Ukraine Police task force seizes $1 billion in assets of Russian, Belarusian companies

The Strategic Investigations Department, a task force established by Ukraine's police, announced on July 28 that it had confiscated or frozen $1 billion in assets belonging to Russian and Belarusian enterprises in Ukraine. The Kyiv Independent reported citing the taskforce's officials that the businesses seized as part of the state takeover campaign following Russian aggression will now 'work' for Ukraine's economy and reconstruction.

The Strategic Investigations Department further added that it has brought 67 such cases to court and issued charges against 270 individuals, bringing the total number of such cases to 216. Ukrainian law enforcement possessed a fleet of varied vehicles, which were equipped for military usage on the frontlines. Securities, drilling equipment, aircraft engines, train carriages, hundreds of tonnes of fuel, and even an airline were among the Russian-owned items captured.

Ukraine stepped up its offensive to recover the Russian-controlled south of the nation, attempting to bomb and isolate Russian troops in difficult-to-resupply areas, but said it observed evidence that Moscow was redeploying forces to hold the territory. Ukraine's southern Kherson area, which borders Russian-annexed Crimea, fell to Russian soldiers shortly after they launched what Moscow terms a "special military operation" on February 24.

Russia-Ukraine War

Further, Ukraine announced on July 28 that Moscow's forces had attacked a military base north of the capital, Kyiv, in a rare acknowledgement of a successful Russian attack on Ukrainian military infrastructure. Oleksiy Gromov, a senior Ukrainian military officer, told reporters that Russian forces fired "six Kalibr cruise missiles on a military facility in Lyutizh" at around 02:00 GMT.

Russian forces unleashed major missile strikes on Ukraine's Kyiv and Chernihiv districts on July 28, locations that had not been attacked in weeks, while Ukrainian officials announced an operation to liberate an occupied region in the country's south. Oleksiy Kuleba, the regional governor of Kyiv, claimed on Telegram that a "town in the region's Vyshgorod district was attacked early Thursday morning; a infrastructure object was hit." It wasn't immediately known if there were any casualties. 

On July 27, Ukrainian military used precision missile launchers supplied by the United States to destroy a crucial bridge used by Russia to supply its forces in an occupied territory of southern Ukraine. According to Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Moscow-appointed administration for the Kherson area, the Antonivskyi Bridge over the Dnieper River was attacked late Tuesday. According to him, the bridge was left standing, but holes in its surface prevented vehicles from traversing the 1.4-kilometer span.

(With agency inputs)

Image: AP