Ukraine takes back part of Severodonetsk; revered church engulfed in flames

The new U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, on Saturday visited Borodyanka, a community northwest of Kyiv hit hard by Russian forces at the start of the war.

Photos of the trip show Brink walking in front of a destroyed building, devastation that she said “strengthens my resolve to do everything we can to hold the perpetrators of these awful crimes to account,” she wrote on Twitter.

The United States reopened its embassy in Kyiv in May, nearly three months after shuttering the office when Russia’s invasion started in February. Brink was confirmed as ambassador around the same time as operations resumed in Ukraine’s capital.

Ukraine had not had a U.S. ambassador since 2019, when President Donald Trump removed Marie Yovanovitch from the position, a move scrutinized during his first impeachment inquiry.

Washington Post reporters visited Borodyanka in April and witnessed scenes of devastation. The city is one of several where war crimes investigations are underway.

A towering wooden monastery that is part of a revered centuries-old Ukrainian Orthodox Church site caught fire and sustained heavy damage, officials said Saturday.

Ukrainian leaders said in a statement on Twitter that Russia bombed the All Saints Monastery, which is affiliated with Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Videos posted on social media showed flames engulfing the ornate building, which drew tourists and pilgrims before the war. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church said it had no information on whether Saturday’s attack caused deaths or injuries.

Ukraine’s mission to the U.N. office in Vienna wrote, “Would Patriarch Kiril finally call president putin 2 end the war or would he continue blessing russia’s army?”

Russia’s Defense Ministry denied that its forces were involved in the attack. Instead, it accused Ukrainian troops of firing at the monastery and sparking the blaze.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday evening called on Russian church leaders to make “a clear condemnation of each of those who condone aggression.”

“Russia is deliberately and systematically destroying Ukraine’s cultural and historical heritage,” he said.

The monastery is part of the Svyatogorsk Lavra, a sacred site along the Siversky Donets river. In March, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church said a bomb fell near a bridge and blasted the facility, breaking windows. Church leaders said more than 500 people were seeking refuge there at the time of the attack.

UNESCO has included the Svyatogorsk Lavra on a list of cultural sites damaged during the war.

The war has raised tensions between the Ukrainian and the Russian Orthodox churches; Christianity is the dominant faith in both nations. Kirill has been a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the invasion. Religious and secular leaders in Ukraine and other countries have called on Kirill to take a stance against the war. In May, Pope Francis warned him not to be “Putin’s altar boy.”

Fighting over the eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk has escalated in its streets over the past three days, a city leader said.

Under a constant barrage of artillery attacks, Severodonetsk remains under Ukrainian control but is split, Oleksandr Stryuk, head of the city’s military administration, said in a Ukrainian news interview Saturday. About half of the residential areas have been taken over by the invaders, Stryuk said. But he offered an optimistic assessment.

“The situation is tense, but there is hope and we are sure that everything will work out,” Stryuk said.

Experts, though, fear Russia will control the area in weeks. Britain’s Ministry of Defense estimated in its Friday report that Russia controlled 90 percent of the Luhansk region, where Severodonetsk is located, and “is likely to complete control in the next two weeks.”

Zachary Nelson contributed to this report.

The eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk has emerged as a focal point of Russia’s war in Ukraine in recent weeks. Fierce fighting continues to rage there as Ukrainian troops seek to prevent Russia from seizing the entire city.

Russian forces have pounded Severodonetsk with artillery, wreaking immense damage as part of a scorched-earth assault on the east that is inflicting massive casualties on Ukrainian forces. Russian troops entered the middle of the city Monday and are battling Ukrainian soldiers on the streets.

Serhiy Haidai, the regional governor of Luhansk, said earlier this week that as much as 70 percent of Severodonetsk was in Russian hands.

The city is key to Moscow’s aim of capturing Donbas, an area encompassing the eastern Ukrainian regions (oblasts) of Luhansk and Donetsk. Russia has concentrated its forces around Severodonetsk, the British Defense Ministry said Friday. Russian forces will likely take control of Luhansk in the next two weeks, the ministry said, but at a steep cost.

Ukrainian investigators have exhumed more than 1,300 bodies of civilians in the Kyiv region as part of the nation’s ongoing investigation into potential war crimes.

In an update Saturday, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said authorities are still finding the bodies of Ukrainians who were shot and tortured in the capital region. Recovered remains are sent to morgues, where a forensic examination is then conducted.

“Unfortunately, we are finding Ukrainians who have been shot every day,” the Kyiv regional police chief, Andriy Nebytov, said in a video shared by the ministry on Facebook.

The identities of more than 200 people found dead have not yet been determined.

Investigators have uncovered mass civilian graves around Kyiv after Russian troops withdrew in early April following stiff Ukrainian resistance. Washington Post reporters have documented cases of indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, torture and summary executions.

Pilots were surveying the damage at a private airfield Saturday after a missile strike that destroyed one plane and damaged 10 others.

Kharkiv Aeroclub manager Serhii Filatov told Reuters that the attack in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region wrecked several hangars. Video of the site shows a large indentation in the ground where the missile hit, and twisted metal and tears in one hangar’s roof.

Pilot Oleksii Ahiievych told the news agency he was at a loss over the attack.

“I don’t understand what goals they tried to achieve here,” he said, referring to Russian forces.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported Friday that Russian forces were continuing to launch airstrikes and fire artillery at Kharkiv city and the northern Kharkiv region. Kharkiv sustained intense strikes at the start of the invasion, though more recently, citizens in the regional capital have begun trying to return to normal.

No casualties were reported in the airfield attack.

Iga Swiatek, who turned 21 last Tuesday, won the French Open women’s tennis championship Saturday, claiming her second Grand Slam title. She also extended her winning streak to 35 matches and claimed her sixth straight tournament title.

After the match, Swiatek saved her final on-court remarks for Ukraine in accepting the 2022 French Open trophy.

“I want at the end to say something to Ukraine: To stay strong, because the war is still there,” she said. A native of Poland, Swiatek competes with a yellow-and-blue ribbon on her cap in solidarity with neighboring Ukraine.

Earlier in the tournament, Swiatek talked about her role as the world’s No. 1 player, given the platform she has.

“Basically, I feel like it’s a pretty tricky situation, and every solution is going to be somehow a wrong one for some part of people or players,” Swiatek said when asked about her position on Wimbledon’s ban on players from Russia and Belarus and the tours’ refusal to award points to Wimbledon competitors in retaliation.

Russian occupying forces in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson are facing strong local resistance, Ukraine's military said in an update Saturday.

“The invaders are afraid of the resistance of the local population” in Kherson, the armed forces general staff said in a statement on Facebook.

“The leadership of the occupiers moves with a lot of security, in bulletproof vests, in armored vehicles,” it added. “Locals continue to put up total resistance.”

Residents of Kherson have previously staged street protests against the Russian occupiers, waving Ukrainian flags and chanting anti-Russian slogans.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, said in its own recent update that Russian occupation authorities began issuing Russian passports in the cities of Kherson and Melitopol. However, it added, they were struggling to establish control and to end “partisan actions.”

In Saturday’s statement, Ukraine’s military also said that Russian forces were continuing their offensive in the city of Severodonetsk in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine. Russian forces are reported to be in control of most of Severodonetsk, but Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said Ukrainian forces have managed to regain control over 20 percent of the city.

In the neighboring region of Donetsk, Russian advances have been slow “due to the physical exhaustion of personnel and low moral and psychological condition,” the Ukrainian statement added.