Father, 4-year-old Son Die in Russian Air Attack on Kyiv Region

Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
TT

Father, 4-year-old Son Die in Russian Air Attack on Kyiv Region

Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS

A 4-year-old boy and his 35-year-old father died when debris from a downed Russian weapon fell on the house they were living in near the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
A 13-year-old child was among the injured in the attack in the Brovary district, in the Kyiv region just northeast of the capital's metropolitan area, Ukraine's emergency services said on the Telegram messaging app.

Meanwhile, Russia's defense ministry said on Sunday Russian air defense units destroyed 14 Ukraine-launched drones and four Tochka-U tactical ballistic missiles over the Kursk region bordering Ukraine.

Sixteen drones were downed over the Voronezh region, several hundred kilometers south of Moscow, and three drones over the border Belgorod region, it said. One drone each was destroyed over the Bryansk and Orlov regions, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged for the first time on Saturday that Ukrainian forces were fighting in the surprise offensive in Kursk, as the border region's authorities rushed to evacuate civilians from areas at risk.

Moscow's forces are in their sixth day of intense battles against Kyiv's largest incursion into Russian territory since the start of the war, which left southwestern parts of Russia vulnerable before reinforcement started arriving.

In a sign of the gravity of the situation, Russia imposed a sweeping security regime in three border regions on Saturday, while Belarus, a staunch ally of Moscow, sent more troops to its border with Ukraine, accusing Kyiv of violating its air space.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said he had discussed the operation with top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, vowing to restore justice after Russia launched a full-scale aggression on its smaller neighbour in February 2022.
"Today, I received several reports from commander-in-chief Syrskyi regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war onto the aggressor's territory," he said.
"Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor."
Russian President Vladimir Putin cast the Ukrainian attack - which military analysts say caught the Kremlin off-guard - as a major provocation.

Russia's top general, Valery Gerasimov, said on Wednesday the attacks had been halted, but Russia has thus far failed to push the Ukrainian forces back over the border.
Russian military bloggers say the situation had stabilized after Russia's reinforcements, though they said Ukraine was swiftly building up forces.

Early on Sunday, Kursk officials said that 13 people were injured in the city after debris from a destroyed Ukraine-launched missile fell onto a nine-story residential building.
Alexei Smirnov, Kursk's acting governor, ordered local authorities to speed up the evacuation of civilians in areas at risk. On Saturday, Russia's TASS state news agency reported that more than 76,000 people had been evacuated.



Iran's President Nominates Abbas Araqchi as FM

A man flashes the victory sign as he rides a bike past a huge billboard depicting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (R) and slain leader of the Palestinian Hamas group Ismail Haniyeh at Tehran's Valiasr square on August 8, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
A man flashes the victory sign as he rides a bike past a huge billboard depicting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (R) and slain leader of the Palestinian Hamas group Ismail Haniyeh at Tehran's Valiasr square on August 8, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
TT

Iran's President Nominates Abbas Araqchi as FM

A man flashes the victory sign as he rides a bike past a huge billboard depicting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (R) and slain leader of the Palestinian Hamas group Ismail Haniyeh at Tehran's Valiasr square on August 8, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
A man flashes the victory sign as he rides a bike past a huge billboard depicting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (R) and slain leader of the Palestinian Hamas group Ismail Haniyeh at Tehran's Valiasr square on August 8, 2024. (Photo by AFP)

Abbas Araqchi was nominated on Sunday as Iran's foreign minister by President Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran's parliament speaker announced live on the Student News Network.

"From tomorrow morning, parliamentary commissions will start reviewing the plans of proposed ministers until the end of next week," parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said as Iran's parliament still needs to approve Pezeshkian's nominated cabinet.

Araqchi is a seasoned pragmatist diplomat who acted as chief negotiator in nuclear talks between Tehran and world powers from 2013 to 2021.

He has served as Iran's ambassador to Japan and Finland, and held the role of deputy foreign minister for Asia-Pacific for two years before becoming spokesperson of the ministry in 2013 for a short period.

When Mohammad Javad Zarif was foreign minister, Araqchi was the second most influential official at the foreign ministry and held roles like deputy for legal and international affairs and deputy for political affairs.

He holds a PhD in Political Thought from the University of Kent.

Mohsen Paknezhad has also been nominated as Iran's oil minister by Pezeshkian, Baqer Qalibaf announced.

Paknezhad served as Deputy Minister of Oil for the supervision of hydrocarbon resources from 2018 to 2021.

From 2000 to 2007, Paknezhad was also a member of the board of directors of the Iranian Central Oil Fields Company. From 2005 to 2007, he was the Planning Manager of the Iranian Central Oil Fields Company, and from then until 2013, he served as the Deputy Director of Integrated Planning at the National Iranian Oil Company, according to the Ministry of Oil's Shana news network.

Paknezhad holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tehran and a Master's degree in Industrial Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology.

Pezeshkian named Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh, an F-14 Tomcat pilot, as defense minister. He was chief of the Iranian Air Force in 2018-2021. This would be the first time that a member of Iran's air force headed the defense ministry.
Pezeshkian proposed Farzaneh Sadegh as roads and housing minister. Sadegh, 53, is currently a director in the ministry. She would become only the second female minister in Iran since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. 

Pezeshkian also proposed to retain current Intelligence Minister Ismail Khatib and current Justice Minister Amin Hossein Rahimi. Pezeshkian also named the current minister of industries, Abbas Aliabadi, as energy minister. On Saturday the president also reappointed Mohammad Eslami as chief of Iran’s civilian nuclear program and one of several vice presidents. They all held their posts under President Ebrahim Raisi, who died alongside Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahain in a May helicopter crash.