Ukraine advances near Bakhmut, S-200 missiles hit Russia, Medvedev seeks nuclear plant strikes. What happened on the front line on July 10?

S-200 missiles can seemingly hit ground targets at a considerable distance – for example, in 2019, an S-200 missile launched by Syrian air defense forces during one of their attempts to repel an Israeli airstrike fell and detonated in northern Cyprus, more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Syrian coast.

Despite the identification of the missiles as S-200 (and not the NATO-supplied Storm Shadow) by the Russian Defense Ministry, former president Dmitry Medvedev once again managed to make threats. In his latest social media outburst, Medvedev, currently deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, claimed he wants to bomb all nuclear power plants in Ukraine and Europe:

“If the attempt to attack the Smolensk (Desnogorsk) nuclear power plant by NATO missiles is confirmed, it is necessary to consider the scenario of a simultaneous Russian strike on the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant, the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant and the Khmelnitsky Nuclear Power Plant, as well as on nuclear facilities in Eastern Europe. There is nothing to be embarrassed about.”

The South Ukraine NPP is notably 260 kilometers from Russia-occupied Crimea, 550 kilometers from the nearest Russian settlement, and less than 250 kilometers from the border with the occupied territories, which Russia claims as its own.

Russian forces shelled the town of Lyman in the Kramatorsk district of the Donetsk region with MLRS on July 9. Nine people were killed as a result of the attack, according to local governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region was also shelled. Four people – three women 43, 45, 47 years old and a 47-year-old man – died on the spot. Eleven people were hospitalized with wounds of varying severity. This is not the first Russian strike on Orikhiv: the town, which is in the rear of the advancing Ukrainian army, is constantly subjected to shelling and bombardment, which affects the civilian population (a recent report by Radio Liberty Ukraine covered the issue).

The question of Russia's expulsion from UNESCO has been raised in connection with the recent missile attack on Lviv, as the missiles impacted the area near the Old Town, which is listed as a World Heritage Site. The affected buildings are located in buffer zones, and are part of an area that allows for the preservation of World Heritage sites. Buffer zones, according to the rules of the organization, should be protected in the same way as the UNESCO sites themselves. After the attack, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyy criticized the organization, which continues to include Russia, for not imposing sanctions against Moscow.

Losses

Independent media outlets Mediazona and Meduza, along with Dmitry Kobak, a professor of machine learning at the University of Tübingen, estimated Russian losses in the war with Ukraine from February 2022 to the end of May 2023 at 47,000. According to the investigation, there is a “95% probability that the true number of casualties falls between 40,000 and 55,000.”

The study accounted for Russian men under the age of 50, with the estimate not taking into account the losses of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR) and “Luhansk People’s Republic” (LPR). The estimate was obtained based on various sources, including the Federal Notary Chamber’s National Probate Registry. This is a public database, maintained and populated by notaries, recording information on inheritances that require state registration – such as cars, apartments, and plots of land. The registry data allowed the researchers to calculate the excess mortality of young men in 2022 and 2023. The authors believe that Russia’s total irrecoverable losses in the war (which includes fatalities and the seriously wounded) reached 125,000 people.

As of July 7, 2023, there were 27,423 people on the list of Russian fatalities compiled by Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service based on open sources (which also excludes soldiers of the “people's militias” of the “LPR” and “DPR”). Taking into account multiple corrective factors, the total number of fatalities could now total 55,000 people, while the total number of casualties (killed and wounded) could potentially come in at 247,000 people.

In 2022, Russia’s average weekly death toll totaled 250-300 people. The figure has recently jumped to 600-700 people per week – an evident consequence of the counter-offensive launched by the AFU.