Here is the situation on Friday, June 21, 2024.
Fighting
- Three people were killed and four others injured, including a 14-year-old boy, after Russia attacked the village of Rozkishne, about 25km (16 miles) from the front line, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Prosecutors said Russia used a Smerch system to launch cluster munitions.
- Seven workers were injured and power supplies cut off to more than 218,000 people after Russia launched a barrage of missiles and drones across four regions of Ukraine causing “significant” damage to a thermal power plant, officials said.
- Ukraine’s rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said 10 Ukrainian children and their families had been returned after being forced to live in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.
- Russian officials reported fires at two fuel depots in the Russian regions of Tambov and Adygea after Ukraine’s SBU security agency said it carried out drone attacks in the area.
Politics and diplomacy
- A Russian military court jailed 27-year-old teacher Daniil Kliuka for 20 years after finding him guilty of “high treason” for sending money to Ukraine. Kliuka was arrested in February 2023 in the Lipetsk region, south of Moscow. He said the money was for relatives in Russian-occupied parts of the country.
- Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American woman, went on trial behind closed doors for alleged treason after authorities accused her of donating money to Ukraine. Karelina was arrested in January while visiting her parents in Yekaterinburg and could face a life sentence if found guilty.
- The lawyer for Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who was jailed in December 2022 for condemning Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, told the AFP news agency that Yashin had been moved to a punishment cell. Yashin is serving an eight-and-a-half-year sentence.
- Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, was set to become the next secretary-general of NATO after Romania’s president withdrew his own candidacy
Weapons
- South Korea said it might provide weapons to Ukraine – reversing a longstanding policy that bars it from selling weapons into active conflict zones – after Russia and North Korea announced a new mutual defence pact where each would provide military assistance to the other if they were the target of armed aggression.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin, who made his first visit to Pyongyang in 24 years, said Seoul would be making a “big mistake” if it supplied arms to Ukraine, and said Moscow was prepared to send weapons to North Korea.
- Romania said it would send one of its two operational Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine.
- The White House said it would prioritise deliveries of anti-air missiles to Kyiv, sending the weapons to Ukraine ahead of other countries that have placed orders.
- Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder said Ukraine was authorised to use US-supplied weapons to hit Russian forces anywhere across the border into Russia and not just in the area around the northeastern Kharkiv region. “The ability to be able to fire back when fired upon is really what this policy is focused on,” Ryder said.
