‘Victims of the Russian Torturers’ – Ukraine at War Update for July 3

Two additional people died on Tuesday as a result of the Russian artillery barrage on the Dnipropetrovsk city of Nikopol, bringing the total death toll there to four, including three elderly women.

Meanwhile, four people, including teenagers, were injured in a series of aerial bomb attacks on districts of Kharkiv.

Serhiy Lysak, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, reported on the tragic news from the Pokrovsk community in Nikopol. “According to the updated information, two people were killed in enemy artillery shelling. A man and a woman. Four victims of the Russian torturers in the district today.”

Lysak had specified earlier that two women were killed and nine people were injured. The attack damaged five residences, a vehicle, and a power line.

In the besieged city of Kharkiv, Moscow’s forces dropped two aerial bombs on industrial areas of Kharkiv at about 4 p.m. local time on Tuesday.

The city’s mayor Ihor Terekhov posted to social media, “Three civilians were injured in the attack on Kharkiv; they were near the site of the strike. A girl, 12, and a boy, 15, both suffered contusions. A 26-year-old woman sustained injuries to her arms.”

UAF says it destroyed an ammo warehouse near Sevastopol that held drones

Ukrainian Air Force (UAF) Commander Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk said on Tuesday that his forces successfully destroyed an ammunition depot in occupied Crimea on Monday, a claim corroborated by several Russian sources cited by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). The strikes appear to have used Western-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.

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One Russian blogger on Telegram posted a photo from Tuesday purportedly of the aftermath of a Ukrainian cruise missile strike against a Shahed drone warehouse near occupied Sevastopol on Monday evening. ISW analysts concluded that the geolocation indicates that the blasted target was the base of Russian military unit 99375, near occupied Flotske (south of Sevastopol).

Another Crimea-based blogger verified that Russian air defense systems were activated near occupied Sevastopol and that there were explosions near “an unspecified Russian military unit near Flotske.”

The Russian opposition media outlet Astra reported that the UAF launched at least six Storm Shadow missiles at Sevastopol on Monday evening, but instead described the target hit as the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s 758th Logistics Center.

Meanwhile, the occupiers’ administrative head of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, tried to frame the attack as unsuccessful, noting only that Russian forces shot down five unspecified air targets over the water and that “small fires” were started.

Russia doubles sentence of filmmaker for Ukraine criticism and sentences a 19-year-old to 12 years

On Tuesday, A Russian court sentenced a 19-year-old to 12 years in a strict penal colony for allegedly donating money to the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU).

The teenager in Rostov-on-Don, about 70 miles from the Ukrainian border, was charged with treason, state media RIA Novosti reported. Russia’s security service, the FSB, whose predecessor in Soviet times was the KGB, alleged that the young man had sent money to Kyiv to buy drones and to pay Ukrainian troops.

He was reportedly arrested at the airport trying to flee the country.

AFP described the two-year Kremlin crackdown on dissent as “comparable to Soviet levels of repression” and noted that Russia regularly imposes long prison sentences on people convicted of donating money to Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, in Saint Petersburg, documentary filmmaker Vsevolod Korolev saw his original three-year sentence more than doubled to seven years after both he and prosecutors appealed against his original jail term. In the first sentencing, prosecutors had originally asked for five years for publicizing “untrue” statements about the infamous 2022 Russian massacres in Bucha, outside Kyiv. 

Ironically he had also released videos, before his arrest, interviewing Russians about their thoughts on the Kremlin’s practice of jailing those who spoke out against the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine.

In the appeal, the state asked that the sentence be increased to nine years. The court’s press service released the statement: “The appeals court changed the decision, increasing Korolev’s punishment to seven years in prison.”

Russians make gains in Vovchansk, deploying reinforcements from elsewhere

The ISW reported on Tuesday that Russian forces have recently advanced within Vovchansk amid continued ground attacks all along the northern parts of the Kharkiv region by the border.

Geolocated footage published on Monday that the ISW said showed elements of the Russian 2nd Spetsnaz Brigade operating along Soborna Street “indicates that Russian forces recently advanced in northern Vovchansk,” analysts wrote.

Combat engagements continued north of Kharkiv near Hlyboke and Lyptsi and within Vovchansk on Tuesday. The AFU Kharkiv Group of Forces Spokesperson Col. Vitaliy Sarantsev said that Russian forces operating in the northern Kharkiv region are transferring reinforcements from other unspecified sectors of the frontline to replenish recent losses suffered at the hands of the AFU.