Here is the situation on Monday, May 27, 2024.
Fighting
- Russia said on Monday its forces had captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine — Netailove in the Donetsk region, and Ivanivka in the northeastern Kharkiv region. Ukraine has yet to issue a statement on Moscow’s claim.
- One person was killed and three others were injured on Monday in a Ukrainian drone attack on a gas station in Russia’s Oryol region near the Ukrainian border, according to Andrei Klychkov, the regional governor. Another drone attack was then launched after the arrival of emergency services on the scene, he said.
- The death toll in Russia’s weekend attack on a hardware hypermarket in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city, rose to 16, with dozens more injured, according to regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov.
- Ukrainian prosecutors said Russian shelling killed three people in three different towns in the eastern Donetsk region.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Russia was preparing to intensify its offensive along Ukraine’s northern border. He did not go into detail but Ukrainian officials have expressed strong concern about the Sumy region. Both Kharkiv city and Sumy with about 250,000 people are within about 25km (15 miles) of the Russian border.
- Russia claimed to have captured the village of Berestove in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, located on the eastern front line close to the Luhansk region.
- Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces were carrying out offensive attacks across the 1,000-kilometre (620 miles) front line, with pitched battles in the Chasiv Yar direction of the Donetsk region, where “the intensity of the hostilities is quite high” according to a statement from Ukraine’s General Staff.
- Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down 12 missiles and all 31 drones launched by Russia over southern, central, western and northern Ukraine. The air force said Russia launched a total of 14 missiles and 36 drones. It did not say what had happened to those that were not shot down or whether they caused any damage.
Politics and diplomacy
- Zelensky has landed in Spain Monday for talks with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez with the pair due to ink a deal increasing Madrid’s military aid to Kyiv. El Pais newspaper reported earlier on Monday that Spain plans to send Patriot missiles and Leopard tanks to Ukraine as part of a 1.13 billion euro ($1.23 billion) weapon package announced last month.
- A German former soldier was sentenced to three and a half years in jail on Monday for sharing secret military information with Russia in the wake of the outbreak of war in Ukraine. A court in Duesseldorf found the defendant, named only as Thomas H., guilty of passing on information on his own initiative from his post in the military procurement service.
- Zelenskyy appealed to United States President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to personally attend a June 15-16 Ukraine peace summit being convened in Switzerland. Bern has said 160 delegations have been invited, but that Russia will not attend.
- Zelenskyy will meet Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Spain at noon (10:00 GMT) on Monday. It is Zelenskyy’s first official visit to Spain since he was elected in 2019, and comes as he tries to rally Ukraine’s allies to send more military aid to his country.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin, making his third foreign trip since he secured a fifth term in March, arrived in Uzbekistan where he was met by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev ahead of the start of formal talks. Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union before the country broke up.
- Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda was returned for a second term in an election marked by security concerns over neighbouring Russia. Nauseda established himself as a staunch supporter of Ukraine in his first term.
Weapons
- Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni reiterated her opposition to Ukraine using Western-supplied weapons supplied on targets in Russia, after the NATO chief suggested in an interview last week with the United Kingdom’s Economist newspaper that Kyiv should be allowed to strike targets beyond its border.
