That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Ukraine live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
To stay updated with all the latest news from Russia’s war on Ukraine, click here.
Ukraine’s military is allowed to use longer-range missiles provided by the US to strike targets inside Russia across more than just the front lines near Kharkiv if Kyiv is acting in self-defence, the Pentagon said.
President Joe Biden initially loosened the restrictions on how Ukraine could use US-provided munitions to give it another option to better defend the eastern city of Kharkiv from a relentless barrage of Russian missiles, AP reported.
Since the beginning of Russia’s 2022 invasion, the US had maintained a policy of not allowing Ukraine to use the weapons it provided to hit targets inside Russia for fear of further escalating the war.
Russia has been firing on Ukrainian targets from inside its border, treating its area as a “safe zone,” said Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary.
“As we see those forces conducting those types of operations from across the border, we’ve explained Ukraine can and does have the right to fire back to defend themselves,” Ryder told reporters Thursday.
Afternoon summary
European Union countries have formally approved the launch of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova next week, another step in the two nations’ long journey to join the 27-nation bloc. Belgium, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, said member states have agreed on a negotiating framework, AP reported.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called the start of EU accession talks a “historic step”. “Millions of Ukrainians, and indeed generations of our people, are realising their European dream,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.
South Korea has summoned the Russian ambassador to protest over its pact with North Korea. Two days ago the Russian president signed an agreement vowing mutual defence with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on a state visit to Pyongyang.
A Russian guided bomb killed two people and wounded three in a residential area of the eastern Ukrainian town of Selydove on Friday, regional prosecutors said. Five five-storey buildings and six private homes were damaged by the UMPB D-30 bomb in Selydove, about 14 km (nine miles) from the front line, the Donetsk region prosecutors said on the Telegram messaging app.
Ukraine’s military said its drones struck four oil refineries, radar stations and other military objects in Russia in an attack in the early hours of Friday. “Unmanned aerial vehicles attacked the Afipsky, Ilsky, Krasnodar, and Astrakhan oil refineries,” the Ukrainian military said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian air defences downed 70 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea and Crimea overnight, the RIA news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying on Friday. The ministry also said Russian forces destroyed six Ukrainian sea drones in the Black Sea
Three men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of trying to collect information on a person from Ukraine for a foreign intelligence agency, prosecutors said Friday. The suspects were arrested in Frankfurt on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said in a statement to AP. They were identified as Robert A., a Ukrainian citizen; Vardges I., an Armenian national; and Arman S., a Russian citizen. Their full names weren’t released in line with German privacy rules.
A member of Russia’s lower house of parliament said law enforcement authorities need to do more to protect civilians from ex-convicts who have returned home from fighting in Ukraine. Nina Ostanina, a Communist Party deputy who has been sanctioned by Western countries over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, told the gazeta.ru newspaper in an interview that violent crimes involving decommissioned soldiers “will be even more numerous” if authorities do not act.
Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that Russia could supply weapons to North Korea is “incredibly concerning”, a senior US official has said, days after Putin and the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, signed a defence pact that requires their countries to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked. Matthew Miller, a US state department spokesperson, said the provision of Russian weapons to Pyongyang “would destabilise the Korean peninsula, of course, and potentially … depending on the type of weapons they provide … violate UN security council resolutions that Russia itself has supported”.
Russian president Vladimir Putin is open to security talks with the United States but they must be “comprehensive” and include the subject of Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. He said such dialogue was needed because of an accumulation of problems relating to global security, Reuters reported.
President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia would keep developing its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Reuters reports, “to preserve the balance of power in the world”. Putin was speaking in the Kremlin at a ceremony attended by graduates of military, police and intelligence service academies.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Moldova’s potential accession to the EU was a sovereign matter for the former Soviet republic, but claimed there were many Moldovans who also wanted to see close ties to Russia. Reuters reports that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was commenting after Moldovan President Maia Sandu – who is seeking to extricate her country from Moscow’s orbit – signed a decree on the start of accession talks with the bloc which are formally meant to begin on 25 June.
The Slovak government has asked police to investigate the former defence minister Jaroslav Nad for donating fighter jets and an air defence system to Ukraine, a government official said on Friday. The new government under the leadership of Robert Fico made a sharp policy turn after it took power in October 2023 and halted any military supplies to Ukraine, although it has allowed commercial supplies to continue.
Ukraine has said is dispatching reinforcements to Chasiv Yar, the embattled strategic hilltop town in the eastern Donetsk region, a vital flashpoint whose capture could accelerate Russian advances deeper in the industrial territory.
The US will send the latest Patriot missiles “rolling off the production line” to Ukraine instead of other countries that ordered them, the White House said on Thursday. “We’re going to reprioritise the deliveries of these exports,” said John Kirby, the national security council spokesman. It also applies to Nasams, another type of air defence missile. “Deliveries of these missiles to other countries that are currently in the queue will have to be delayed,” Kirby said, though deliveries to Taiwan and Israel would not be affected.
Ukrainian drones struck a Russian airbase in a second night of attacks on the Krasnodar region, reports online said. Russian emergency officials, writing on the Telegram messaging app, confirmed three municipalities of Krasnodar came under “massive attack”. The Russian journalist-run Astra social media channel reported that Yeysk, home to a military airfield, was hit by drones and there were fires afterwards, and posted eyewitness videos. Nasa satellite fire monitoring indicated fires or hotspots at the airbase. The Krasnodar region sits across the Kerch strait from Crimea.
Ukraine can use US-supplied weapons to hit Russian forces that are firing on Ukrainian troops anywhere across the border into Russia and not just in Russian territory near Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the Pentagon said. “It’s self-defence and so it makes sense for them to be able to do that,” Ryder said.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has announced measures to protect Ukraine’s energy system, including protection for power plants under Russian fire and the development of alternative and renewable energy sources. Drone and missile strikes have knocked out half of generating capacity since March, according to official figures. Attacks overnight into Thursday hit four regions and cut power to more than 218,000 consumers, the energy ministry said.
Zelenskiy outlined plans to develop solar energy and energy storage facilities, “decentralised energy capacities”, and a schedule for critical infrastructure sites to come up with alternative energy sources. The work, he said, must be completed before winter and its increased energy demand.
Russians on Thursday reported problems with processing payments at major banks after a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyber-attack, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported. The paper said the Telegram messaging app and major mobile phone networks were also affected. The IT Army of Ukraine, a volunteer hacker group, claimed responsibility.
Three men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of trying to collect information on a person from Ukraine for a foreign intelligence agency, prosecutors said Friday.
The suspects were arrested in Frankfurt on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said in a statement to AP. They were identified as Robert A., a Ukrainian citizen; Vardges I., an Armenian national; and Arman S., a Russian citizen. Their full names weren’t released in line with German privacy rules.
A judge on Thursday ordered them kept in custody pending a possible indictment for working for a foreign secret service. In their statement, prosecutors didn’t specify what country’s intelligence agency the three are alleged to have spied for.
They said that the suspects were tasked with gathering information on a person from Ukraine in Germany, whom they didn’t identify. To that end, the trio on Wednesday allegedly scouted out a cafe in Frankfurt where that person was thought to be.
The Slovak government has asked police to investigate the former defence minister Jaroslav Nad for donating fighter jets and an air defence system to Ukraine, a government official said on Friday.
The new government under the leadership of Robert Fico made a sharp policy turn after it took power in October 2023 and halted any military supplies to Ukraine, although it has allowed commercial supplies to continue.
Donating the air defence system exposed Slovak airspace and endangered citizens, said Ìgor Melicher, defence minister and a member of the ruling Smer-SD party. “I am convinced that Nad betrayed Slovakia,” Melicher told a briefing.
“The defence ministry is filing a criminal complaint for the suspicion of committing the crime of sabotage, or treason, abuse of power and failing fiduciary duties.”
Nad has rejected any wrongdoing and said he would make the same decision again.
Updated
Russia to keep developing nuclear arsenal 'to preserve balance of power,' says Putin
President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia would keep developing its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Reuters reports, “to preserve the balance of power in the world”.
Putin was speaking in the Kremlin at a ceremony attended by graduates of military, police and intelligence service academies.
“We plan to further develop the nuclear triad as a guarantee of strategic deterrence and to preserve the balance of power in the world,” said Putin.
Russia’s nuclear triad is a reference to its land, sea and air-launched nuclear missiles. Its nuclear arsenal is the largest in the world.
It’s not clear whether Dmitry Peskov was also asked today about Ukraine joining the EU but the Kremlin has previously talked down the prospect. In December, he said that neither Ukraine or Moldova met the EU’s criteria for joining and letting Kyiv in could destabilise the bloc.
The two countries have now met the conditions, meaning the lengthy negotiations can start.
Many Moldovans want closer Russian ties, claims Kremlin
The Kremlin said on Friday that Moldova’s potential accession to the EU was a sovereign matter for the former Soviet republic, but claimed there were many Moldovans who also wanted to see close ties to Russia.
Reuters reports that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was commenting after Moldovan President Maia Sandu – who is seeking to extricate her country from Moscow’s orbit – signed a decree on the start of accession talks with the bloc which are formally meant to begin on 25 June.
“...This is not a quick process, it is a sovereign matter for each state, including Moldova,” said Peskov, when asked by reporters about the matter.
But he said Moldova had opportunities to develop in other directions at the same time and accused the country’s political leadership of mistakenly excluding such options. “We know that many people in this country believe that the country should develop in all directions, and that the future interests of the country cannot be connected only with the European Union, but with such promising markets as the Russian Federation, as well as with integration processes on the territory of the former Soviet Union,” said Peskov.
Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, has a Romanian-speaking majority and a substantial Russian-speaking minority, and its politics have oscillated between pro-western and pro-Russian parties for decades.
Updated
Zelenskiy hails news EU accession talks to begin
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called the start of EU accession talks a “historic step”.
“Millions of Ukrainians, and indeed generations of our people, are realising their European dream,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.
“Ukraine is returning to Europe, where it has belonged for centuries, as a full-fledged member of the European community,” he added.
Today, 27 EU member states approved the negotiating framework necessary to begin EU accession negotiations with Ukraine. I am grateful to @EUCouncil and @EU2024BE for their robust political will.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 21, 2024
We look forward to next week, June 25th, when Ukraine and the EU are set to hold…
Ukraine – followed by its neighbour Moldova – lodged its application to join the 27-nation EU in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Starting the negotiations will still only put the two ex-Soviet states at the beginning of what is likely to be a years-long process of reforms before they can finally become members.
Updated
A member of Russia’s lower house of parliament said law enforcement authorities need to do more to protect civilians from ex-convicts who have returned home from fighting in Ukraine.
Nina Ostanina, a Communist Party deputy who has been sanctioned by Western countries over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, told the gazeta.ru newspaper in an interview that violent crimes involving decommissioned soldiers “will be even more numerous” if authorities do not act.
Reports of Russian soldiers committing serious crimes including murder and rape after returning from Ukraine are widespread and have posed problems for the Kremlin, which portrays those fighting in its “special military operation” as heroes, Reuters reported.
Many of the offenders are men who had been released early from prison, where they were serving time for serious crimes, in exchange for fighting in the war. Some Russian prisons are set to close this year because so many of their inmates have gone to the battlefields in Ukraine.
The comments by Ostanina, published on Wednesday, amount to a rare admission from a Russian politician that returning soldiers are putting strains on local communities.
Ostanina told gazeta.ru that law enforcement should be obliged to keep regular tabs on the former soldiers, and also help them find jobs and reintegrate into society.
Russian president Vladimir Putin is open to security talks with the United States but they must be “comprehensive” and include the subject of Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
He said such dialogue was needed because of an accumulation of problems relating to global security, Reuters reported.
EU nations approve opening of enlargement talks with Ukraine and Moldova next week
European Union countries have formally approved the launch of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova next week, another step in the two nations’ long journey to join the 27-nation bloc.
Belgium, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, said member states have agreed on a negotiating framework, AP reported.
“This opens the way for launching the negotiations on Tuesday, 25 June, in Luxembourg,” the Belgian presidency said.
Following a positive assessment from the EU’s executive branch, EU leaders had already agreed last year that accession negotiations should start with both countries.
The process between the start of negotiations with Ukraine and its neighbour Moldova and their becoming members of the EU could take many years.
A Russian guided bomb killed two people and wounded three in a residential area of the eastern Ukrainian town of Selydove on Friday, regional prosecutors said.
Five five-storey buildings and six private homes were damaged by the UMPB D-30 bomb in Selydove, about 14 km (nine miles) from the front line, the Donetsk region prosecutors said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia, which began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, has dropped over 10,000 guided bombs since the start of the year, including over 3,200 in May alone, Ukrainian military spokesman Nazar Voloshyn said.
Ukraine's military says it struck four oil refineries in Russia
Ukraine’s military said its drones struck four oil refineries, radar stations and other military objects in Russia in an attack in the early hours of Friday.
“Unmanned aerial vehicles attacked the Afipsky, Ilsky, Krasnodar, and Astrakhan oil refineries,” the Ukrainian military said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
“Additionally, radar stations and electronic intelligence centres of the Russian invaders in the Bryansk region and the temporarily occupied Crimea were struck,” the statement said.
The Ukrainian military also struck drone storage and preparation sites in Russia’s Krasnodar region, Reuters reported.
Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska said that the ongoing conflict in the country has “pushed [her] close to psychological burnout”.
In an interview with The Telegraph, she said she has had to employ coping mechanisms to maintain a “mental balance”.
She said:
There are moments where I feel I am close to psychological burnout and I understand that I need rest. I try to use the moment effectively, because sometimes when we think we have rest, we don’t.
Zelenska added:
A couple of times I allowed myself to cry when it was unbearably sad but it was something I did consciously because I know I have to dive deep to the bottom to find the power to push and then I can swim again. You have to allow yourself an opportunity to cry it all out.
I think when I am scared I need to physically do something, I can compile a list of things that calm me down, and I’ll go and do those things.
She also said that her greatest hope for Ukraine is that its victory is not pyrrhic and she comes out the other side of the war with her sanity intact.
Russian air defences downed 70 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea and Crimea overnight, the RIA news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying on Friday.
The ministry also said Russian forces destroyed six Ukrainian sea drones in the Black Sea
Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that Russia could supply weapons to North Korea is “incredibly concerning”, a senior US official has said, days after Putin and the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, signed a defence pact that requires their countries to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked.
Matthew Miller, a US state department spokesperson, said the provision of Russian weapons to Pyongyang “would destabilise the Korean peninsula, of course, and potentially … depending on the type of weapons they provide … violate UN security council resolutions that Russia itself has supported”.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and South Korea’s foreign ministry said the treaty between Russia and North Korea posed a “serious threat” to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. Blinken said the US would consider “various measures” in response to the pact, which elevated ties between the sanctions-hit states to their highest level since the cold war.
South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador to protest against the pact with North Korea, as border tensions continued to rise.
Seoul has also said it would consider providing arms to Ukraine, triggering an angry response from the Russian ambassador, Georgy Zinoviev, who said attempts to blackmail and threaten Russia were unacceptable, according to Russia’s Tass news agency.
In his meeting with Zinoviev on Friday, the South’s vice foreign minister, Kim Hong-kyun, condemned the treaty and called on Russia to immediately halt military cooperation with North Korea.
Opening summary
Good morning, and welcome to our Ukraine blog where the fallout from Vladimir Putin’s visit to North Korea and Vietnam continues.
South Korea has summoned the Russian ambassador to protest over its pact with North Korea. Two days ago the Russian president signed an agreement vowing mutual defence with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on a state visit to Pyongyang.
South Korea’s government has denounced the agreement as a threat to the South’s security and said it will consider providing arms to Ukraine to help it fight Russia’s invasion.
Earlier on Friday, Kim’s powerful sister issued a vague threat of retaliation after South Korean activists flew balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border, underscoring rising tensions on the peninsula. More on that shortly, in other news:
Ukraine has said is dispatching reinforcements to Chasiv Yar, the embattled strategic hilltop town in the eastern Donetsk region, a vital flashpoint whose capture could accelerate Russian advances deeper in the industrial territory.
The US will send the latest Patriot missiles “rolling off the production line” to Ukraine instead of other countries that ordered them, the White House said on Thursday. “We’re going to reprioritise the deliveries of these exports,” said John Kirby, the national security council spokesman. It also applies to Nasams, another type of air defence missile. “Deliveries of these missiles to other countries that are currently in the queue will have to be delayed,” Kirby said, though deliveries to Taiwan and Israel would not be affected.
Ukrainian drones struck a Russian airbase in a second night of attacks on the Krasnodar region, reports online said. Russian emergency officials, writing on the Telegram messaging app, confirmed three municipalities of Krasnodar came under “massive attack”. The Russian journalist-run Astra social media channel reported that Yeysk, home to a military airfield, was hit by drones and there were fires afterwards, and posted eyewitness videos. Nasa satellite fire monitoring indicated fires or hotspots at the airbase. The Krasnodar region sits across the Kerch strait from Crimea.
Ukraine can use US-supplied weapons to hit Russian forces that are firing on Ukrainian troops anywhere across the border into Russia and not just in Russian territory near Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the Pentagon said. “It’s self-defence and so it makes sense for them to be able to do that,” Ryder said.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has announced measures to protect Ukraine’s energy system, including protection for power plants under Russian fire and the development of alternative and renewable energy sources. Drone and missile strikes have knocked out half of generating capacity since March, according to official figures. Attacks overnight into Thursday hit four regions and cut power to more than 218,000 consumers, the energy ministry said.
Zelenskiy outlined plans to develop solar energy and energy storage facilities, “decentralised energy capacities”, and a schedule for critical infrastructure sites to come up with alternative energy sources. The work, he said, must be completed before winter and its increased energy demand.
Russians on Thursday reported problems with processing payments at major banks after a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyber-attack, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported. The paper said the Telegram messaging app and major mobile phone networks were also affected. The IT Army of Ukraine, a volunteer hacker group, claimed responsibility.
