Air-raid sirens pierced the dark again. In the early hours on the night of July 13, Russian missiles rained down across Ukraine. Chernivtsi took the worst of it. At least two civilians were killed. Thirty-eight others lay wounded, some pulled from crumbled walls and broken glass. The wreckage spread from Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast to Lviv and Lutsk in the west. Not even Ukraine’s westernmost regions were spared.
Fire crews battled blazes through the night. Concrete dust mixed with smoke. Civilians carried water buckets through collapsed courtyards. Hospitals reported injuries from burns, shrapnel and blast waves. Ukraine’s Interior Ministry confirmed the strikes targeted civil infrastructure. Meanwhile, Russia claimed they hit military industry targets and an airfield.
June was already the deadliest month in three years. Now, with 232 civilians killed and over 1,300 injured, the UN human rights team says the toll continues to rise.
Just across the border in Russia’s Belgorod region, a private home was struck by a shell. One man was killed, said Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. But Russian state media focused more on alliances than casualties.
In North Korea, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stood beside leader Kim Jong Un. The setting was Wonsan, on the coast. The message was chilling. Kim pledged his country’s “unconditional support” for all of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The two regimes issued a joint declaration vowing to defend each other’s sovereignty and territorial claims. Lavrov warned the United States, South Korea and Japan not to form any bloc that could be seen as hostile.
In Europe, tensions brewed behind closed doors. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico told reporters his country still had not agreed to support the EU’s 18th sanctions package against Russia. The problem was gas. Slovakia gets most of its supply from Russian state-owned Gazprom through a deal valid until 2034. The European Union wants to end all Russian gas imports by 2028. Slovakia wants protection before saying yes. Talks are on. The deadline is June 15.
Russia, for its part, blamed Western sanctions for the collapse of a food-and-fertiliser export deal with the United Nations. Signed in 2022, the original agreement was meant to stabilise food prices. It is now dead.
Back in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looked to the sky and to Washington. He said Ukraine was close to finalising a “multilevel agreement” with the United States to secure more Patriot air defence systems and the missiles to fire from them. Ukraine is also trying to build its own interceptor systems, but resources are thin.
“Every minute matters now. We are under attack from every direction, and even diplomacy takes too long,” a Ukrainian official said in private.
As day 1,235 of this war closes, Ukraine counts the dead, negotiates for shields and watches the clouds for the next missile.
