Strikes, sanctions and Saakashvili: Ukraine's 4 July 2023

What did the news from Ukraine look like on 4 July 2023, and what did it show about the pressures on Kyiv? The day's reports pointed to three fronts at once: continued attacks on civilians, a push to widen economic pressure on Russia, and a diplomatic dispute with Georgia.

Attacks on civilians

On 4 July 2023, Ukrainian officials said Russian forces struck Pervomaiskyi in Kharkiv Oblast with missiles, injuring at least 38 civilians and damaging infrastructure. The same day, Russian shelling of Kherson killed two people, and shelling in Chernihiv injured three more.

The day before, on 3 July, Russian drone attacks on Sumy killed two people and injured 19. In response, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for a major upgrade of anti-aircraft defences. Taken together, the reports describe strikes across the north, east and south, rather than a single sector.

The economic front

On 3 July, Ukraine's National Agency on Corruption Prevention added the British conglomerate Unilever to its list of "international sponsors of war". The agency's stated reasoning was that Unilever's Russian operations indirectly fund the invasion. The listing was a Ukrainian designation aimed at a company, not a measure imposed by governments.

The same day brought a reminder of how sanctions were reshaping trade patterns. Indian oil refiners began paying for Russian oil imports in Chinese yuan, an alternative to the US dollar, because of the sanctions against Russia. Kyiv's naming of corporate actors and the adaptation of payment channels by buyers of Russian oil were two sides of the same contest over how far sanctions could bite.

A dispute with Tbilisi

Also on 3 July, Zelenskyy asked Georgia's ambassador, Gela Dumbadze, to return home within 48 hours to negotiate the transfer of Mikheil Saakashvili to a Ukrainian clinic. Saakashvili, the imprisoned former Georgian president and a Ukrainian citizen, was described as being in declining health. The request put a humanitarian question into the diplomatic relationship between Kyiv and Tbilisi.

What the day shows

The reports from 3 and 4 July 2023 show Ukraine operating under military pressure while pursuing economic and diplomatic levers. The call for stronger air defences followed directly from the drone strike on Sumy, and the Kharkiv, Kherson and Chernihiv reports show that the threat to civilians was not confined to one place. Meanwhile, the Unilever listing and the yuan payments showed that the argument over sanctions was being fought through companies and currencies as well as through governments.