Already and this is the daily This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Wednesday, the tenth of July. I'm zara, i'm emma. On Monday local time, Russia launched a missile attack on Ukraine.
Earth shattering blasts during the morning rush hour.
Really distressing scenes coming from Ukraine.
This is being called the worst missile attack since the war started.
At the time of recording, the Russian strikes have killed at least thirty six civilians, with many more injured. The missiles damage residential building's infrastructure and the country's biggest children's hospital. Russia has denied targeting civilian infrastructure. In today's deep dive, we're going to explain the latest in this year's long conflict and also what these latest round of attacks mean for the region. Before that, though, em what's making heavy lines.
The federal government has appointed lawyer Gillian Siegel as Australia's first Special Envoy to combat anti Semitism. Prime Minister Anthony Alberizi said Seagull's role is designed to help Jewish Australians feel safe and included in response to rising antisemitism, since the Israel Hamas War began. Albanizi flagged the government would also announce a special envoy for Islamophobia quote.
Shortly, a twenty one year old climate activist has been released on bail after being sentenced to three months in prison. This week, Laura Davey was convicted over her involvement in blocking trains to Newcastle's Coalport. Davy pleaded guilty but has appealed her sentence. The New South Wales Greens have called
for the state to repeal its anti protest laws. It's just, as spokesperson said, no one should be in prison for quote engaging in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience as part of their political and moral objection.
Australia has partnered with countries including the US, UK and New Zealand to accuse a Chinese cyber group of spying on global organizations. The federal government's Australian Signals Directorate says a Chinese state backed group has been repeatedly targeting domestic cyber networks, including government organizations and businesses in the private sector. It called the group advanced and said it remains a threat to national and international networks.
In today's good News deforestation in Colombia has fallen to a twenty three year low. Between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three, the Amazon region saw a sixty one percent reduction in deforestation, meaning nearly twenty seven thousand hectares of the Amazon rainforests has been saved. The Environment minister said it's thanks to the country's deforestation containment plan, which
has exceed its targets by at least twenty percent. According to the World Wildlife Fund, South America's Amazon contains nearly a third of all tropical rainforests left on Earth. On Monday local time, Russian strikes in Ukraine killed at least thirty six civilians and injured one hundred and forty others.
The missile strikes hit five cities in Ukraine. The strikes damaged residential buildings, they damaged infrastructure and also, and this is what we have seen reported quite widely, the country's biggest children's hospital. Russia has denied targeting this infrastructure, and in particular when it comes to the hospital, Russian authorities have claimed that the damage was caused by Ukraine Zara.
It's been quite a while since we've actually spoken about Russia and Ukraine on the podcast. But of course this conflict is ongoing. Can you give us a bit of a background leading up to these latest missile strikes this week?
Yeah, absolutely, we were talking about it in the office. And Russia's invasion of Ukraine was in twenty twenty two. That's two years ago. You know, some people might not have been adults when that happened, and so I do think that a refresher on what exactly went on in February twenty twenty two is very helpful. So it was the twenty fourth of February when Russian President Vladimir Pudin announced what he called a special military operation into Ukraine.
At the time, Pudin claimed that Ukraine was not just a neighboring country. He claimed it was part of Russia and therefore that was the I guess justification he used for ordering troops in So Russian troops entered Ukraine from
multiple directions and attacked the capital Kiev. In response, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski said that the country would defend itself, and over the last two years Ukraine has really sought to take big chunks of its territory back, but in recent months that our offensive has stalled.
Zara, I wanted to ask you about the death toll from this conflict. As you mentioned, it's been well over two years the counteroffensive that Ukraine mounted. You know, it seemed that there was a lot of positive momentum for the Ukrainian side in that initial response, but as you mentioned, that seems to have slowed or slipped in recent months, a lot more destruction on the ground in Ukraine. Do we have a sense of how many lives have been lost?
Yeah, it's a good question, and I think it's really difficult because I think that this really highlights the limitations of any newsroom, which is that, especially when it comes to foreign conflict, we are very heavily reliant on global bodies like the UN or local forces to give us numbers because we obviously can't be on the ground. We're a small newsroom, and in this case, those numbers just
aren't very readily available. So the latest update we have from the Rush Ukraine war is actually from February of this year, so over six months, and yeah, that is quite surprising.
Long time ago, especially in a quickly evolving conflict.
Exactly, so when the UN posted that update, they confirmed around ten thousand civilian deaths in Ukraine at that time, but obviously, when there is so little information, experts are considering that the toll is likely a lot higher than that. The UN also hasn't provided a recent update at all on Russian civilian deaths, So we have that number when it comes to Ukrainians, but we don't have that number when it comes to any Russian civilian deaths.
Does that have more to do with kind of Russia's the nature of Russian media as being state controlled?
Yeah, I mean there's obvious difficulties. As you said, it quite tightly controlled media environment there, but it does become very difficult to paint an accurate picture of the destruction when we have kind of very little insight into it.
And so over the course of the past few years, we've had this constant drum of conflict playing out on an international stage with no real signs of any diplomatic conclusion or peaceful end in sight. But there was a big escalation in this conflict on Monday. Can you tell us about that?
As you said, I think that drum is a kind of accurate way to describe it, which is that it's just gone on and on, and I think that there is a lot to be said about the way that the media covers ongoing conflicts. I think that, you know, compassion fatigue and news fatigue especially sets in, and that it's very easy for people who are not directly affected to turn away or to not engage as deeply as
they might have back in twenty twenty two. But also there is this sense that it has just been going on in kind of a very similar fashion for quite a while, as you said, though that did change on Monday when there was quite a significant escalation with these Russian strikes. So what we understand is that Russia sent forty long range missiles towards Ukraine, and that Ukraine managed to shoot down thirty of those, but obviously there were
still remaining missiles. It was quite remarkable. They landed in daytime, so there's quite a lot of vision. You know, usually you see kind of things through the sky it's pitch black. This was daytime, so there's a lot of vision of it. And these missiles hit a number of Ukrainian cities and as we said at the top, have killed at least thirty six people at the time of this recording.
So these missiles hit multiple Ukrainian cities, but a lot of the kind of global outrage about this story has focused in particular on a hospital that was hit two.
Yeah, so that hospital in Kiev has been the focus of a lot of coverage. Two people have died at the time of recording at that hospital. It's a children's hospital, it's the biggest children's hospital in Ukraine, and there is quite significant damage that has been done as a result of those missiles, according to local doctors on the ground. All of those patients have now been evacuated from the building, and there was quite a lot of vision of young
cancer patients being escorted out of the building. But it's being reported that the two people who died were a doctor and another adult, and not any children. Yeah.
I think when we hear these stories, you know, the immediate attention is focused on the death toll, But as you mentioned, this is infrastructure that's been damaged, vital infrastructure, a children's hospital, no less, And some of that kind of global shock, I guess is tied to this idea of the rules of war and international treaties or agreements and rules of engagement. And I think any time you
see a story like this. You know, you understand the interest around the world, so we know how the world has responded. How did Ukraine respond to this attack.
So it's interesting that you frame it that way because a lot of the Ukrainian leadership's response was about the rest of the world and was about their responsibility. So shortly after the attack, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski said, we will retaliate against these people. We will deliver a powerful response for our side to Russia. For sure. The question to our partners is can they respond? So he added, mere concern doesn't stop the terror. Compassion is not a weapon.
It is necessary to shoot down Russian missiles. It is necessary to take strong steps that will not leave any security deficit. So there he's throwing it back to the allies of Ukraine and to the rest of the international community. We've heard quite often over the kind of course of the last six or so months, Zelenski saying, don't forget about us. We need your assistance, we need your funding, we need your weapons and your aid. And so there
again he's really reiterating that call domestically as well. We had Kiev's mayor also declared the ninth of July as a day of mourning.
So some very strong language from Ukrainian officials, Zelenski strongly condemning Russia, the call out to Western democracies and other countries to do their bid and support Ukraine. What about Russia, have they responded to these accusations that the attacks were led by their forces.
Yeah, so we haven't heard directly from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. There's been no public statement issued by him right now. I'm sure that will change in the days to come. We have heard though from Russian authorities that they deny targeting any civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, and particularly on the matter of the children's hospital, they are blaming the damage there on a Ukrainian air defense missile. So remember I said earlier that Ukraine has said that it
shut down some of those missiles. So here Russia is alleging that the damage at that hospital is a result of the actions.
Okay, so we've touched a little bit already on the kind of global response, but can you tell us a bit more about the international community and the official response around the world.
So we had what I would call a fairly swift condemnation from the international community. The UN condemned the attack, with a spokesperson for Secretary General Antonio Guterrez calling the reports of a hospital attack particularly shocking. The UN Security Council will now hold an emergency meeting to discuss the strikes, and I think we've spoken a number of times on this part about what's available to that Security Council when
it comes to acting against certain countries. So it'll be interesting to see what happens there and if there are any kind of sanctions or anything that comes out of that. There was also some pretty strong language from the EU's top diplomat. He posted on x and I'll just quote here. He said, Russia keeps ruthlessly targeting Ukrainian civilians. All responsible
for Russian war crimes will be held to account. Back here in Australia, we had Foreign Minister Penny Wong who said Russia's missile attacks on several Ukrainian cities, including a Kiv children's hospital, are abhorrent. We condemn the targeting of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals. Australia continues to support the people of Ukraine in the face of Russia's illegal and immoral war.
Zara, thank you so much for taking us through that. Of course, we will continue to talk about this ongoing conflict here on the podcast and over on the Daily OS. Thank you so much for joining us on the Daily OS. If you learned something from today's episode, don't forget to hit subscribe so there's an episode waiting for you every weekday morning. We'll be back tomorrow. Until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Kalgotin woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.