Ukraine adds 8 deaths to war toll

Pope preps for meeting next month with Russian patriarch

Sgt. Maj. Artur Shevtsov of the Dnipro-1 regiment leaves a bunker Friday at the unit’s position near Sloviansk in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. The unit is expanding a network of trenches and bunkers. More photos at arkansasonline.com/ukrainemonth6/.
(AP/David Goldman)
Sgt. Maj. Artur Shevtsov of the Dnipro-1 regiment leaves a bunker Friday at the unit’s position near Sloviansk in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. The unit is expanding a network of trenches and bunkers. More photos at arkansasonline.com/ukrainemonth6/. (AP/David Goldman)


ISTANBUL -- Ukraine's presidential office said at least eight civilians were killed and 16 others wounded in the latest Russian shelling.

The eastern Donetsk region has for weeks faced the most intensive Russian barrage. Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko repeated his call for all residents to evacuate.

"Shellings and bombings are going round the clock, and people who refuse to evacuate risk being killed on their pillows," Kyrylenko said in televised remarks.

In Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv, three districts have come under massive shelling. Several apartment buildings and a street market were damaged, and three people were wounded.

Russian shelling also targeted the city of Zaporizhzhia and several towns along the front-line in the region. For a second straight day, the Russians also shelled the city of Nikopol that faces the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant across the Dnieper River. Dozens of houses were damaged.

Energoatom, which operates Ukraine's nuclear power plants, said three shells landed in the evening on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia plant, which is Europe's largest. No casualties or damage to the reactors was reported.

"This is an open and audacious crime, an act of terror," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.

The Russians also hit the southern city of Mykolaiv. The regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, said Russian forces fired on the city after lunchtime, causing extensive damage, killing an unspecified number of people and injuring at least nine. He said the fire came from the direction of Kherson, the Russian-occupied city about 30 miles to the southeast.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis met Friday with a top official of the Russian Orthodox Church ahead of an expected meeting next month in Kazakhstan with the Russian Orthodox leader, Patriarch Kirill, who has justified the war in Ukraine.

The audience was the first between Francis and the new director of the Moscow Patriarchate's foreign relations office, Metropolitan Anthony. He replaced the Vatican's longtime liaison with the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Hilarion, who was transferred to Hungary after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Both the pope and Kirill have confirmed their presence in Kazakhstan to attend a government-organized interfaith meeting, the "Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions," from Sept. 14-15. If they meet on the sidelines of the congress, it would be the second-ever encounter between a pope and a Russian patriarch, after a June encounter was canceled because of the diplomatic fallout over Russia's invasion.

Kirill has justified the invasion of Ukraine on spiritual and ideological grounds, calling it a "metaphysical" battle with the West. He has blessed Russian soldiers going into battle and invoked the idea that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

Francis' audience with Kirill's envoy came on the same day the pope made a symbolically meaningful decision for some Ukrainian Catholics.

He declared an underground Ruthenian Greek Catholic priest who ministered during Soviet times in Ukraine, the Rev. Petros Oros, a martyr, fast-tracking him on the path to possible sainthood. Oros lived from 1917 until 1953, when he was killed out of hatred of the faith by Soviet forces, the Vatican said in a statement.

The Holy See's in-house media arm, Vatican News, said Oros had been shot in the chin a few hours after celebrating a clandestine Divine Liturgy in Siltse.

At the time, Catholics had been persecuted and Oros' eparchy suppressed. The Vatican noted that Oros had been pressured to transfer to the Russian Orthodox Church but "resisted, remaining faithful to the pope."

Under the Vatican's rules for martyrs, Oros can now be beatified -- the first step toward possible sainthood -- without having to have a miracle attributed to his intercession. A miracle is needed for canonization.

Information for this article was contributed by Zeynep Bilginsoy, Aya Batrawy and Nicole Winfield of The Associated Press.



 Gallery: Images from Ukraine, month 6



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