Kyiv called for an international response to what it described as “another Russian war crime” after three Red Cross workers were killed and two injured in shelling of an aid distribution point in eastern Ukraine on Thursday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its aid team in a Kyiv-held area of the partly occupied Donetsk region “was preparing to distribute wood and coal briquettes in Viroliubivka village to vulnerable households to help them prepare for the upcoming winter”.
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, said the three people killed were Ukrainian citizens.
“Another Russian war crime,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on social media. “The world must respond firmly and with principle. Countries and international organisations cannot remain indifferent. Only together can the world force Russia to stop this terror and make Moscow seek peace.”
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ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric said: “I condemn attacks on Red Cross personnel in the strongest terms. It’s unconscionable that shelling would hit an aid distribution site. Our hearts are broken today as we mourn the loss of our colleagues and care for the injured.”
Kyiv also accused Russia of bombing a cargo ship transporting grain from Ukraine to Egypt as it sailed through the Black Sea maritime economic zone of Nato member Romania.
“Russia launched a strike on an ordinary civilian vessel in the Black Sea right after it left Ukrainian territorial waters. Fortunately, there were no casualties,” Mr Zelenskiy wrote, alongside photographs of mangled metal on the deck of a cargo ship.
British maritime security company Ambrey said a bulk carrier registered in Saint Kitts and Nevis had been hit by a Russian-launched missile after leaving the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Chornomorsk, Reuters reported.
Ukraine established a new shipping route from its southern ports that hugs the coasts of Nato members Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, to avoid Russian attempts to impose a blockade on grain and other exports further east in the Black Sea.
Moscow did not immediately comment on its alleged attacks on the Red Cross workers and the cargo ship, but has claimed during its 2½-year full-scale war against pro-western Ukraine that it does not strike civilian targets.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its troops had retaken 10 settlements in its Kursk region from Ukrainian forces that seized more than 1,000sq km of the border area since launching an incursion last month.
Ukraine’s attack on Kursk does not appear to have forced Moscow to redeploy large forces away from Donetsk region, where its troops are still grinding towards the small Kyiv-held city and transport hub of Pokrovsk.
“The Russians have launched a counteroffensive. Everything is going according to our Ukrainian plan,” Mr Zelenskiy said, without giving details.
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