Ukrainian forces are advancing “slowly but surely” on the front lines in the east and southeast of the country as well as around the longstanding flashpoint of Bakhmut, senior military officials have said. Ukrainian commander-in-chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi told chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley that his forces had “succeeded in seizing the strategic initiative.”
Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar, speaking on national television, said forces had made advances in sectors in the south designated by two occupied towns – Berdiansk and Mariupol. “Every day, there is an advance,” Maliar said. “Yes, the advances are slow, but they are sure.”
The death toll in a Russian rocket attack on a packed pizza restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk has risen to 12, including four children. Ukraine’s state emergency service said at least 56 people were injured, some critically, when two Iskander missiles slammed into the restaurant in the city centre on Tuesday evening. Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said rescue attempts had ended. The UK’s ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, described the strike as “heartbreaking”.
Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency has arrested a local man it accused of helping the Russians carry out the attack on Kramatorsk. The SBU said it had arrested an employee of a gas transportation company who helped coordinate the strike and allegedly sent video footage of the cafe to the Russian military. It provided no evidence for the claims.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that he “didn’t doubt” that he had the support of Russians during the mutiny. In a meeting with the head of the southern Russian province of Dagestan, parts of which were aired on state television, he said: “I did not doubt the reaction in Dagestan and in all of the country.”
Putin made a rare public walkabout in Derbent, including shaking hands with people, which was shown on Russian state television.
A Russian general who previously led the invasion force in Ukraine has not been seen in public since Saturday. The New York Times, citing anonymous US intelligence sources, reported that General Sergei Surovikin had prior knowledge of the uprising led by the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, with whom he had well publicised links. Surovikin is the head of the Russian aerospace forces and was formerly Moscow’s supreme commander in Ukraine.
The distribution of humanitarian aid in Nevske in the Ukraine-controlled portion of Luhansk has been paused after Russian shelling.
The Russian-imposed acting governor of occupied Kherson region has denied claims that Ukrainian troops had succeeded in establishing any kind of bridghead over the Dnipro at the location of the Antonivskyi bridge. He has also claimed that Russian forces have repelled multiple landing attempts in the area.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he had rejected calls from Washington and Kyiv to arm Ukraine due to “concerns that I don’t think any of the western allies of Ukraine have”. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said Israel needed “freedom of action” in Syria, where Israel often bombs Iranian targets near Russian forces. He said he also had fears that Israeli weaponry could be captured in Ukraine and turned over to Iran, specifically the Iron Dome air defence system, which was developed with the US.
Poland expects the EU to help it fund measures to strengthen its eastern border, a deputy minister said on Thursday, after Warsaw announced a tightening of security due to concerns over the presence of Wagner group troops in Belarus.
The Hungarian parliament’s house committee has rejected a proposal to schedule a vote on the ratification of Sweden’s Nato membership for next week
The EU should not “lower the bar” on membership for Ukraine in terms of corruption and democracy, Denmark’s foreign minister has warned in an interview with the Financial Times, saying to do so would risk “importing instability”. Lars Løkke Rasmussen told the newspaper Denmark supported EU membership for Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and the western Balkans but that “geopolitical circumstances” did not justify skating over governance reforms.
Russia said it is opening criminal cases against what it claims are 160 mercenaries from 33 different countries who are operating on behalf of Ukrainian forces in the country.
Papal envoy Cardinal Matteo Zuppi and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, will meet in Moscow on Thursday.
US president Joe Biden said Putin “was clearly losing the war” but that it was too early to tell whether he had been weakened by the Wagner rebellion. “He’s losing the war at home, and he has become a bit of a pariah around the world,” he added.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz said the failed mutiny had weakened Putin but the implications for his invasion of Ukraine remained unclear. “I do believe he is weakened as this shows that the autocratic power structures have cracks in them and he is not as firmly in the saddle as he always asserts,” Scholz said in an interview with broadcaster ARD.
