August 8, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Rescue work is ongoing in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, which officials say was targeted by Russia on Monday in a “double-tap” strike, which aims to kill or injure first responders.

Meanwhile, Russia has issued new history textbooks for high-school students, offering the Kremlin’s account of the reasons for the war in Ukraine, or what it still euphemistically calls a “special military operation.”

Here are the latest developments:

Weeks into Ukraine’s highly anticipated counteroffensive, Western officials describe increasingly “sobering” assessments about Ukrainian forces’ ability to retake significant territory, four senior US and Western officials briefed on the latest intelligence told CNN.

“They’re still going to see, for the next couple of weeks, if there is a chance of making some progress. But for them to really make progress that would change the balance of this conflict, I think, it’s extremely, highly unlikely,” a senior Western diplomat told CNN.

“Our briefings are sobering. We’re reminded of the challenges they face,” said Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat who recently returned from meetings in Europe with US commanders training Ukrainian armored forces.

The primary challenge for Ukrainian forces is the continued difficulty of breaking through Russia’s multi-layered defensive lines in the eastern and southern parts of the country, which are marked by tens of thousands of mines and vast networks of trenches. Ukrainian forces have incurred staggering losses there, leading Ukrainian commanders to hold back some units to regroup and reduce casualties.

A senior US official said the US recognizes the difficulties Ukrainian forces are facing, though retains hope for renewed progress.

Multiple officials said the approach of fall, when weather and fighting conditions are expected to worsen, gives Ukrainian forces a limited window to push forward.

These latest assessments represent a marked change from the optimism at the start of the counteroffensive. These officials say those expectations were “unrealistic” and are now contributing to pressure on Ukraine from some in the West to begin peace negotiations, including considering the possibility of territorial concessions.

“Putin is waiting for this. He can sacrifice bodies and buy time,” Quigley said.

Read more here.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed it hit a military command post in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk. 

In an update shared Tuesday, the Ministry of Defense used the Russian name for the city and said, "In the area of ​​the settlement of Krasnoarmeysk of the Donetsk People's Republic, the advanced command post of the united group of Ukrainian troops Khortitsa was hit."

Local Ukrainian officials have denied there are military units based there.  

The United Kingdom has added new designations under its sanctions regimes against Russia and Belarus, it announced on Tuesday.

Six of the new designations target Belarus-affiliated individuals and institutions; 19 target those affiliated with Russia. They include sanctions against individuals and businesses based in Russia, Turkey, Dubai, Slovakia and Switzerland.

The companies sanctioned include electronics and defense equipment producers who have exported microelectronics and drones to Russia to help in its war against Ukraine. Also sanctioned were Slovakian national Ashot Mkrtychev, who was involved in an attempted arms deal between North Korea and Russia, and Swiss national Anselm Oskar Schmucki for working in Russia’s financial services sector.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in a statement Tuesday that the sanctions will “further diminish Russia’s arsenal and close the net on supply chains propping up Putin’s now struggling defense industry.”

“Alongside our G7 partners, the UK has repeatedly called on third parties to immediately cease providing material support to Russia’s aggression or face severe costs.”

The hotel hit by Russian missile strikes in the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk on Monday was closed and had been empty for five weeks, a local official told CNN Tuesday.

“Half of the building is gone, so it's good that no one was inside,” said Serhii Dobriak, head of Pokrovsk city military administration.

“All the victims are either those who were in the residential building or rescuers and police. Among the victims there were not only city residents, but also some IDPs (internally displaced people), many of them were police officers from Mariupol,” he added.

Dobriak said that “it is unclear why they (Russians) were firing there, it is the center of the city – there were no military there. This is just terror. This does not intimidate us, but people are dying and suffering.”

He added it is a “rather rear city” away from the frontline and there are not military units based there. 

Among the policemen wounded is an officer featured in the documentary film "20 Days in Mariupol," Dobriak said.

The film’s director Mstyslav Chernov posted a Facebook tribute to the officer named as Volodymyr, saying: “Risking his life, he constantly helped to save people in Mariupol. After we broke out of the encirclement, he continued to work as a police officer in his native Donetsk region.

“Today, he arrived at the site of the Russian missile strike to help people as usual, and this time he was hit by another missile attack. Hold on, my friend. We still have to go back to Mariupol.”

Two Russian Iskander missiles hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk within 30 to 40 minutes of each other, killing seven people, including an emergency worker who was responding to the first strike, officials said Tuesday.

The bombardment began at 7:15 p.m. local time on Monday (12.15 p.m. ET), a local military leader said, when a short-range ballistic missile hit what President Volodymyr Zelensky called an “ordinary residential building” in the city in the Donetsk region.

First responders arrived on the scene to treat the wounded and dig people out from under the rubble, only to be targeted themselves.

The second strike prompted authorities to suspend work to clear the rubble due to fear of another strike, despite the widespread damage.

“The blast radius was very large – windows in many buildings were smashed, at least 2,000 windows,” he added.

Local officials said a residential building, hotel, shops and administrative buildings were damaged. The Druzhba (Friendship) Hotel and Corleone pizzeria, both popular with journalists, were damaged in the attack according to geolocated footage from the scene.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Donetsk Regional Military Administration, said that among the seven people killed were five civilians, a rescuer and a serviceman.

He said there were 81 people injured, including 39 civilians, two children, 31 police officers, seven rescuers and four military personnel.

Ukraine’s National Police said that the deputy head of the Ukrainian State Emergency Service in the Donetsk region, Andrii Omelchenko, was killed, and confirmed that 31 police officers were injured.

Read more here:

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Russian 'double-tap' attack in Pokrovsk wounds workers digging people from rubble, Ukrainian official says | CNN

Ukrainian officials said Russia targeted residential buildings in the city of Pokrovsk overnight in what is called a “double-tap” strike – which describes two separate attacks on the same target, with a brief interval in between.

This tactic gives time for first responders to arrive at the scene of the initial blast, only to be caught up in the second. At least 31 police officers and seven rescue workers have been injured in Pokrovsk, according to officials.

Reporting from Kharkiv in April 2022, shortly after the war began, a CNN team witnessed a double-tap strike first hand, while documenting the work of Ukrainian paramedics responding to Russian shelling.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward and her team traveled with Alexandra Rudkovskaya and Vladimir Venzel, both young paramedics, to the site of a Russian strike on a residential complex. They had received a call for help from a Ukrainian man wounded by the blast.

As CNN’s team arrived at the site, observing the paramedics trying to locate the injured man in the damaged building, another strike was launched – hitting the building next door.

After fleeing the scene, CNN later found Rudkovskaya and Venzel treating the injured man by the side of a road some distance away. The back window of their ambulance had been shattered by the blast. The paramedics asked the injured man various questions, but he was unable to make sense of them: The explosion had deafened him.

Asked how they cope with working in such dangerous conditions, the paramedics said it was their duty.

While her mother had begged Rudkovskaya, her only daughter, to leave that line of work and go to a safer place, Rudkovskaya said she could not fathom doing so.

According to local officials, out of the 250 ambulances in Kharkiv at the time, 50 had been rendered inoperable due to injuries sustained by explosions – a measure of the prevalence of Russian double-tap strikes in the early months of the war.

Watch the full report here:

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See the moment CNN crew gets caught in active Russian shelling | CNN

The Russian Ministry of Education has unveiled new history textbooks for high-school students, education minister Sergey Kravtsov said Monday. They include sections on what Moscow calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine, a long-term Kremlin euphemism for the war.

The four textbooks for 10th and 11th grade students detail “the reasons for the start of the special military operation, the purpose of the special military operation, denazification, demilitarization,” Kravtsov told Russian state media.

The new textbooks will be taught as a part of a standardized history course across Russian schools starting September 1.

Kravtsov also vowed to update the textbooks again after the end of the war, “as soon as we win,” according to RIA Novosti.

Ukraine has removed Soviet-era signage from a hilltop monument in Kyiv, amid a conflict that has seen the country fight to reassert its cultural identity in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Kyiv last week replaced the Soviet hammer and sickle symbol with a trident – the Ukrainian coat of arms – on the shield of the Motherland Monument, which dominates the capital’s skyline.

“We believe that this change will be the beginning of a new stage in the revival of our culture and identity, the final rejection of Soviet and Russian symbols and narratives,” the Ukrainian culture ministry said. The week-long operation to dismantle the Russian insignia was completed on August 6, according to the ministry.

The monument, a 102 meter-tall statue that towers over the surrounding area, is made of steel. Its construction began in 1979, and it depicted a woman holding a sword and a shield emblazoned with the Soviet hammer and sickle symbol.

Read the full story here:

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Ukraine replaces Soviet-era hammer and sickle symbol with a trident on Kyiv statue | CNN