Russia attacks Kyiv area for first time in weeks

KYIV, July 29 (AP/AFP): Russian forces launched a missile attack on the Kyiv area for the first time in weeks Thursday and pounded the northern Chernihiv region as well, in what Ukraine said was revenge for standing up to the Kremlin.
Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, announced a counteroffensive to take back the occupied Kherson region in the country's south, territory seized by Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces early in the war.
Russia attacked the Kyiv region with six missiles launched from the Black Sea, hitting a military unit in the village of Liutizh on the outskirts of the capital, according to Oleksii Hromov, a senior official with Ukraine's General Staff.
He said that the attack ruined one building and damaged two others, and that Ukrainian forces also shot down one of the missiles in the town of Bucha.
Fifteen people were wounded in the Russian strikes, five of them civilians, Kyiv regional Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Kuleba linked the assaults to the Day of Statehood, a commemoration that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instituted last year and Ukraine marked for the time on Thursday.
"Russia, with the help of missiles, is mounting revenge for the widespread popular resistance, which the Ukrainians were able to organize precisely because of their statehood," Kuleba told Ukrainian television. "Ukraine has already broken Russia's plans and will continue to defend itself."
Ukraine reduces sentence
of Russian soldier
A Ukrainian court on Friday reduced to 15 years a life sentence handed to a Russian soldier in May for pre-mediated murder in the country's first war crimes trial.
"According to the result of the appellate review, the appeal filed by the defence was partially satisfied," a statement on the Kyiv court of appeals' website said, adding that Russian soldier "Vadim Shishymarin was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment."
Russia, Ukraine trade blame
over strike on POW jail
Moscow and Kyiv on Friday accused each other of bombing a jail holding Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russian-held territory, with Russia saying 40 prisoners and eight prison staff were killed.
Russia's defence ministry said the Ukrainian strikes were carried out with US-supplied long-range missiles, in an "egregious provocation" designed to stop soldiers surrendering.
It said that among the dead were Ukrainian forces that had laid down their arms after repelling Moscow's assault on the sprawling Azovstal steel works in Mariupol.
The claims came as President Volodymyr Zelensky visited a port in southern Ukraine to oversee a ship being loaded with grain for export under a UN-backed plan aimed at ending a food crisis.
Ukraine's presidency said exports could start in the "coming days" under the plan aimed at getting millions of tonnes of Ukrainian grain stranded by Russia's naval blockade to world markets.
Following the strike on the prison, Russian state-television showed what appeared to be destroyed barracks and tangled metal beds but no casualties could be seen.