Here is the situation on Monday, June 3, 2024.
Fighting
- Ukraine imposed emergency power shutdowns in all but three regions of the country a day after Russia unleashed large-scale attacks on energy facilities, which also injured 19 people.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed that its armed forces had taken over Umanske in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The tiny village had fewer than 180 residents before Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and lies about 25km (15 miles) to the northwest of Donetsk, which is the main city of the region and under Russian occupation.
- Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, said six people were injured in Ukrainian shelling of the region, just across the border from Kharkiv. A local official also died when some ammunition detonated, he said.
- Almost 1,000 people gathered in central Kyiv to remember Iryna Tsybukh, known as Cheka, a 25-year-old high-profile journalist and volunteer paramedic who was killed in action in the northeastern Kharkiv region last week.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told defence and security leaders in Singapore that the Switzerland peace summit scheduled for later this month was the best way to end the “cruel war” in Ukraine and that he was disappointed China would not be attending. He said he had not been able to meet the Chinese delegation in Singapore. China’s foreign affairs minister, Wang Yi, said on Friday that China, which claims to be neutral in the war but has deepened ties with Moscow, would not be taking part.
- Zelenskyy and his defence minister, Rustem Umerov, held talks with United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for more than an hour on Sunday. He also met Indonesia’s President-elect Prabowo Subianto and the president of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta.
- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said NATO’s recent move to strengthen defences in the Baltic states was aimed at deterring Russia, and a signal that the security alliance would “defend every square inch of NATO territory against attacks”.
- Russia’s TASS news agency said former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, who fled the country a decade ago for fear of persecution, could be targeted for allegedly violating the Kremlin’s “foreign agent” law. Moscow added Kasparov, a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to its list of individuals supposedly acting as foreign agents soon after it began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Weapons
- White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby confirmed that US President Joe Biden had agreed to allow Ukraine to use some weapons provided by the US to strike inside Russia.
