Summary
It is nearly 8.30pm in Kyiv and here is where we stand on the day’s developments the Russia-Ukraine war:
- 200 Russian marines from the 810th naval infantry brigade refused to come back to fight in the southern regions of Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry Intelligence Directorate, The Kyiv Independent reports.
- The Odesa District State Administration has reported that Russian forces have conducted a missile strike that has hit a quarry. The authorities didn’t specify the location and the number of casualties is being clarified.
- Russia has moved some units from the Sloviansk direction in Donetsk, Oblast, to the southern Zaporizhzhia, Oblast, the Kyiv Independent reports. According to the report, Ukraine’s military said that Russian troops have had partial success near Avdiivka while Ukrainian forces pushed back Russian attempts to advance toward the Husarivka village in Kharkiv, Oblast.
- Six people were injured when a drone flew into the Russian headquarters of its Black Sea fleet. The Sevastopol mayor, Mikhail Razvozzhaev, said six people were injured in the blast.
- There was intense bombardment of the eastern town of Bakhmut, reports say. One person has reportedly been killed. It comes after the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s late-night address on Saturday in which he called for civilians to leave the frontline Donetsk region.
- The Ukrainian military said it had killed scores of Russian soldiers and destroyed two ammunition dumps in fighting in the Kherson region, the focus of Kyiv’s counter-offensive in the south and a key link in Moscow’s supply lines.
-
Ukrainian officials have denounced a call by Russia’s embassy in Britain for fighters from the Azov regiment to face a “humiliating” execution, Agence France-Presse reported. Twitter said the embassy had violated its rules on “hateful conduct” but put a warning on the tweet rather than ban the post about the Azov, a Ukrainian battalion that retains some far-right affiliations.
That is it for today’s coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Gemma McSherry and earlier Emine Sinmaz and Joe Middleton were reporting.
Updated
The Kyiv Independent reports that according to Ukraine’s Sea Ports Authority, the passage through the Danube’s Bystre Canal mouth is restricted after a motorboat collided with an explosive. No casualties have been reported due to the incident.
Ukraine resumed shipping through the Danube Delta in early July following the retreat of Russian forces from Snake Island near the delta in the Black Sea. “The crew were evacuated by a small boat of the Ukrainian sea guard” the report reads. The circumstances of the incident are yet to be clarified.
Updated
The US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget A Brink, has called the attack on the detention facility in Olenivka “unconscionable” and said the US would “continue to pursue accountability and give Ukraine what it needs to defend itself against Moscow’s horrific aggression”.
The attack on the detention facility in Olenivka is unconscionable, as are reports of barbaric treatment of Ukrainian POWs by Russia’s forces. We will continue to pursue accountability and give Ukraine what it needs to defend itself against Moscow's horrific aggression.
— Ambassador Bridget A. Brink (@USAmbKyiv) July 31, 2022
Updated
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has not yet received permission to visit the building in Olenivka where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed, it said on Sunday.
It comes after Russia’s defence ministry said it had invited experts from the UN and Red Cross to examine the deaths “in the interests of conducting an objective investigation”.
The ICRC condemned Friday’s attack in which at least 50 prisoners died, Reuters reported.
“Families must receive urgent news of and answers on what happened to their loved ones. The parties must do everything in their power, including through impartial investigations, to help determine the facts behind the attack and bring clarity to this issue. However, it is not the role or mandate of the ICRC to carry out public investigations into alleged war crimes,” the ICRC said in a statement
Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over who is responsible for Friday’s missile strike or explosion.
Updated
Summary
It is just after 6pm in Kyiv and here is where we stand on the day’s developments the Russia-Ukraine war:
- There was intense bombardment of the eastern town of Bakhmut, reports say. One person has reportedly been killed. It comes after the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s late-night address on Saturday in which he called for civilians to leave the frontline Donetsk region.
- Six people were injured when a drone flew into the Russian headquarters of its Black Sea fleet. The Sevastopol mayor, Mikhail Razvozzhaev, said six people were injured in the blast.
- Latvia’s foreign minister has urged the European Union to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. Edgars Rinkēvičs also said he condemned the “brutal murder of Ukrainian PoWs by Russian armed forces in Olenivka and ongoing atrocities committed by the Russian military against Ukraine”.
- Social media footage appears to show a forest fire in Mykolaiv after Russian shelling. The video was shared on Twitter by the Ukrainian presidential adviser Anton Gerashchenko, who wrote: “Huge forest fire is raging near Mykolaiv after shelling. Russia kills all living creatures, and the environment as well.”
- Ukrainian officials have denounced a call by Russia’s embassy in Britain for fighters from the Azov regiment to face a “humiliating” execution, Agence France-Presse reported. Twitter said the embassy had violated its rules on “hateful conduct” but put a warning on the tweet rather than ban the post about the Azov, a Ukrainian battalion that retains some far-right affiliations.
- Renewed Russian strikes on Ukraine’s frontline have left one person dead in the south of the country and also hit a school in Kharkiv, officials said. The mayor of the southern city of Mykolaiv said one person was killed when rockets pounded two residential districts overnight, AFP reported. In Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, rockets from an S-300 surface-to-air system destroyed part of an educational facility, local authorities said.
- The Ukrainian military said it had killed scores of Russian soldiers and destroyed two ammunition dumps in fighting in the Kherson region, the focus of Kyiv’s counter-offensive in the south and a key link in Moscow’s supply lines.
Updated
A video posted on social media appears to show a forest fire in Mykolaiv following Russian shelling.
The video was also shared on Twitter by the Ukrainian presidential adviser Anton Gerashchenko, who wrote: “Huge forest fire is raging near Mykolaiv after shelling. Russia kills all living creatures, and the environment as well.”
Huge forest fire is raging near Mykolaiv after shelling.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) July 31, 2022
Russia kills all living creatures, and the environment as well. pic.twitter.com/kmQRVbvplk
Updated
An adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he believes the leading Ukrainian agricultural magnate Oleksiy Vadatursky was deliberately killed.
According to a report from the BBC, Mykhailo Podolyak said one of the missiles hit the businessman’s bedroom, which he said “leaves no doubt” it was a targeted attack.
Authorities said Vadatursky, 74, and his wife, Raisa, were killed when a missile struck their home in the southern city of Mykolaiv.
Vadatursky was ranked Ukraine’s 24th richest man with a fortune worth $430m by Forbes, and was previously decorated with the prestigious “Hero of Ukraine” award.
Here are some more photographs from the newswires which show the aftermath of the shelling in Mykolaiv.
Updated
The Irish president, Michael D Higgins, has been urged to state unequivocal support for the Ukrainian cause and oppose Russian aggression, after his wife penned a controversial letter.
Sabina Higgins wrote to the Irish Times last week to criticise one of the newspaper’s editorials on the conflict.
In the letter, she said the fighting would go on until the world “persuades President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire and negotiations”.
Critics have suggested she was drawing an equivalence between the actions of Ukraine and Russia.
The Fine Gael senator John McGahon called on the president to clarify whether he had been aware of the letter before it was published, or had any role in drafting it.
“If you were to read that letter you’d think that this is a dispute between two countries over a contested piece of land,” he said. “And I think the comments that she has made is a slap in the face to the 47,000 Ukrainian refugees who have come to this island of Ireland to seek safety and seek sanctuary.”
Updated
Eastern city of Bakhmut attacked
AFP reports that its journalists have witnessed an intense bombardment of the eastern town of Bakhmut, where one person has reportedly been killed.
It comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s late-night address on Saturday in which he called for civilians to leave the frontline Donetsk region.
Bakhmut, one of the few remaining cities under Ukrainian control in the region, is now at the centre of Russia’s offensive in the east of the country.
AFP journalists reported seeing a wounded man collected by an ambulance after a ferocious attack on Sunday.
The agency shared some harrowing images from the town, including a photograph of a severely injured man.
Updated
The fallout from the attack on a prison in Olenivka where at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed on Friday continues.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, alleged on Sunday that images of the prison indicated that the blast came from within the building, which is under Russian control, according to an AP report.
Russian officials have claimed the building was attacked by Ukraine with the aim of silencing PoWs who may have be giving information about Ukrainian military operations.
Satellite photos taken before and after the attack show that a small, squarish building in the middle of the Olenivka prison complex was demolished, its roof left in splinters.
Podolyak said on Twitter that those images and the lack of damage to adjacent structures showed that the building was not attacked from the air or by artillery, and contended that the evidence was consistent with a hyperbaric bomb being set off inside.
Here is a photo taken after the attack that is on the newswires.
Here is a photo taken before the attack.
Updated
These are some of the latest images to be sent to us over the newswires from Ukraine.
Updated
Isobel Koshiw reports for us from Kyiv:
Russia is moving large numbers of troops to Ukraine’s south for battles against the country’s forces through the newly occupied territories and Crimea, according to Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence.
If Russia won, it would try to capture more territory, said Vadym Skibitsky. “They are increasing their troop numbers, preparing for our counteroffensive [in Ukraine’s south] and perhaps preparing to launch an offensive of their own. The south is key for them, above all because of Crimea,” he said.
Russian troop movements come in response to Ukraine’s declared counteroffensive to liberate the southern occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukrainian forces have retaken dozens of villages and towns along the border, according to the region’s military governor, Dmytro Butrii, and are pushing towards Kherson’s regional capital.
Read more of Isobel Koshiw’s report from Kyiv: Ukrainian offensive forces Russia to bolster troops in occupied south
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has paid tribute to Oleksiy Vadatursky, the owner of one of the country’s largest grain producing and exporting companies, after he was killed in shelling in Mykolaiv.
Vadatursky, the founder and owner of the agriculture company Nibulon, and his wife, were killed in their home, the local governor, Vitaliy Kim, said on Sunday.
Zelenskiy described Vadatursky’s death as “a great loss for all of Ukraine”, saying in a statement that the businessman had been in the process of building a modern grain market involving a network of transhipment terminals and elevators.
Three people were also wounded in the attacks on Mikolaiv, the city’s mayor, Oleksandr Senkevych, told Ukrainian television, adding that 12 missiles had hit homes and educational facilities.
Updated
Vladimir Putin has signed a new naval doctrine that casts the US and Nato as the biggest threats facing Russia, Reuters and AFP report.
The 55-page document, signed on Navy Day, sets out the broad strategic aims of Russia’s navy, including its ambitions as a “great maritime power” which extends over the entire world.
The main threat to Russia, the doctrine says, is “the strategic policy of the USA to dominate the world’s oceans” and the movement of the Nato military alliance closer towards Russia’s borders.
Russia may use its military force appropriately to the situation in the world’s oceans should other soft powers, such as diplomatic and economic tools, be exhausted, it adds.
“Today’s Russia cannot exist without a strong fleet … and will defend its interests in the world’s oceans firmly and with resolution,” the doctrine says.
Updated
Here are some more of the latest images to be sent to us over the newswires from Ukraine.
Updated
Fighting has also continued in the southern city of Nikopol and in the north-eastern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy, according to agency reports.
The governor of Dnipropetrovsk, Valentyn Reznichenko, wrote on Telegram that Nikopol had come under heavy attack. He said up to 50 Grad rockets hit residential areas on Sunday morning, wounding one man and damaging homes and gas and water pipes.
The Sumy regional chief, Dmytro Zhyvytsky, said 50 strikes on Saturday evening had left one person dead and two wounded.
Igor Terekhov, the mayor of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, said: “Today a whole succession of explosions took place … a few buildings are reportedly damaged.”
Updated
These are some of the latest images to be sent to us over the newswires showing the aftermath of Russian shelling in Mykolaiv.
Updated
Oleksiy Vadatursky, the founder and owner of one of the largest Ukrainian agriculture companies, Nibulon, and his wife were killed in a Russian strike on the Mykolaiv region, the local governor, Vitaliy Kim, said on Sunday.
According to a Reuters report, the governor said on Telegram that the couple were killed in their home in the city of Mykolaiv, which was shelled overnight and on Sunday morning.
Nibulon, which is headquartered in Mykolaiv, specialises in the production and export of wheat, barley and corn, and it has its own fleet and shipyard.
The port city’s mayor, Oleksandr Senkevych, said Mykolaiv had been hit by heavy Russian strikes overnight, with two people confirmed killed and three wounded. Senkevych wrote earlier on Telegram that the Mykolaiv strikes were “probably the most powerful of the entire time [of the war]”.
Russian shelling in city damaged a hotel and school buildings, AP added.
Updated
The first grain-exporting ship could leave Ukraine’s ports on Monday, a spokesperson for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said.
Speaking in an interview with broadcaster Kanal 7, Ibrahim Kalin said the joint coordination centre in Istanbul would probably complete the final work on the exporting routes very soon, Reuters reports.
Russia and Ukraine are major global wheat suppliers, and the UN-brokered agreement they signed in Istanbul last week is intended to ease the food crisis and reduce global grains prices, which have risen since the Russian invasion.
Updated
Vladimir Putin has said the Russian navy will receive hypersonic Zircon cruise missiles within the next few months, Reuters reports.
Speaking on Russia’s Navy Day in St Petersburg, he that the area of their deployment would depend on Russian interests.
Putin did not mention Ukraine directly, but he said he had signed a new navy doctrine and touted the Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles as unique.
He said:
The delivery of these [missiles] to the Russian armed forces will start in the coming month.
The Admiral Gorshkov frigate will be the first to go on combat duty with these formidable weapons onboard.
The key thing here is the capability of the Russian navy … It is able to respond with lightning speed to all who decides to infringe on our sovereignty and freedom.
Hypersonic weapons can travel at nine times the speed of sound, and Russia has conducted test launches of the Zircon from warships and submarines over the past year.
Updated
Russia has said it has invited United Nations and Red Cross experts to investigate the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Moscow-backed separatists, Reuters reports.
At least 50 prisoners of war were killed in an attack on a jail in Olenivka, in Russian-occupied Donetsk, on Friday. Both sides in the war have blamed the blast on each other.
Russia invited experts from the UN and Red Cross to examine the deaths “in the interests of conducting an objective investigation”, the defence ministry said on Sunday.
The ministry had published a list of 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war killed and 73 wounded in what it said was a Ukrainian military strike with a US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (Himars).
Ukraine’s armed forces denied responsibility, saying Russian artillery had targeted the prison to hide mistreatment there. The foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Friday that Russia had committed a war crime and called for international condemnation.
Updated
Six injured after Ukrainian drone flies into Russian Black Sea fleet HQ, reports say
AP reports that the drone that flew into the Russian headquarters of its Black Sea fleet has injured six people.
We reported earlier that five people were wounded, but the Sevastopol mayor, Mikhail Razvozzhaev, has said six people were injured in the blast.
The Black Sea fleet’s press service said the drone appeared to be homemade and described the explosive device as “low power”.
Updated
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said the country’s harvest could be half its usual amount this year.
He posted on Twitter: “Ukrainian harvest this year is under the threat to be twice less. Our main goal – to prevent global food crisis caused by Russian invasion. Still grains find a way to be delivered alternatively.”
He posted a link to a video from United24, the country’s crowdfunding platform, which states that Ukraine was the second largest supplier of grain for the EU in 2021. But it says that since February “Russia has been doing everything to keep Ukraine from getting its grain to the rest of the world”.
Ukrainian harvest this year is under the threat to be twice less. Our main goal — to prevent global food crisis caused by Russian invasion. Still grains find a way to be delivered alternatively. Watch a new episode of @United24media «Yep, this is Ukraine»: https://t.co/JvaqQcnXb3 pic.twitter.com/hBxuvjlFWc
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 31, 2022
Updated
The latest daily assessment from the UK Ministry of Defence states that Russia fired at least 20 missiles into northern Ukraine from Belarusian territory on Thursday (28 July).
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 31 July 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) July 31, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/l2m2OqODU7
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/C3qIlLHgga
Updated
The death toll from a strike on a bus stop in the southern city of Mykolaiv on Friday climbed to seven after two men died in hospital, Ukraine authorities said.
Reuters reported them saying Russian bombardments targeting the south and east of the country on Saturday had left another dead in Mykolaiv and one dead in Bakhmut.
In Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, in the north-east, three Russian S-300 missiles struck a school, the mayor, Igor Terekhov, said on Telegram, adding that the main building was destroyed.
A Ukrainian spokesman said its forces had set fire to grain fields around Mariupol so they could not be used by Russian forces.
Sergiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odessa regional military administration, said:
The Mariupol resistance forces set fire to the fields with grain so that it would not be stolen by the occupiers.
Ukraine’s military said more than 100 Russian soldiers were killed and seven tanks destroyed in fighting in the country’s south on Friday.
The area includes the Kherson region that is the focus of Kyiv’s counteroffensive in that part of the country and a key link in Moscow’s supply lines.
Rail traffic to Kherson over the Dnipro River was cut, Reuters reported the military’s southern command as saying on Saturday, potentially further isolating Russian forces west of the river from supplies in occupied Crimea and the east.
South of the town of Bakhmut, which Russia has cited as a prime target in Donetsk, the Ukrainian military said Russian forces had been “partially successful” in establishing control over the settlement of Semyhirya by storming it from three directions.
“He established himself on the outskirts of the settlement,” the military’s evening report said, referring to Russian forces.
Defence and intelligence officials from Britain portrayed Russian forces as struggling to maintain momentum.
The Kherson region’s pro-Ukrainian governor, Dmytro Butriy, said fighting was continuing in many parts of the region, and that Berislav district, just north-west of the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant, was particularly hard hit.
He wrote on Telegram:
In some villages, not a single home has been left intact, all infrastructure has been destroyed, people are living in cellars.
Just to the north of Lysychansk, which Moscow’s forces captured in early July, Ukrainian partisans destroyed a railway junction box near the Russian-controlled town of Svatove on Friday night, making it harder for Moscow to transport ammunition to the front lines by train, Luhansk’s regional governor, Serhiy Gaidai, said in an online post.
Officials from the Russian-appointed administration running the Kherson region earlier this week rejected western and Ukrainian assessments of the situation.
Updated
Latvia urges EU to declare Russia a terrorism sponsor
Latvia’s foreign minister has urged the European Union to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.
Edgars Rinkēvičs also said in a tweet that he condemned the “brutal murder of Ukrainian POWs by Russian Armed Forces in Olenivka and ongoing atrocities committed by the Russian military against Ukraine”.
He urged the EU to ban tourist visas for Russians.
Rinkēvičs’ comments came after at least 50 prisoners of war were killed in an attack on a jail in Olenivka, in Russian-occupied Donetsk, over which Ukraine and Russia have traded blame.
Rinkēvičs said in his tweet:
EU must consider Russia as state sponsor of terrorism, I reiterate proposal to impose EU tourist visa ban for [Russian] citizens.
I condemn brutal murder of Ukrainian POWs by Russian Armed Forces in #Olenivka and ongoing atrocities committed by the Russian military against #Ukraine. #EU must consider #Russia as state sponsor of terrorism, I reiterate proposal to impose EU tourist visa ban for 🇷🇺 citizens
— Edgars Rinkēvičs (@edgarsrinkevics) July 30, 2022
Updated
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, has said the evacuation of people from the eastern Donetsk region needs to take place before winter begins since the region’s natural gas supplies have been destroyed.
She was quoted by domestic Ukrainian media outlets while, separately, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his government was ordering the mandatory evacuation in Donetsk, the scene of fierce fighting with Russia.
Reuters reported him saying in a television address that hundreds of thousands of people still in combat zones in the larger Donbas region – which contains Donetsk as well as the neighbouring Luhansk region – needed to leave.
He said:
The more people leave [the] Donetsk region now, the fewer people the Russian army will have time to kill.
Residents who left would be given compensation, Zelenskiy said.
Many refuse to leave but it still needs to be done.
Five injured as drone hits Russia's Black Sea fleet HQ
A drone flew into the Russian headquarters of its Black Sea fleet, injuring five people, the governor of Sevastopol said.
Russia’s state-run Ria-Novosti news agency quoted Mikhail Razvozzhaev as also saying all festive events in honour of the Navy Day in the city had been cancelled for security reasons.
Russian state media reporting that the HQ of Russia’s Black Sea fleet has been hit by a drone attack, wounding five. Today is Navy Day in Russia, major naval parades planned in St. Petersburg and other cities. https://t.co/JgNW99edwv
— Andrew Roth (@Andrew__Roth) July 31, 2022
Summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here’s a summary of the latest developments as it just passes 9am in Kyiv on this Sunday 31 July 2022.
- Ukrainian officials have denounced a call by Russia’s embassy in Britain for fighters from the Azov regiment to face a “humiliating” execution, Agence France-Presse reported. Twitter said the embassy had violated its rules on “hateful conduct” but put a warning on the tweet rather than ban the post about the Azov, a Ukrainian battalion that retains some far-right affiliations. Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian presidency’s office, responded on Telegram on Saturday: “In the 21st century, only savages and terrorists can talk at the diplomatic level about the fact that people deserve to be executed by hanging. Russia is a state sponsor of terrorism. What more evidence is needed?”
- Renewed Russian strikes on Ukraine’s frontline have left one person dead in the south of the country and also hit a school in Kharkiv, officials said. The mayor of the southern city of Mykolaiv said one person was killed when rockets pounded two residential districts overnight, AFP reported. In Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, rockets from an S-300 surface-to-air system destroyed part of an educational facility, local authorities said.
- The Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has called for the evacuation of the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, which has seen fierce clashes between his country’s forces and the Russian military. The governor of Donetsk, where Moscow is focusing the brunt of its offensive, said six civilians were killed and 15 wounded by strikes on Friday. Zelenskiy said in his daily address: “There’s already a governmental decision about obligatory evacuation from Donetsk region. Please, follow evacuation.” Zelenskiy said thousands of people, including children, were still in the battleground areas of the Donetsk region.
- The Ukrainian military said it had killed scores of Russian soldiers and destroyed two ammunition dumps in fighting in the Kherson region, the focus of Kyiv’s counter-offensive in the south and a key link in Moscow’s supply lines. Reuters reported the military’s southern command as saying rail traffic to Kherson over the Dnipro River had been cut, potentially further isolating Russian forces west of the river from supplies in occupied Crimea and the east.
- Gazprom has suspended gas supplies to Latvia following tensions between Moscow and the west over the conflict in Ukraine and sweeping sanctions against Russia, AFP reports. The company drastically cut gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline on Wednesday to about 20% of its capacity. European Union states have accused Russia of squeezing supplies in retaliation for western sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
- Russia announced it was banning 32 New Zealand officials and journalists from entering its territory, in response to similar measures taken by Wellington against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, AFP reported. Among those subjected to sanctions are the mayor of Wellington, Andrew Foster; the mayor of Auckland, Philip Goff; the commander of New Zealand’s navy, Commodore Garin Golding; and the journalists Kate Green and Josie Pagani, Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
- The United States ambassador to the United Nations said on Friday there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intended to dismantle Ukraine, Reuters reported. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the UN security council that the US was seeing growing signs of Russia laying the groundwork to attempt to annex all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
- Russia is “running out of steam” in its war on Ukraine, the chief of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, Richard Moore, said in a brief comment on Twitter on Saturday. Moore made the remark above an earlier tweet by the Ministry of Defence that said the Kremlin was “growing desperate”.
- Russia and Ukraine have both launched criminal investigations into strikes that have reportedly killed at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were held at a pre-trial detention centre in the village of Olenivka, after both countries blamed the other side for the attack. The UN is prepared to send a group of experts to Olenivka to investigate the incident, if it gets consent from both parties.
- Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has accused Russia of a “petrifying war crime” over the killings and called on world leaders to “recognise Russia as a terrorist state”.
- Ukraine has said it is ready for grain exports to leave its ports again but is waiting for the go-ahead from the UN.
