Here are the key events so far on Wednesday, July 6.
Get the latest updates here.
Fighting
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said air alerts rang out across almost all of Ukraine on Tuesday night as there were attacks in the Khmelnytskyi region of western Ukraine, the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, the border region of Sumy, and the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv and its region.
- Russian troops are engaged in heavy fighting and making their way into Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said.
- The United Kingdom’s defence ministry says the battle for the city of Sloviansk, in the Donetsk region, will be the next key contest in the struggle for the Donbas. According to officials, Russian forces struck a market and a residential area in the city of Sloviansk, killing at least two people and injuring seven.
- Russian-backed separatists seized two foreign-flagged ships in the southeast Ukrainian port of Mariupol, saying they are now “state property”, in the first such moves against commercial shipping, letters seen by the Reuters news agency showed.
(Al Jazeera)
Diplomacy
- A two-day conference aimed at helping Ukraine recover from Russia’s war wrapped up in Lugano, Switzerland, with a top US diplomat urging allies to help the war-battered country meet its “immediate and urgent” needs, not only longer-term rebuilding.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will call on G20 nations this week to put pressure on Russia to support the United Nations’ efforts to reopen sea lanes blocked by the Ukraine conflict, and repeat warnings to China not to support Moscow’s war effort, diplomats said.
- Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called on all parties in the world to make efforts to protect international laws as “the world is evolving in a complicated manner”.
- The West is seeking to turn Ukraine “into an openly Russophobic, neo-Nazi state, a military foothold” that would threaten Russia’s security, Lavrov said during his visit to Mongolia, according to state news agency TASS.
Economy
- Switzerland President Ignazio Cassis cautioned Western allies about the legal complexities of using frozen Russian assets to help pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction, saying “the right of property is a fundamental right – is a human right”.
- Shares of Japanese trading firms Mitsui & Co and Mitsubishi Corp dropped more than 4 percent on Wednesday after former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made comments threatening the loss of oil and gas supply to Japan.
- Medvedev said a reported proposal from Japan to cap the price of Russian oil at about half its current price would lead to a market shortage that could push prices above $300-400 a barrel.
