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What the Chasiv Yar strike revealed about Donbas
Summary
A retrospective on the apartment-block attack in Donetsk Oblast, reported on 10 July 2022, and on the days around it.
What did the people of Donbas face as the war's fifth month wore on? On 10 July 2022, one answer came from Chasiv Yar, in Donetsk Oblast, where a Russian airstrike on an apartment complex was reported to have killed at least 47 people and injured nine others.
The background to the event adds detail. The missile strike hit two residential buildings at 21:17 local time on 9 July 2022, so the attack came the evening before the reports of the toll. A five-storey residential building partially collapsed, and two entrances were completely destroyed. The death toll was later put at at least 48.
A region under continuous fire
The strike did not come in isolation. On 8 July 2022, Serhiy Haidai, Governor of Luhansk Oblast, said Russian shelling was continuing across the oblast. He said the 8,000 residents of Sievierodonetsk were on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe. Taken together, the reports from Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts described civilians in the Donbas living under sustained bombardment.
Politics in Kyiv
There was also news from the capital. On 9 July 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Ukraine's ambassadors to Germany, India, the Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary. The reports gave no reasons, and the dismissals sat alongside the military news of the same days.
Looking back
The Chasiv Yar attack stands out because of where it landed: an ordinary residential block, with the toll counted in dozens. The reporting from 8 to 10 July 2022 shows a war in which the pressure on eastern Ukraine's towns and their civilians was constant, and in which the government in Kyiv continued to make decisions at the same time.
