We will be pausing our live coverage of the war in Ukraine for the next few hours.
Before we return, here is a comprehensive rundown of where things currently stand.
It is just past 3am in Ukraine on the 96th day of Russia’s war. Here is where the crisis currently stands:
- Officials in eastern Ukraine say Russian shelling of Sievierodonetsk has been so intense that it has not been possible to assess casualties and damage, as Moscow closes in on the largest city still held by Ukraine in the Donbas. Fighting is believed to be taking place in the streets and “the entire critical infrastructure” of the city has been destroyed, according to president Zelenskiy. Ukrainian authorities have described conditions in Sievierodonetsk as reminiscent of Mariupol.
- The “liberation” of Ukraine’s Donbas region is an “unconditional priority” for Moscow, while other Ukrainian territories should decide their future on their own, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said according to a released from Russia’s foreign ministry.
- Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy visited troops in Kharkiv and toured the country’s second-largest city to see damage by Russian forces in his first official appearance outside the Kyiv area since the start of the war. “Kharkiv suffered terrible blows from the occupiers… One third of the Kharkiv region is still under occupation,” he said. According to local officials, over 2,000 apartment blocks have been wholly or partially destroyed by Russian shelling in the region.
- About 31% of the Kharkiv region’s territory is temporarily occupied by Russian forces while 5% has been liberated by Ukrainian defenders, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration said. “We are not yet able to fully inspect some of the liberated settlements, conduct full-fledged de-mining and begin rebuilding critical infrastructure, as shelling continues. Where we can do it remotely - we do it,” Oleg Synegubov said according to a release from the president’s office.
- Zelenskiy said he has fired the head of state security service in Kharkiv for not working to defend the city, adding that “law enforcement officers” are now involved. “I came, figured out and fired the head of the security service of Ukraine of the (Kharkiv) region for the fact that he did not work on the defence of the city from the first days of the full-scale war, but thought only about himself,” the president said in his daily national address. “On which motives? The law enforcement officers will figure it out,” he added.
- The EU failed to agree on an embargo of Russian oil during talks on Sunday while debating whether to water down a ban on Russian oil imports to placate Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, who is blocking the latest European sanctions. However, diplomats said they will still try to make progress ahead of a Monday-Tuesday summit on an exemption for pipeline deliveries to landlocked Central European countries. Zelenskiy is set to speak by video link to European Union leaders in Brussels on Monday.
- The German economy minister, Robert Habeck, raised concerns that European Union unity on new sanctions against Russia is “starting to crumble”. “After Russia’s attack on Ukraine, we saw what can happen when Europe stands united. With a view to the summit tomorrow, let’s hope it continues like this. But it is already starting to crumble,” he told a news conference on Sunday.
- Russia will continue to supply gas to Serbia, after a phone call between the Russian president and his Serbian counterpart. Aleksandar Vučić said he agreed a three-year gas supply contract with Putin, with further details to be finalised with producer Gazprom.
- Russia is continuing to ship gas to Europe through Ukraine, Gazprom has confirmed. The Russian gas producer said its supply via the Sudzha entry point stood at 44.1 million cubic metres, up from 43.95 on Saturday.
- Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has denied speculation that president Vladimir Putin is ill. Answering a question from France’s broadcaster TF1, Agence France-Presse quotes Russia’s top diplomat as saying: “I don’t think that sane people can see in this person signs of some kind of illness or ailment.”
- Zelenskiy said he believed Russia would agree to talks if Ukraine could recapture all the territory it has lost since the invasion. However, he ruled out the idea of using force to win back his land. “I do not believe that we can restore all of our territory by military means. If we decide to go that way, we will lose hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.
- Ukraine has started receiving Harpoon anti-ship missiles from Denmark and self-propelled howitzers from the United States. “The coastal defence of our country will not only be strengthened by Harpoon missiles – they will be used by trained Ukrainian teams,” Ukrainian defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov said.
- Poland has also agreed to send artillery to Ukraine, Polish state media reported.
Nato has the right to deploy in eastern Europe, deputy chief says
Nato is no longer bound by past commitments to hold back from deploying its forces in eastern Europe, the US-led alliance’s deputy secretary general has said.
Moscow itself has “voided of any content” the Nato-Russia Founding Act, by attacking Ukraine and halting dialogue with the alliance, Mircea Geoana told Agence France-Presse.
Under the 1997 Founding Act, intended to reset the relationship between Russia and the Alliance, both sides agreed to work to “prevent any potentially threatening build-up of conventional forces in agreed regions of Europe, to include Central and Eastern Europe”. Geoana, speaking in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, said:
They took decisions, they made obligations there not to aggress neighbours, which they are doing, and to have regular consultations with Nato, which they don’t.
So I think that in fact this founding act is basically not functioning because of Russia,” he added.
Russia, he said, had effectively moved away from the terms of the 1997 agreement.
Now we have no restrictions to have robust posture in the eastern flank and to ensure that every square inch of Nato’s territory is protected by Article 5 and our allies.”
Nato’s article 5 is the one referring to collective defence, which says that an attack on one member is an attack on all of them.
Geoana did not give details of any such planned deployment, but said he anticipated “a robust, flexible and sustainable presence”.
Updated
Capturing Sievierodonetsk is a “fundamental task” for Russia as 90% of houses in the city are now damaged, Zelenskiy has said.
As a result of the Russian strikes at Sievierodonetsk, the entire critical infrastructure of the city has already been destroyed. 90% of houses are damaged. More than two-thirds of the city’s housing stock has been completely destroyed. There is no mobile connection. Constant shelling.
Capturing Sievierodonetsk is a fundamental task for the occupying contingent. And they don’t care how many lives they will have to pay for this attempt to raise the Russian flag on 32 Druzhby Narodiv boulevard (Friendship of Nations - ed.) - no matter how bitter the name sounds now - where the Sievierodonetsk administration is located.
We are doing everything to repel this offensive.”
Here is a little more on the situation unfolding in Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Kharkiv.
President Zelenskiy noted in his most recent national address:
Kharkiv suffered terrible blows from the occupiers. Black, burnt-out, half-ruined apartment buildings face east and north with their windows - from where Russian artillery was firing. From where Russian combat aircraft arrived...
Russia has already lost not only the battle for Kharkiv, not only the battle for Kyiv and the north of our country. It lost its own future and any cultural ties to the free world. They all burned down. In particular, there, in Saltivka.
One third of the Kharkiv region is still under occupation. We will definitely liberate the entire territory. And everyone should work for this result in positions both at the local level and at the state level.”
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has denied speculation that president Vladimir Putin is ill.
Answering a question from France’s broadcaster TF1, Agence France-Presse quotes Russia’s top diplomat as saying: “I don’t think that sane people can see in this person signs of some kind of illness or ailment.”
Lavrov said that Putin, who will turn 70 in October, appeared in public “every day.
“You can watch him on screens, read and listen to his speeches,” Lavrov said in comments released by the Russian foreign ministry.
“I leave it to the conscience of those who spread such rumours.”
Putin’s health and private life are taboo subjects in Russia, and are almost never discussed in public.
Summary
- Volodymyr Zelenskiy, fresh off his first trip to Kharkiv since the invasion, said on Telegram today that he has fired the head of state security service in the Kharkiv region for not working to defend the city and instead thinking “only about himself”. He said law enforcement officers were investigating why the former head of state security was thinking “only about himself”.
- Zelenskiy also said Sunday that all critical infrastructure in Sievierodonetsk, the largest city still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Donbas region, has been destroyed.
- Meanwhile, Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, went on the French TV channel TF1 to say that the “liberation” of the Donbas is an “unconditional priority” for Moscow, while other Ukrainian territories should decide their future on their own.
- Serhiy Haidai, regional governor of the Luhansk oblast, said Sunday that the situation in Lysychansk, a city of 103,000 in the Luhansk oblast in eastern Ukraine, has become “significantly worse”.
Russian troops heavily shelled the Sumy oblast near Kharkiv today. Now, it looks like the shelling has continued:
Explosions in the Sumy region
— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) May 29, 2022
Scenes from Mariupol:
Pain, tears, despair. This is the situation in temporarily occupied Mariupol now #StopRussia pic.twitter.com/cBsDtUngRh
— Stratcom Centre UA (@StratcomCentre) May 29, 2022
Ukraine accused Russia with stealing steel from occupied #Mariupol pic.twitter.com/1YoQvIF5Lr
— Guy Elster (@guyelster) May 29, 2022
Updated
In a surreal bid to return to normalcy, the residents of Kyiv rang in Kyiv Day today with children climbing over burned Russian tanks and amid displays of Russian weapon systems that just weeks ago were used to attack this very city.
Russian forces focused heavily on capturing the capital of Kyiv early on in the invasion, laying waste to many of the surrounding cities and towns in the Kyiv oblast as Ukrainian forces held strong. In early April, Ukrainian forces were able to push them back, retaking occupied territories throughout the region and uncovering mass graves and horrific evidence that Russian troops had engaged in widespread torture and killing of civilians.
In the months since, residents have worked to get back to some form of normalcy, returning to restaurants and shops as they reopen in Kyiv even as they watched for news of missile strikes on their compatriots elsewhere in the country.
Updated
Russia: the 'liberation' of the Donbas is an 'unconditional priority' for Moscow
Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, went on the French TV channel TF1 to say that the “liberation” of the Donbas is an “unconditional priority” for Moscow, while other Ukrainian territories should decide their future on their own, Reuters is reporting.
“The liberation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, recognized by the Russian Federation as independent states, is an unconditional priority,” Lavrov said in an interview.
For the other territories in Ukraine, “the people should decide their future in these areas,” Lavrov said.
In Kherson, a city in the south of Ukraine, nine out of 10 pharmacies are not operational, leaving its residents in a terrible situation where they cannot access the medications they need to live their lives.
9 out of 10 pharmacies are not operational in the southern #Kherson region of #Ukraine, reports @KRYMSOS
— UN Geneva (@UNGeneva) May 29, 2022
Prices have also gone up, creating significant challenges for people with chronic and other health conditions to get a hold of desperately-needed medication.
v @OCHA_Ukraine pic.twitter.com/LWBep6KHBI
Zelenskiy fires head of state security in Kharkiv
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram today that he has fired the head of state security service in Kharkiv for not working to defend the city.
AFP is reporting that Zelenskiy said in his daily national address that “law enforcement officers” are involved in his reason for dismissing the head of security service.
“I came, figured out and fired the head of the security service of Ukraine of the (Kharkiv) region for the fact that he did not work on the defense of the city from the first days of the full-scale war, but thought only about himself,” Zelensky said in his daily national address.
“On which motives? The law enforcement officers will figure it out,” he added.
Today Zelenskiy visited Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine. Though much of the Kremlin’s focus has turned to the southeast region of the country, Russian forces are still shelling Kharkiv regularly.
Zelenskiy’s office said 2,229 buildings have been destroyed in Kharkiv and the region. “We will restore, rebuild and bring back life. In Kharkiv and all other towns and villages where evil came,” it said on his Telegram account.
Zelenskiy spent his trip meeting with local officials - the governor of Kharkiv region and the mayor of the city - to discuss reconstruction programmes for the region, calling on them to “find cool projects” to rebuild destroyed areas. “This is a chance for such districts to have a new face,” Zelenskiy said.
“In this war, the occupiers are trying to squeeze out at least some result,” Zelenskiy said in a later post.
“But they should have understood long ago that we will defend our land to the last man. They have no chance. We will fight and we will definitely win.”
Bakhmut, a city of 72,000 in the Donetsk region in the Donbas, was heavily hit this weekend - and its residents are preparing for even more heavy shelling from Russian forces in the days to come.
Here’s a look at the situation in the Donbas at the moment:
Seeing some commentary that Ukraine's position in Donbas is improving and renewed optimism. While Russia's advance from Popasna has slowed, it feels more tense here if anything here. Drivers who would work last week are now afraid to do so and more people have left.
— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) May 29, 2022
The road from Bakhmut to Lysychansk is a deathtrap at best and even the road from Siversk sounds very dangerous now. After capture of Lyman, there's fear for the next stage of the Russian offensive. A sense of the calm before the storm now.
— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) May 29, 2022
Reports of many civilian evacuations from Bakhmut today amid expectation that Russia will begin shelling the city heavily in the coming days, now that it is well within artillery range
— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) May 29, 2022
In the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian servicemen and women readied themselves for the worst. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said last week that Ukraine could lose 50 to 100 soldiers a day defending the eastern region of the country.
Zelenskiy: All critical infrastructure in Sievierodonetsk destroyed
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Sunday that all critical infrastructure in Sievierodonetsk, the largest city still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Donbas region, has been destroyed, Reuters is reporting.
The Ukrainian president confirmed that taking Sievierodonetsk is Russia’s principal aim. The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War had previously noted that the Kremlin’s fixation on Sievierodonetsk had drawn resources from other battlefronts, resulting in little progress elsewhere.
Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, Donbas, says #Ukraine had driven Russian troops back from a highway, allowing Kyiv’s forces to supply the key city of #Sievierodonetsk but in desperate need of weapons and ammunition to hold on.
— Gianni Riotta (@riotta) May 29, 2022
Updated
The situation in Lysychansk, a city of 103,000 in the Luhansk oblast in eastern Ukraine, has become “significantly worse”, Serhiy Haidai, regional governor of the Luhansk oblast, said Sunday.
“A Russian shell fell on a residential building, a girl died and four people were hospitalized,” he said on Telegram.
According to AFP, Haidai said that fighting in the city of Severodonetsk was advancing street by street. An estimated 15,000 civilians remained in Severodonetsk, but a local official said the “constant shelling” was making it increasingly difficult to get in or out.
“Evacuation is very unsafe, it’s isolated cases when we manage to get people out. Now the priority is for the wounded and people who need serious medical assistance,” Oleksandr Stryuk, head of the city’s military and civil administration, told AFP.
Residents have also gone more than two weeks without a mobile phone connection, Stryuk said, and the water supply was becoming increasingly unstable.
Updated
Russian troops heavily shelled the Sumy oblast and Chernihiv oblast today:
⚡️ Russians heavily shell Sumy Oblast, Chernihiv Oblast.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) May 29, 2022
Russia shelled the northern Ukrainian regions 10 times on May 29, the State Border Guard Service reported.
The German economy minister, Robert Habeck, has raised concerns that European Union unity on new sanctions against Russia is “starting to crumble”, reports Reuters.
It comes ahead of a summit this week to discuss a further package of sanctions against Moscow, including an unprecedented halt to Russian oil imports.
“After Russia’s attack on Ukraine, we saw what can happen when Europe stands united. With a view to the summit tomorrow, let’s hope it continues like this. But it is already starting to crumble,” he told a news conference earlier today.
The latest proposed sanctions have been blocked by landlocked Hungary. The country has no access to oil cargo ships, while 65% of its oil needs are supplied by Russia via the Druzhba pipeline.
Having rejected a proposal to allow it two years longer than the other 26 states to wean itself off Russian oil, Budapest wants at least four years and EU funds to adapt its refineries to process non-Russian crude and boost pipeline capacity to Croatia.
A compromise tabled by France would exclude the Druzhba pipeline from a future oil embargo and only impose sanctions on oil shipped to the EU by tanker vessel.
Habeck called for Germany to speak with one voice at the summit instead of abstaining from votes due to differences of opinion within the country’s ruling coalition. He called for similar unity from other EU states. “Europe is still a huge economic area with incredible economic power. And when it stands united, it can use that power,” he said.
You can read more about the debate over whether to water down a ban on Russian oil imports here:
Updated
Allowing Russia to win would “push humanity back into the dark ages”, Mykhaylo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, has said.
“‘Why does the world pay more attention to Ukraine than to Africa or the east?’ – such a narrative is promoted by [Russian] influence agents,” he tweeted.
“The war in [Ukraine] is not a local conflict – it is the question of what the world will be like tomorrow.”
Arguing that if Russia were to win the war, “any autocrat” would be able to provoke territorial conflicts and seize countries, he added that stopping Russia was the mission of all civilised countries.
“Allowing [Russia] to win is to open Pandora’s box & push humanity back into the dark ages,” said Podolyak.
Updated
Summary
Here’s a roundup of today’s news, as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has visited troops outside Kyiv for the first time since Russia’s invasion, and Vladimir Putin’s forces continue their assault on the Donbas region.
- Ukrainian forces are resisting Russian attacks in Sievierodonetsk in Donbas, where fighting is taking place in the streets.
- Shelling is so intense in Luhansk that its governor, Serhiy Haidai, said it was impossible to determine casualties.
- Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy has visited troops in Kharkiv and toured the city to see damage by Russian forces for himself.
-
Mariupol city council deputy Oleksandr Lashin said that the now-occupied city had no water, electricity and was “unsanitary”.
- Russia has given up on capturing Kyiv but the country’s ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, insists it was never a target.
- In a broadcast interview with the BBC’s Clive Myrie, Kelin said that claims of war crimes in Bucha, near Kyiv, were a “fabrication”. He also disputed footage of civilians being shot.
- Ukrainian politician Kira Rudik said she would ask UK MPs for more long-range missiles, help getting exports moving out of the country and for visa requirements in the UK to be relaxed.
- The EU is debating whether to water down a ban on Russian oil imports to placate Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, who is blocking the latest European sanctions.
- Poland has agreed to send artillery to Ukraine, Polish state media has reported.
- Russia will continue to supply gas to Serbia, after a phone call between the Russian president and his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vučić.
Updated
More on president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Kharkiv.
Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on the Telegram app that the president had also visited Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv.
Yermak said Zelenskiy toured destroyed residential buildings, noting that their replacements had to be built with bomb shelters in place.
The president’s chief of staff added that 31% of Kharkiv region’s territory was currently occupied by Russia, and a further 5% had been taken back by Ukraine having been occupied earlier.
Ukrainian TV station Espreso has reported comments by Mariupol city council deputy Oleksandr Lashin about the current state of the now-Russian occupied city in south-eastern Ukraine.
He said the city was unsanitary and lacked water and electricity.
“There is a collapse in Mariupol. There is light in some places and the occupiers tried to give water, but the streets are flooded, streams run down the roads, the sewage stinks everywhere. There are also corpse odours. There is a lot of unsanitary conditions in the city,” he said.
“The Russian occupiers cannot bring order to their country. Especially in Ukraine, it does not work out, people are not capable of anything and they will not be able to establish communication. Poor people who cannot leave, they are simply captives of the occupiers.”
Updated
The EU is debating whether to water down a ban on Russian oil imports to placate Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, who is blocking the latest European sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s war machine.
Under a compromise, the EU could ban Russian oil arriving on tankers but allow pipeline imports, a proposal that would allow Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to continue being supplied via the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline that runs through Ukraine.
More than three weeks after the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, proposed a complete ban on Russian oil imports to the EU by the end of the year, the bloc is stalled on the plans. Hungary, which is heavily dependent on Russian oil, has said it needs five years and billions of euros to upgrade its refineries.
Read more:
Zelenskiy visits frontlines outside Kyiv for first time since February
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has visited troops in Kharkiv, the first time he has made an official appearance outside Kyiv since the Russian invasion in February.
“You risk your lives for us all and for our country,” the president’s office website cited him as saying to the soldiers, adding that he handed out commendations and gifts.
President Zelensky visited Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/Yg1jma7EW7
— Michael A. Horowitz (@michaelh992) May 29, 2022
Updated
A crowdfunder set up to raise cash Tymofiy Seidov, eight, who was the only child left in his bombed out village near the city of Kharkiv, in north east Ukraine until his evacuation last Sunday has surpassed its £10,000 target after two anonymous donors pledged £3,000 and £2,000 respectively for travel and accommodation for Tymofiy and his family.
The Guardian’s Brussels bureau chief wrote about how Tymofiy spent much of his time drawing monsters and tanks and remembered sunny days while sheltering for three months in a dark basement below the ruins of a kindergarten with 23 others including his mum, aunt and grandmother.
A volunteer offered to resettle Tymofiy and his family but they needed funds for travel and accommodation on the way.
Updated
Poland has agreed to send artillery to Ukraine, Polish state media has reported. A plan for Poland to transfer 28 MiG-29 jets familiar to Ukrainian pilots in March via the US collapsed after White House objection. Last month, the UK said it was looking at sending British Challenger 2 tanks to Poland so that Warsaw could in turn send Ukraine more T-72 tanks, the Russian design used by its armed forces.
Poland has donated 18 155mm 'AHS Krab' modern self propelled howitzers to Ukraine, according to Polish state media. 🇵🇱🤝🇺🇦
— Jimmy (@JimmySecUK) May 29, 2022
These extremely effective weapons have a maximum range of 40km and a standard range of 30km.https://t.co/ImCcvbxnG3
Updated
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, said he understood the decision of Ukraine’s branch of the church to cut ties with Moscow.
“We fully understand how the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is suffering today,” the head of the Russian Orthodox Church said in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in central Moscow.
“We understand that His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy and the episcopate should act as wisely as possible today so as not to complicate the lives of their believers,” Patriarch Kirill said in his first comments since the announcement, according to Agence-France Presse.
He added that the “spirits of malice” wanted to divide the Orthodox people of Russia and Ukraine but they would not succeed.
On Friday, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that had been aligned with Moscow announced it was cutting ties with Russia over its offensive in Ukraine, declaring “full independence” in a historic move against Russia’s spiritual authorities.
The pro-Moscow branch of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church had earlier pledged allegiance to Russia’s Patriarch Kirill, who has fully backed president Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Updated
Russia will continue to supply gas to Serbia, after a phone call between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vučić.
The Kremlin said the leaders discussed the issues of Ukraine, and Kosovo, and that the two countries will form a closer partnership, according to Reuters.
Vučić said he agreed a three-year gas supply contract with Putin, with further details to be finalised with producer Gazprom. In the phone call, he also discussed expanding his country’s gas storage network.
Updated
Vladimir Kara-Murza’s wife, Evgenia, thinks he will have been like a “hurricane contained inside a bottle” since he was arrested on 11 April in Moscow and held in pre-trial detention over a speech he made in Arizona criticising the war in Ukraine.
“He has so much energy, so many ideas, and initiatives, that being contained within the four walls of a prison will be the hardest part for him,” said Evgenia, who has not been allowed to speak to him.
As a Russian politician, campaigner and regime critic, Vladimir Kara-Murza worked for 15 years alongside Boris Nemtsov, another opposition leader, who was killed in 2015.
Updated
Situation in Luhansk has 'extremely escalated', says governor
A dispatch here from Reuters reporters in Ukraine, as Russia continues its assaults to try to capture the Donbas region.
Ukrainian forces were on Sunday resisting a Russian assault on Sievierodonetsk, the largest city they still hold in the eastern Donbas region, but were weathering heavy artillery barrages, Ukrainian officials said.
The shelling was so intense it was not possible to assess casualties and damage, the governor of Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, said. Dozens of buildings have been destroyed in the past few days.
“The situation has extremely escalated,” Haidai said.
The Ukrainian government meanwhile urged the west to provide it with more longer-range weapons in order to turn the tide in the war, now in its fourth month.
The battle for Sievierodonetsk, which lies on the eastern side of the Siverskyi Donets River, has become the focus of attention as Russia ekes out slow but solid gains in the Donbas, comprising of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
Russia’s fixation on Sievierodonetsk had drawn resources from other battlefronts and as result they had made little progress elsewhere, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the military situation in the Donbas – parts of which are controlled by Moscow-backed separatists – was very complicated but defences were holding up in a number of places, including Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.
“It’s indescribably difficult there. And I am grateful to all those who withstood this onslaught,” he said in his nightly video address.
Updated
More than 500 Ukrainian children who fled the war without their parents are stuck waiting in limbo across Europe after applying to the Homes for Ukraine scheme, sources working closely with the Home Office say.
Most are teenagers who thought they would be eligible and have British families waiting to host them, but have heard nothing from the Home Office.
Many have been waiting for two months or more without an answer due to indecision about how to handle their cases.
Best-selling Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov has written for the Sunday Times in the UK today, talking about the uncertainty that many in the country are facing.
Kurkov, who wrote the acclaimed Death and the Penguin, penned his piece as there was a call at Davos this week by former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger for Ukraine to give up some territory in exchange for peace.
Some interesting extracts here
I understand that those on whom the outcome of the war hinges may not be as interested in Ukraine’s victory as I am. They may not see a way to return occupied territories to Ukraine and protect our independence while also ensuring their own safety and prosperity.
Kurkov wrote that there were delays in supplying old fighter planes to help Ukraine’s air force, and the Swiss and Israeli governments have blocked sales of shells and missiles.
I tried hard to find a person in Ukraine who would approve of a deal with Putin for the sake of an end to the war. But I failed.
Nina Yanchuk, a retired lady who lives with her husband, Tolik, next door to our summer house in the rural Zhytomyr region, was typically defiant when I asked her if it wouldn’t be better to come to some agreement with Putin.
“No, there can be no negotiations with Putin — only war to the bitter end. How can you talk about anything with him after such atrocities? What’s more, he’s a cheat. How many times has he deceived everyone?”
Away from the morning TV broadcast round in the UK, Reuters is reporting that the Russian defence ministry said it has destroyed a large Ukrainian army arsenal in Kryvyi Rih.
The defence ministry said Russian anti-aircraft defence systems shot down a SU-25 jet in Dnipro, according to Russian news agency Tass.
Updated
Myrie asks if Kelin believes Russia could use nuclear weapons against the UK, as indicated by Russia Channel One journalist Dmitry Kiselyov, or against Ukraine in the conflict.
Kelin says: “No, no, I don’t believe that. He is a journalist, he is like you, he is trying to find something juicy to put on the television and make it loud, a loud statement, he has done it, like you, trying to instigate me. He has instigated a discussion.
“Tactical nuclear weapon according to Russian military doctrine is not used in conflicts like this at all. I do not think so. We have strict provisions on use of tactical nuclear weapons. It has nothing to do with the current operation.”
And that’s it.
Updated
Myrie asks Kelin if he’s scared to speak out like Bondarev did against the war this week.
He said he doesn’t agree with Bondarev in any way at all.
Kelin becomes increasingly tetchy. “I have been shown, what you would like to ask me, it was totally different issues. If you are only interested to provoke me ... then it will be our last ... we can finish on this point.”
Myrie repeats foreign secretary Liz Truss’s words that the conflict can’t end until Russian forces leave.
Kelin calls Truss “belligerent”, saying she will prolong the war. “It will be no good for Ukraine, it will be no good for European peace and stability.”
Updated
Kelin says that 75% of people in Russia support the invasion and that Russia’s representative at the UN, Boris Bondarev, who spoke out against the war this week was not respected by Russia.
Bondarev said the invasion had involved “warmongering, lies and hatred”.
“He is very unprofessional ... he does not have our respect,” Kelin says.
Updated
Kelin then tries to deny that the devastation in Mariupol is the fault of Russian forces, indicating that the Ukrainian army could be to blame.
Myrie then turns the question around and says that it is possible in Kelin’s eyes that Russia is responsible.
“Russians are targeting military infrastructure, collateral damage is possible,” Kelin says.
Claims of war crimes in Bucha a 'fabrication', says Russian ambassador to UK
On to Bucha, the town near Kyiv, where there was evidence Russian forces committed war crimes against civilians. Clive Myrie shows aerial footage roughly two weeks apart showing dead bodies on Bucha’s streets.
“Is this how Russian troops are supposed to conduct this war. It suggests they are committing war crimes,” Myrie says.
Andrei Kelin says that for three days after Russian troops left there was no evidence of any dead bodies. “Can you imagine any professional troops, they will step over dead bodies and just leave them? I cannot believe this, it is unprofessional.
“In our view, it is a fabrication. It is used to interrupt negotiations. There were, at the beginning of the conflict, we had very good negotiations. The Ukrainians have had a constructive position, and then it changed, someone has used this situation to cut off that negotiation, and there is now a stalemate.”
Updated
Myrie shows Kelin CCTV footage showing two Russian soldiers at a building in Ukraine shooting at two civilians walking away from them.
Kelin says he would like to show Russian videos of Ukraine shelling Russian civilians. He then denies that they are Russian soldiers, saying it could be a “piece of a film, or a piece of a game”.
The Russian ambassador asks if they are having an interview or if Myrie is just expressing his point of view, as he becomes increasingly unhappy.
Updated
Russia given up on Kyiv but diplomat insists it was never a target
Kelin says that Russia has given up on Kyiv in response to Myrie’s question, “yes, I think,” he says.
He adds that none of Russia’s leaders, including Vladimir Putin, have ever said they wanted to seize Kyiv.
“I don’t believe it is possible to seize Kyiv or occupy Kyiv, it is a big big city.”
Myrie asks why troops were in the region near the capital if they never had any intention of occupying or taking it, saying he saw them himself.
“We did have troops, but not for the seizure of Kyiv. I’m not a military person, I am not a diplomat, but even I understand that if you want to do things on one front, you have to do different things on another.
“We didn’t have a goal of seizing Kyiv at the initial stage. I don’t believe that’s a possibility.”
Updated
Myrie says there is no evidence of Ukraine looking to start a war or operation against Russia, so asks again why Russia took this action of invading, saying it is not a “limited operation”.
More civilians have been killed in the conflict since February than in the last eight years, Myrie says, so he repeats his question asking where the threat to Russia was.
Kelin disputes this. He says that they are not targeting civilians, only “military infrastructure”.
“We would like to diminish Ukrainian capabilities of striking, first of all and we need to help these now independent republics to survive.”
Now Myrie is interviewing Andrey Kelin, Russia’s ambassador to the UK.
Myrie starts by reading out the death toll and the number of people displaced in the war to Kelin, asking why Russia started the war.
Kelin denies it’s a war, repeating the Russian line that it’s a “limited operation”. He says he knows it is unpopular in Britain, but says it is because the media is only presenting one side of the story.
“Right now, events are going on in the east, south-east of Ukraine. During 8 years of nationalistic government have come to power in Kyiv, they have built a fortress, which is where the majority of Ukrainian forces are concentrated. This is a highly fortified area, from which we are certain events could be started, whether it will be used by Ukrainian army as defensive, or we have evidence that they are planning an offensive against Donbas region, against Russians living over there.
“As President Putin said, we have had no other way to do this.”
Updated
Across to BBC One, where Clive Myrie is presenting today’s episode of Sunday Morning.
He hears from veteran war reporter Jeremy Bowen that the Russians are making small gains, using heavy artillery to bombard Ukrainians, who don’t have equal or superior firepower themselves.
Speaking from the Donbas, Bowen says that there is “very very strong” evidence of war crimes committed by Russians.
In a moving section, Rudik starts to cry as she tells Ridge stories of how children have been affected by the conflict.
She recalls how one mother was teaching her toddler his blood type in a bomb shelter in case he was injured. In another, a girl asked her mother if they were now refugees, and in Mariupol were being evacuated without their parents.
“They were saying [to their children] whatever happened, hold onto your backpacks, hold onto your backpacks. At these refugee centres you are hugging this child, and telling them ‘give it to me and find out what’s in there’. They are saying no, and asking if they will see their mummy again.
“When you open up they have written down small things saying ‘Mummy loves you’, their paperwork, and ‘please, please make him safe.’
“This is what I want for Ukrainian children, to make them safe.”
In meetings this week, Rudyk says she’s asking the UK defence select committee in the UK for long-range missiles to help stop the Russian advance in the east, for visa papers for Ukrainians, the 36-year-old saying it is making it more difficult for refugees to reach the UK.
Ukrainians are having to travel through Europe without visas, she says, and that the process has been eased up for the US and Canada, but not the UK. Rudyk said it would only affect 20,000 people.
Rudyk adds that exports including sunflower oil, grain, tomatoes and corn are being held up in Ukraine.
“Right now it is all blocked in Ukraine and we cannot deliver it anywhere because of the blocked ports.
“We need a humanitarian mission to extract this produce. I know you guys are having higher food prices, sunflower oil is missing from the stores, you know why, because it is all in Ukraine right now. The world only has 10 weeks supplies of grains, 10 weeks for all the politicians and leaders of the world to figure how they will get it out of Ukraine,” she said.
Ridge asks Rudyk whether she feels safe. She says she does in the UK, where she is currently visiting and meeting with politicians. Rudyk talks about hearing air raid sirens and attacks on cities in Ukraine.
“The threat and the fear is still there ... I will go back home, because this is the fight we have to put up and we have to win. I dream of the day that all Ukrainians will feel safe. They will be able to sit with their hands on their lap and think ‘we are okay now.’
“The important thing is that children feel safe. The protests at Downing Street, at the rallies, people were saying that they felt so uncomfortable that they had to leave. They feel great that people are supporting us, but they feel guilty. I said: ‘Don’t, you make sure that your children are not going through this terror and going through this drama. You have to make sure they are safe’.
“That’s why I’m telling Ukrainian people wherever you are, we’re all together, we are supporting our country and every single person is doing it their own way.”
Updated
Ukrainian MP Kira Rudyk is now speaking to Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday. She is a member of the territorial armed forces in Ukraine, and part of a group that would help defend Kyiv.
She talked through the feeling of being unsafe and what it is now like in the country.
“My life as a politician, as a member of the resistance, it’s different from anything I could have ever imagined. I stay at home, I still have resistance members staying with me, they are training and I am training with them. We are training to shoot and how to protect part of the territory.
“We are part of the major resistance of the Kyiv region. And some of the people have gone to war, and some of the members of my team have gone also.
“We still have one month’s supply of food and water at home, because it’s so scary that there will be no water, I was thinking ‘I don’t want to die dirty’ so I have loads of water everywhere.”
Updated
Russia is continuing to ship gas to Europe through Ukraine, Gazprom has confirmed.
The Russian gas producer said its supply via the Sudzha entry point stood at 44.1 million cubic metres, up from 43.95 on Saturday.
The amount is still lower than that seen earlier in May, which stood at 95.8mcm before Ukraine stopped a route through Kyiv because of the war.
An application to supply gas via another entry point, Sokhranovka, was rejected by Ukraine, according to Reuters.
This is Harry Taylor in London, bringing you more updates throughout today.
Updated
Their reports in the Observer revealed the reality of life in the occupied city. Now two female Ukrainian journalists are safe in England but want to continue their work. Here is an extract of a feature on the duo, by Miranda Bryant.
In a series of dispatches for the Observer at the start of the war, the two female Ukrainian journalists bravely documented the horrors of life in occupied Kherson – from the city’s brave resistance to looming humanitarian disaster and burying the dead. But they also offered an insight into how, despite it all, residents fiercely continued to find glimmers of joy: a tale of young hospital interns getting married; drinking coffee at their favourite coffee shop under the roar of artillery strikes. There were scenes of dark humour too. In one dispatch, they described how a queue of civilians laughed a group of empty-handed Russian soldiers out of the butcher’s shop because they were unimpressed with the quality of meat available.
Despite growing numbers of people leaving, the escalating danger – particularly for journalists – and dwindling supplies, the old friends, who are both in their 50s, hadn’t planned to leave their home city.
Despite writing anonymously, they feared being identified by their reporting. One of their friends, Oleh Baturin, was detained and tortured for eight days and threatened with mutilation and death, and Maxim Negrov, the owner of the online newspaper Postfactum, was arrested and detained. They also worried that if the city were liberated it could lead to further killings by Russian soldiers.
But it was only when they were offered seats in friends’ cars that they made the decision to go. Borisova in a car with her daughter-in-law and a baby, and Poliakova with a friend and her cat. Their husbands and sons remain in Kherson.
“I made up my mind very quickly, during half a day,” said Borisova. “Not because of me, more for the sake of my daughter-in-law because my son begged me. Now with all these Bucha stories [of rape], he was very afraid. He said: ‘I will sleep well when you girls get out of Kherson.’” She added: “That chance was given to me and it was too foolish not to take it.”
They left just in time.
Read more here:
Updated
Russia has demonstrated is it prepared to leverage global food security for its own political aim and then present itself as the reasonable actor and blame the west for any failure, the latest UK Ministry of Defence intelligence update has said.
On 25 May, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Andrei Rudenko, said Russia is ready to provide a humanitarian corridor for vessels carrying food through the Black Sea in return for the lifting of sanctions.
The minister also requested Ukraine de-mine the area around the port of Odesa to allow the passage of ships. In this instance, Ukraine has only deployed maritime mines because of the continued credible threat of Russian amphibious assaults from the Black Sea.
Russia has demonstrated it is prepared to leverage global food security for its own political aim and then present itself as the reasonable actor and blame the west for any failure.
Russia’s attempt to achieve a reduction in the severity of international sanctions also highlights the stresses sanctions are placing on the regime.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 29 May 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) May 29, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/uOVOzCZE8O
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/f1hL0W2AGs
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A dispatch here from the Associated Press in Pokrovsk, to where some civilians were able to flee as Russian forces pressed their offensive to take the eastern Ukrainian cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, the last major cities under Ukrainian control in the Luhansk region.
Bouncing her 18-month-old son on her lap, Yana Skakova choked back tears as she described living in a basement under relentless bombing, and having to leave her husband behind when she fled with her baby and four-year-old son.
Initially after the war broke out, there were quiet times when they could come out of the basement to cook in the street and let the children play outdoors. But about a week ago, the bombing intensified. For the past five days, they hadn’t been able to venture out of the basement at all.
“Now the situation is bad, it’s scary to go out,” she said.
It was the police who came to evacuate them on Friday from the basement where 18 people, including nine children, had been living for the past two and a half months.
“We were sitting there, then the traffic police came and they said: you should evacuate as fast as possible, since it is dangerous to stay in Lysychansk now,’” Skakova said.
Despite the bombings and the lack of electricity, gas and water, nobody really wanted to go.
“None of us wanted to leave our native city,” she said. “But for the sake of these small children, we decided to leave.”
She broke down in tears as she described how her husband stayed behind to take care of their house and animals.
“Yehor is 1 1/2-years old, and now he’s without a father,” Skakova said.
Updated
More than 682 children have been injured or killed in Ukraine, according to a government statement. It said 242 had died and 440 wounded, adding that the figures were not final as it was difficult to confirm reports in places of active fighting. The largest numbers were in Donetsk (153), Kyiv (116) and Kharkiv (108).
Ukraine’s armed forces have accused Russian authorities in Crimea of ordering hospitals to refuse civilian patients in order to free up beds for Russian soldiers. In a statement on its Facebook page, the forces said donor blood was also being collected “intensively”.
⚡️ Ukraine’s military: Civilians denied admission to hospitals in Crimea to make room for Russian servicemen.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) May 29, 2022
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said on May 29 that blood donations are also being collected at a growing rate in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has ruled out the idea of using force to win back all the land Ukraine has lost to Russia since 2014, which includes the southern peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Moscow that year.
“I do not believe that we can restore all of our territory by military means. If we decide to go that way, we will lose hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.
Updated
Fighting for the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk continues with Russian forces conducting assault operations on Saturday, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Sunday.
“With the use of artillery, Russian forces carried out assault operations in the area of the city of Sievierodonetsk,” the general staff said in a statement on its Facebook page. “The fighting continues.
“There remains a threat of the task from the territory of the Republic of Belarus of rocket and aviation strikes on Ukrainian infrastructural objects.”
Updated
Hello and welcome to today’s continuing coverage of the Ukraine war. Below is a quick summary of the latest developments.
Ukraine is in a race against time to save the eastern Donbas region as relentless Russian artillery and air strikes threaten to turn the tide of the war, and support for Kyiv’s continued defiance among some west European allies appears to be slipping. You can read our latest wrap here:
- Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Saturday night television address that conditions in Donbas were “indescribably difficult”, and thanked Ukrainian defenders holding out in the face of the onslaught.
- Ukraine is urgently pleading for heavy weapons to repel Russian forces in the eastern Donbas region, as relentless Russian artillery and airstrikes threaten to turn the tide of the war and support for Kyiv’s continued defiance among some west European allies appears to be slipping.
- Zelenskiy has conceded that not all the land that Russia has seized since it annexed Crimea in 2014 can be recaptured militarily. While he is certain his country will take back the territory Russia has claimed since its 24 February invasion, he said other territory could not be recovered by force.
- Russia’s defence ministry claims to have captured the strategically important city of Lyman and several other smaller towns and encircled Sievierodonetsk, which Ukraine denies.
- At least six superyachts linked to UK-sanctioned Russian oligarchs have “gone dark” on ocean tracking systems, vanishing from the global maps used to locate marine traffic.
- Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has scrapped the upper age limit for military recruits in the face of mounting losses in Ukraine, Tass reported. UK intelligence estimated this month Russia had lost about a third of its ground forces.
- Officials in the south-eastern port city of Mykolaiv said at least one person was killed, and at least six injured, in Russian shelling. Two rounds landed in courtyards of high-rise buildings, and one shell fell close to a kindergarten, CNN reported.
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Boris Johnson and Zelenskiy discussed concerns over food supplies in a phone call. A Downing Street spokesperson said Johnson told Zelenskiy the UK would continue to support Ukraine’s armed resistance, including by supplying equipment.
- Putin spoke to French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olaf Scholz and, according to the Kremlin, he told them that continuing arms supplies was “dangerous”, warning “of the risks of further destabilisation of the situation and aggravation of the humanitarian crisis”. Russia said it was willing to discuss ways to make it possible for Ukraine to resume shipments of grain from Black Sea ports.
- Spain is sending a battery of surface-to-air missiles and about 100 troops to the Nato forward presence mission in Latvia, joining about 500 compatriots already present in the Baltic state, El País reported.
