a leading hardliner.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, meanwhile, told reporters in Spain that the bloc was considering military training for Ukraine’s armed forces.
General Valeriy Zaluzhny, the supreme commander of Ukraine, said the children of Ukraine deserve special attention “because their fathers went to the front and may be among the nearly 9,000 heroes who were killed.”
Zaluzhny’s comments on the Ukrainian death toll, reported by the Interfax-Ukraine news agency, were the first hint of Kiev’s military casualties since April.
Ukraine marks its Independence Day on Wednesday, six months since Russian troops invaded.
After Ukrainian resistance thwarted an early Russian push on the capital, Kyiv, Moscow’s troops focused on gaining ground in the east of the country.
The shockwaves of war are being felt around the world with rising energy prices and food shortages.
– Putin denounces “heinous crime” –
Russia’s FSB security services on Monday accused Ukraine of being behind Saturday’s car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow that killed Daria Dugina, daughter of Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin.
“The crime was prepared and committed by Ukrainian special services,” the FSB said in a statement released by Russian news outlets on Monday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the “heinous crime” in a message of condolences to her family.
The FSB statement said the responsible person was a Ukrainian woman born in 1979 who rented an apartment in the same building where Dugina lived.
After the car bomb attack, she fled to EU member Estonia, it said.
Dugin, 60, is an outspoken Russian ultra-nationalist intellectual who, like his daughter, enthusiastically supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian media reports suggest that Dugina borrowed her father’s car at the last minute.
Over the weekend, Ukraine’s presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak denied that Kyiv had anything to do with the bombing.
– Tense Independence Day –
In Spain, Borrell told reporters that EU defense ministers would discuss launching a major training operation for Ukrainian forces in neighboring countries next week.
“It seems reasonable that a war that is ongoing and lasting will not only require efforts in terms of material supplies,” Borrell said.
The EU defense ministers have a two-day meeting in Prague starting next Monday.
“I hope it gets approved,” Borrell said, adding that the details would have to be agreed by all EU member states.
Any such operation would be an improvement over the military training that several nations are already providing to Ukrainian forces under bilateral agreements.
As much of Europe braces for fuel shortages as Moscow cuts supplies to the West in response to sanctions, Bulgaria said on Monday it was seeking talks with Russian gas giant Gazprom.
The country is almost entirely dependent on Russia for its annual consumption of 3.0 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
“Of course we have to contact them,” said Energy Minister Rosen Hristov.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned over the weekend that Russia could mark Ukraine’s Independence Day by launching a trial of Ukrainian soldiers captured during the Mariupol siege.
“This will be the limit beyond which negotiations are no longer possible,” he warned in Sunday’s night address.
The capital Kyiv has already announced a ban on public gatherings around the public holiday on Wednesday, and the eastern city of Kharkiv has imposed a curfew.
Ahead of Independence Day, residents of Kiev climbed onto wrecked Russian tanks on display in the city center over the weekend.
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