Poland Says Belarusian Helicopters Violated Its Airspace, Orders More Soldiers To Border

A doctor was killed and several medical workers injured on August 1 as a result of a Russian missile attack on a hospital in Kherson, regional officials said after a second air-raid alert was declared for Kyiv and most of Ukraine.

Military administration head Roman Mrochko said on Telegram that the attack occurred shortly after 11 a.m. local time. Photos on social media showed the floor of a balcony with blood stains and a gaping hole in the roof with debris strewn over the floor.

Kherson regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said four medical workers were injured in addition to a badly wounded nurse whose injuries were reported earlier.

The four suffered concussions and acute stress reactions, he said, adding that they had received medical attention and their lives were not in danger.

Mrochko said the doctor who was killed had only been working for a few days and that doctors were fighting for the life of the nurse. The surgery department of the hospital was also damaged by the shelling, Prokudin said.

The reports could not be immediately verified.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had been working at the hospital supplying medical equipment and providing services to people displaced by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in early June.

“We unequivocally condemn this disgraceful attack on a medical facility and extend our condolences to the family of the doctor who died,” MSF said on social media.

Russian troops shell Kherson and the liberated part of the region almost every day. Despite the evidence and testimony to the contrary, Moscow has denied targeting civilians since the beginning of the full-scale invasion more than 17 months ago.

In a separate incident in a northeastern village, an elderly woman was killed and a man was wounded in Russian shelling on August 1, Kharkiv regional Governor Oleh Synehubov, said on Telegram.

The second air-raid alert declared for Kyiv and most of Ukraine came just hours after a first alert that followed a Russian drone strike that destroyed a college dormitory in Ukraine’s eastern city of Kharkiv.

Authorities said the alert was prompted by the heightened likelihood of Russian drone and missile strikes after Ukraine’s General Staff said early on August 1 that Russian forces carried out nine missile and 57 air strikes on Ukraine over the previous 24 hours.

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At least one person was wounded in the attack on Kharkiv, which Mayor Ihor Terekhov said targeted the city’s densely populated suburbs and involved at least three drones.

“One of the drones destroyed two floors of one of the dormitories,” Terekhov said.

Deputy regional Governor Yevhen Ivanov said the most recent attacks were the first time that Kharkiv, which is close to the border with Russia, was struck by drones.

In Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the Russian capital repelled a Ukrainian drone attack early on August 1 but one office tower was damaged, while one of the city’s main airports was briefly closed.

“Several drones were downed by air-defense systems while attempting to reach Moscow. One hit the same tower in the city as last time,” Sobyanin wrote on Telegram, referring to the building that was struck in a previous drone attack over the weekend.

Sobyanin said the drone attack didn’t cause any casualties. Russian authorities accused Kyiv of staging the attack. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said that Moscow “is rapidly getting used to a full-fledged war,'” without confirming or denying Kyiv’s involvement.

The office building complex, located about 7 kilometers from the Kremlin, is the headquarters of a number of government agencies, including the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Digital Development and Communications, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

It wasn’t clear why the same building was hit twice in a row. In both incidents, the Russian military said the drones that hit the skyscraper were jammed before crashing.

Explosions were heard later on August 1 in the port city of Sevastopol in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Crimea. Explosions are heard almost daily in the region, which Russia illegally seized in 2014.

Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed administrator of Sevastopol, said a drone was shot down, causing an explosion on the ground and some bushes to catch fire.

In the eastern region of Donetsk, two civilians were killed by Russian shelling over the past 24 hours, regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram on August 1.

The previous day, six people, including a 10-year-old child, were killed and 22 others were wounded in a missile strike on a high-rise apartment building in the southern city of Kryviy Rih.

On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces have been engaged in heavy fighting along the entire front line, fighting more than 40 close-combat battles over the past day, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military said in its daily report on August 1.

The British Ministry of Defense, in its daily intelligence bulletin, reported “intense fighting” in southern Ukraine.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said on August 1 that Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of Russia’s armed forces, had visited Russian troops in Ukraine’s southern region of Zaporizhzhya.

The previous day, Deputy Ukrainian Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported advances in the counteroffensive in Zaporizhzhya.

“We are gradually but surely moving [ahead] in the Berdyansk and Melitopol directions,” Malyar said on Telegram, adding, “Fighting continues in all directions of the counteroffensive.”

Separately, Russia on August 1 said it had repelled an overnight attack by Ukrainian naval drones that targeted its patrol boats in the Black Sea.

“During the night, Ukrainian armed forces tried without success to attack with three drones the Sergei Kotov and Vasily Bykov, patrol boats of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that the drones were destroyed some 340 kilometers southwest of Sevastopol, the port that houses Russia’s Black Sea Fleet on the occupied Crimea Peninsula.

The claim could not be independently verified.

Tensions in the Black Sea have been on the rise since Russia refused to extend a Turkey- and UN-sponsored deal that had made possible the safe export of Ukrainian grain by sea.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP