This liveblog is closing now. You can continue to see all our coverage of the war in Ukraine here. Thank you for reading.
Canada to return seized Russian gas turbine to Germany
Canada is risking Ukraine’s ire by returning to Germany a repaired giant turbine that will speed the flow of Russian gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, Reuters reports.
Canada announced its decision Saturday after originally seizing the damaged turbine, owned by Russian gas and oil giant Gazprom, last month while it was undergoing repair in the workshops of Siemens Energy Canada.
⚡️ Reuters: Canada will deliver turbine needed for maintenance of Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline to Germany.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) July 8, 2022
Despite Ukraine opposing it, Canada will hand over the turbine to Russia's Gazprom, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources.
Kyiv urged the Canadian government not to return it to Germany, stating that such a decision would breach the integrity of sanctions against Russia. But Germany, which is facing severe gas shortages, is being threatened with a further squeeze on Russian gas by Moscow if the turbine isn’t returned, and pleaded with Canada to send it back.
Its return will support “Europe’s ability to access reliable and affordable energy as they continue to transition away from Russian oil and gas,” Canada’s energy ministry said in a statement.
In an apparent attempt at appeasement of Ukraine, Canada announced new sanctions against Russia’s energy sector. The sanctions “will apply to land and pipeline transport and the manufacturing of metals and of transport, computer, electronic and electrical equipment, as well as of machinery,” the statement said.
Here’s a handy explainer from CBC about the wrangling over the turbine.
And you can read more about Germany’s reliance on Russian energy here:
Summary
It’s past midnight Sunday in Kyiv and Moscow. Here’s what we’ve been following as the conflict in Ukraine reaches its 138th day:
- At least five people were killed Saturday, and seven others injured, by renewed Russian shelling in the eastern region of Donetsk, Ukraine officials said. A missile attack in Druzkivka, northern Donetsk, tore apart a supermarket and gouged a crater into the ground.
- US secretary of state Antony Blinken said his country’s “commitment to the people of Ukraine is resolute” while announcing more than $360m in additional aid.
- The United Nations said Ukraine’s armed forces bore a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for an assault at a nursing home in Luhansk, where dozens of elderly and disabled patients were trapped inside without water or electricity. At least 22 of the 71 patients survived, but the exact number killed remains unknown.
- Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP with the centrist Golos party, said rockets struck central Kharkiv, injuring and hospitalising four civilians, including a child.
- Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa regional military administration, said Russia forces were “purposefully” destroying crops in the Kherson region. He said fires occur in the fields every day from shelling, and added: “Russian troops do not allow locals to put out fires, destroying granaries and equipment.”
- The governor of the Luhansk region said Russian forces were creating “hell” in shelling the Donetsk region. Serhiy Haidai said Russian forces fired eight artillery shells, three mortar shells and launched nine rocket strikes overnight.
- Russia is moving forces across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, according to the ministry of defence. The latest intelligence update said a large proportion of the new infantry units were “probably” deploying with MT-LB armoured vehicles taken from long-term storage.
- The first cohort of Ukrainian soldiers arrived in the UK to be trained in combat by British forces. The programme will train up to 10,000 Ukrainians over the coming months to give volunteer recruits with little to no military experience the skills to be effective in frontline combat.
World Central Kitchen, the global, rapid response non-profit founded by celebrity chef José Andrés to provide meals to victims and first responders at the site of disasters, has posted to Twitter video of the aftermath of today’s Russian missile attack on Drujkivka, Donetsk.
UPDATE from WCK’s Artem who is on the scene of a big missile attack in the city center of Drujkivka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Our WCK team from Kramatorsk arrived with food & water for residents and everyone helping clear the rubble. #ChefsForUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/rzmwRpz5KD
— World Central Kitchen (@WCKitchen) July 9, 2022
Here are some more images from Ukraine, sent to us over the news wires on Saturday.
The New York Times on Saturday published an in-depth news analysis predicting the conflict in Ukraine could devolve into a long-lasting war of attrition, with Russian president Vladimir Putin “gambling that he can outlast a fickle, impatient West”.
The outcome, the newspaper says, is “likely to be shaped by whether the US and its allies can maintain their military, political and financial commitments to holding off Russia”.
It notes the US has committed $54bn (£45bn) in military and other aid to Ukraine, which is expected to last into next year, but states there is unlikely to be much appetite for pledging anywhere near as much again when stocks of weapons from the US and European allies begin to run low.
Democratic senator for Delaware Chris Coons, a close ally of President Joe Biden, told the newspaper that the allies needed to be “determined” in continuing to support Ukraine:
I worry about the fatigue factor of the public in a wide range of countries because of the economic costs and because there are other pressing concerns.
Exactly how long this will go, exactly what the trajectory will be, we don’t know right now.
But we know if we don’t continue to support Ukraine, the outcome for the US will be much worse.
The Guardian is committed to occasionally sharing with readers other media outlets’ coverage of the conflict in Ukraine. You can read the New York Times analysis here.
At least five killed in Russian shelling of Donetsk: Ukraine officials
It’s Richard Luscombe in the US picking up the blog from my colleague Nadeem Badshah. I’ll be guiding you through the next few hours. Thanks for joining me.
Officials in Ukraine say at least five people were killed in renewed Russian shelling Saturday of the country’s eastern Donetsk region, AFP reports.
A missile attack in Druzhkivka, northern Donetsk, tore apart a supermarket and gouged a crater into the ground, the news agency said.
At least five people were killed in the Donetsk region in the past 24 hours, and seven injured, Ukrainian officials said in a Saturday afternoon update.
Oleksandr Vilkul, mayor of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine, said Russia attacked the city with cluster munitions, killing at least one person and injuring two.
Russia’s defence ministry said it inflicted heavy losses in the Mykolaiv and Dnepropetrovsk regions, in southern and central Ukraine respectively, and claimed strikes on Donetsk and the Kharkiv region.
Russia is unlikely to withdraw from a swathe of land across Ukraine’s southern coast and will defeat Ukrainian forces in the whole of the eastern Donbas region, Russia’s ambassador to the UK has said.
When asked how the conflict might end, Andrei Kelin said it was difficult to see Russian and Russian-backed forces withdrawing from the south of Ukraine, and that Ukraine’s soldiers would be pushed back from all of Donbas.
“We are going to liberate all of the Donbas,” Kelin told Reuters.
“Of course, it is difficult to predict the withdrawal of our forces from the southern part of Ukraine because we have already experience that after withdrawal, provocations start and all the people are being shot and all that.”
Updated
Zelenskiy dismisses several Ukrainian ambassadors
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has dismissed Kyiv’s ambassador to Germany on Saturday as well as several other top foreign envoys, the presidential website said.
In a decree that gave no reason for the move, he announced the sacking of Ukraine’s ambassadors to Germany, India, the Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary, Reuters reports.
It was not immediately clear whether the envoys would be handed new jobs.
Kyiv’s relations with Germany, which is heavily reliant on Russian energy supplies and is also Europe’s biggest economy, have been a particularly sensitive matter.
The two countries are at odds over a German-made turbine undergoing maintenance in Canada.
Germany wants Ottawa to return the turbine to the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom to pump gas to Europe.
Kyiv has urged Canada to keep the turbine, saying that shipping it to Russia would be a violation of sanctions imposed on Moscow.
Updated
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said sanctions against Russia are working, and repeated calls for more deliveries of high-precision western weapons, Reuters reports.
“Russians desperately try to lift those sanctions which proves that they do hurt them. Therefore, sanctions must be stepped up until Putin drops his aggressive plans,” Kuleba told a forum in Dubrovnik, Croatia by video link.
Updated
Updated
Updated
Earlier, we reported on allegations from Ukrainian officials that Russian forces are “purposefully” destroying crops in the Kherson region.
In a post on Facebook, local police forces said they have opened criminal proceedings after constant shelling and Russian forces not permitting the extinguishing of fires in occupied land.
Police said large-scale fires are a daily occurrence, burning through hundreds of hectares of wheat, barley and other grain crops, in addition to forests.
The post said:
Due to constant shelling, it is extremely difficult to extinguish such fires in the de-occupied territories, and in the occupied lands the Russians deliberately do not allow extinguishing the occupation, the immigrants destroy grain warehouses, agricultural machinery and solar power plants.
Updated
British forces have begun training Ukrainian soldiers in a new programme to help in their fight against Russia. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, visited the military camp in the north-west of England where up to 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers will arrive for specialist military training.
Updated
Summary
It’s past 5pm in Ukraine – here are the latest updates:
-
On Saturday the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the US’s “commitment to the people of Ukraine is resolute” while announcing more than $360m in additional aid.
- The United Nations has said Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for an assault that took place at a nursing home in Luhansk, where dozens of elderly and disabled patients were trapped inside without water or electricity. At least 22 of the 71 patients survived the assault, but the exact number of people killed remains unknown.
- Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP with the centrist Golos party, has said rockets struck central Kharkiv, injuring and hospitalising four civilians, including a child.
- Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa regional military administration, has said Russia forces are “purposefully” destroying crops in the Kherson region. He said fires occur in the fields every day from shelling, and added: “Russian troops do not allow locals to put out fires, destroying granaries and equipment.”
- The governor of the Luhansk region has said Russian forces are creating “hell” in shelling the Donetsk region. Serhiy Haidai said Russian forces fired eight artillery shells, three mortar shells and launched nine rocket strikes overnight.
-
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has expressed concerns about China’s alignment with Russia, after meeting with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, in Indonesia. Blinken said the US saw no signs “at this moment in time” that Russia was willing to engage in meaningful diplomacy.
- Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region was also shelled on Saturday, according to the region’s governor. Pavlo Kyrylenko said the cities of Druzhkivka, Slovyansk, Chasovoy Yar, Hirnyk and Svitlodar had been attacked.
- Russia is moving forces across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, according to Britain’s Ministry of Defence. The latest intelligence update said a large proportion of the new infantry units were “probably” deploying with MT-LB armoured vehicles taken from long-term storage.
- The first cohort of Ukrainian soldiers have arrived in the UK to be trained in combat by British forces. The programme will train up to 10,000 Ukrainians over the coming months to give volunteer recruits with little to no military experience the skills to be effective in frontline combat. About 1,050 UK service personnel are being deployed to run the programme, which will take place at Ministry of Defence sites across the the UK.
Updated
Images are coming through on the wires of an exhibition of Ukrainian army hardware and weapons left in the city of Lysychansk, after troops fled.
Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin declared victory in the eastern Ukrainian region and told Russian troops to rest and “increase their combat capabilities”, a day after Ukrainian forces withdrew from their last remaining stronghold in the province.
On Saturday, the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, wrote on Telegram: “Luhansk region is not occupied – a small part of the region is held by the armed forces of Ukraine, despite the Russians’ declarations of victory.”
Updated
An investigation by the Times has found 18 properties in England owned by the Russian state that it says could be seized and given to Ukraine.
The Times said Ukraine was also considering legal action to take possession of the 18 properties, which could be worth up to £100m.
Vadym Prystaiko, the Ukrainian ambassador to the UK, said:
We appreciate Britain and the EU said they would help us rebuild Ukraine but it’s Russia that needs to pay for that ... For us, this would be a straightforward way of doing it.
Updated
On Saturday, following his departure from Indonesia, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the US’s “commitment to the people of Ukraine is resolute” while announcing more than $360mn in aid.
Our commitment to the people of Ukraine is resolute. The United States is providing nearly $368 million in additional humanitarian aid to support people inside Ukraine and refugees forced to flee their country to seek safety in the midst of Russia's brutal war.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) July 9, 2022
Earlier, we reported on Blinken’s meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, during which they discussed Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, and Blinken raised concerns over Beijing’s alignment with Moscow.
“I don’t believe China is acting in a way that is neutral,” Blinken said.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images to be sent to us from Ukraine and elsewhere over the newswires.
Updated
UN says Ukraine bears share of blame for nursing home attack
The United Nations has said Ukraine’s armed forced bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for an assault that took place at a nursing home in Luhansk, where dozens of elderly and disabled patients were trapped inside without water or electricity, two weeks after Russia launched it’s invasion.
According to AP, Ukrainian authorities placed the fault on Russian forces, accusing them of killing more than 50 civilians in an unprovoked attack. At least 22 of the 71 patients survived the assault, but the exact number of people killed remains unknown, according to the UN.
However, the United Nations has now said Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in the village of Stara Krasnyanka.
The report by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights did not conclude that either side committed war crimes, but said the battle at the nursing home was an example of concerns over the potential use of “human shields” to prevent military operations in certain areas.
Updated
A Ukrainian MP, Kira Rudik with the centrist Golos party, said rockets have struck central Kharkiv, injuring and hospitalising 4 civilians, including a child.
Rocket attacks on the centre of #Kharkiv. 4 civilians were injured and hospitalised. One of them is a child. And a young woman who suffered shelling in #KryvyiRih died in hospital. We ask the whole world to help us stop the #russian terrorists!#StopPutinNOW
— Kira Rudik (@kiraincongress) July 9, 2022
In case you missed it earlier, British forces have begun training Ukrainian soldiers in a new programme to help in their fight against Russia.
Up to 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers will arrive in the UK for specialist military training lasting several weeks. The first cohort met the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, on Thursday, the Ministry of Defence confirmed.
Wallace, widely expected to launch a campaign to replace Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative party, described the programme as the next phase of Britain’s support to the Ukrainian army.
“Using the world-class expertise of the British army, we will help Ukraine to rebuild its forces and scale up its resistance as they defend their country’s sovereignty and their right to choose their own future,” he said.
Ukraine is losing up to 200 soldiers every day, meaning that training reinforcements away from the threat of Russian attacks is critical to the country’s war effort.
Updated
Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa regional military administration, has said Russia forces are “purposefully” destroying crops in the Kherson region.
Sharing photos from local police of fields on fire and scorched, Bratchuk said:
Due to shelling with incendiary shells, large-scale fires occur every day in the fields, in protective strips and forests throughout the territory of the region. In addition, Russian troops do not allow locals to put out fires, destroying granaries and equipment.
Updated
Summary
It’s past 1pm in Ukraine. Here’s a summary of the day so far:
- The governor of the Luhansk region has said Russian forces are creating “hell” in shelling the Donetsk region. Serhiy Haidai said Russian forces fired 8 artillery shells, 3 mortar shells and launched 9 rocket strikes overnight.
-
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken expressed concerns about China’s alignment with Russia, after meeting with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, in Indonesia. Blinken said the US saw no signs “at this moment in time” that Russia was willing to engage in meaningful diplomacy.
- Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region was also shelled on Saturday, according to the region’s governor. Pavlo Kyrylenko said the cities of Druzhkivka, Slovyansk, Chasovoy Yar, Hirnyk and Svitlodar had been attacked.
- Russia is moving forces across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, according to Britain’s Ministry of Defence. The latest intelligence update said a large proportion of the new infantry units were “probably” deploying with MT-LB armoured vehicles taken from long-term storage.
- The first cohort of Ukrainian soldiers have arrived in the UK to be trained in combat by British forces. The programme will train up to 10,000 Ukrainians over the coming months to give volunteer recruits with little to no military experience the skills to be effective in frontline combat. About 1,050 UK service personnel are being deployed to run the programme, which will take place at Ministry of Defence sites across the the UK.
- Ukraine’s deputy prime minister has asked all residents in the Russian-occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to “evacuate by all possible means”. “Please leave – our army will begin retaking these areas. Our determination is rock solid. And it will be very difficult later to open humanitarian corridors when children are involved,” said Iryna Vereshchuk, according to Ukrainian media.
Updated
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, left the G20 meeting of leading economies early on Friday after telling his counterparts that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not responsible for a global hunger crisis and that sanctions designed to isolate Russia amounted to a declaration of war.
Watch more here:
Updated
Here are some of the latest images to be sent to us from Ukraine and elsewhere over the newswires.
Updated
The governor of the Luhansk region has said Russian forces are creating “hell” in shelling the Donetsk region.
In a Telegram post on Saturday, Serhiy Haidai said:
It may seem that the invaders are conducting an offensive operation west of Lysychansk and that’s all. However, we are trying to contain the armed formations of the Russians along the entire frontline. They do not stop trying to break into the neighbouring region along the administrative border. They attack from several directions. Where it is inconvenient for them to go forward, they create real hell, shelling the territories on the horizon. Therefore, danger is coming everywhere – from Kreminnaya to Popasnaya.
Haidai said Russian forces fired 8 artillery shells, 3 mortar shells and launched 9 rocket strikes overnight.
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, were holding talks on the Indonesian island of Bali on Saturday, a day after they both attended a gathering of top diplomats from the G20 countries.
Blinken discussed Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, and raised concerns over Beijing’s alignment with Moscow, AP reports.
Speaking to reporters after talks with Wang, which lasted more than five hours, he said:
We are concerned about the PRC’s alignment with Russia. I don’t believe China is acting in a way that is neutral.
Blinken said they saw no signs “at this moment in time” that Russia was willing to engage in meaningful diplomacy, according to Reuters.
The aggression is not only against Ukraine, he said but against the basic principles of the world order. “We will see in coming days if Russia got the message at G20.”
Updated
Ukraine restores Danube River ports in emergency effort to get grain out
Ukraine is restoring and expanding some of its long-decommissioned river ports on the Danube to facilitate the exportation of grain amid Russia’s Black Sea blockade.
Before the war, Ukrainian river ports on the Danube were seldom used, with some of them in complete disrepair. However, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its control of exit routes to the Black Sea, Kyiv is resuscitating its old river harbours in order to avoid the sea blockade and accelerate the exportation of the country’s wheat.
“Take the example of the Reni River port,’’ Alla Stoyanova, the head of the department of agricultural policy of the Odesa region, told the Guardian. The port was among the most important of the Danube region during the Soviet Union and a passageway to Romania. “It wasn’t used at all recently. So now we are working to expand it, alongside other river ports, to increase capacity. As we speak, over 160 ships are awaiting in the Black Sea to enter the Sulina canal, but they can’t because the capacity of that canal is only 5-6 ships a day.”
Read more from my colleagues Lorenzo Tondo in Odesa and Pjotr Sauer:
Updated
Russian shelling of the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih has killed two people and injured three, according to the governor of Dnipropetrovsk.
In a Telegram post, Valentyn Reznichenko also said:
A 43-year-old man is in the hospital. This is the father of the dead girl. How to tell him that his child is no longer there...
Updated
Earlier we reported on Ukrainian soldiers arriving in UK for training. About 1,050 UK service personnel are running the programme, which will train up to 10,000 Ukrainians over the coming months.
The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, who visited the training this week, said:
This ambitious new training programme is the next phase in the UK’s support to the armed forces of Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression. Using the world-class expertise of the British army, we will help Ukraine to rebuild its forces and scale up its resistance as they defend their country’s sovereignty and their right to choose their own future.
Updated
A woman’s portrait painted in the blue and yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag and also streaked with blood-red paint is among 300 pictures by Ukrainian children being displayed in a Kyiv bomb shelter.
The exhibition – titled Children. War. Future – opened to journalists on Friday in a central Kyiv metro station that has been closed since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on 24 February, Agence France-Presse reports.
Olena Sotnyk, an exhibition organiser as well as a Ukrainian politician and adviser to the prime minister, said: “It’s worth reminding adults – the whole world – that children see all this, experience it, feel it. And, unlike us, they can’t make decisions.
“They expect adults and the world to act to stop the war.”
The paintings by Ukrainian children from across the country depict horrors in places such as Mariupol – a city brutally besieged and bombed by Russian forces – and Bucha, one of the first towns where civilians were found killed en masse.
Others are optimistic: a smiling soldier straps on a helmet, a woman wears a blue and yellow wreath of flowers with a dove surrounded by multicoloured flowers.
But the captions are unambiguous: “No to war” and “I don’t want to die”.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images to be sent to us from Ukraine and elsewhere over the newswires.
Updated
Russia launches shelling in east Ukraine
Russia launched shelling of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Saturday, according to the region’s governor.
Pavlo Kyrylenko said that according to “preliminary information”, there had been a missile strike in the city of Druzhkivka. He said a hospital, the Palace of Culture, residential buildings and a playground were damaged. They were awaiting information about victims.
In Slovyansk, a home was targeted, burying the owner under rubble. Kyrylenko said rescue workers are on site.
Russian forces also fired at a railway station in Chasovoy Yar, the governor said, where several people were injured. And overnight, the city of Hirnyk came under fire, he said, cutting power lines, wounding two civilians and damaging residential buildings and infrastructure. Parts of Svitlodar were also under fire.
“The only correct way out is evacuation!” Kyrylenko said in a post on Telegram.
Updated
Germany says it hopes to convince Canada to deliver a turbine needed to maintain the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, with Russia waiting on the machine’s arrival before increasing supplies, Agence France-Presse reports.
Germany is seeking to bolster waning energy supplies, but Ukraine has accused Berlin of giving in to Russian “blackmail” after Moscow blamed reduced supplies on the need for pipeline repairs, not market conditions amid the Ukraine war.
The turbine is currently undergoing maintenance at a Canadian site owned by the German industrial giant Siemens.
Russian energy behemoth Gazprom last month blamed the issue for a reduction in supplies to Germany via the controversial pipeline, with Berlin facing a serious energy crisis.
Berlin says it has been in regular contact with Ottawa in recent weeks to ensure the turbine’s swift transfer back to Europe without Canada falling foul of Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia.
Germany has been concerned by a wider pipeline maintenance session set to start on Monday and for about 10 days.
A German government spokesperson, Steffen Hebestreit, said on Friday that Berlin had received “positive signals” from Canada.
Updated
Russia is moving forces across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, according to Britain’s Ministry of Defence.
The latest intelligence update, published on Saturday, said a large proportion of the new infantry units were “probably” deploying with MT-LB armoured vehicles taken from long-term storage.
The update said Russia has long considered them unsuitable for most infantry transport roles.
Despite President Putin’s claim on 7 July 2022 that the Russian military has ‘not even started’ its efforts in Ukraine, many of its reinforcements are ad hoc groupings, deploying with obsolete or inappropriate equipment.
This is Geneva Abdul in London. I’ll be taking you through updates over the next few hours.
Updated
A Ukrainian regional official has warned of deteriorating living conditions in a city captured by Russian forces two weeks ago, saying Sievierodonetsk is without water, power or a working sewage system while the bodies of the dead decompose in hot apartment buildings.
Governor Serhiy Haidai said on Friday that Russian forces were unleashing indiscriminate artillery barrages as they tried to secure their gains in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk province.
Moscow this week claimed full control of Luhansk, but the governor and other Ukrainian officials said their troops retained a small part of the province.
“Fierce battles are going on in several villages on the region’s border,” Haidai told Associated Press. “The Russians are relying on tanks and artillery to advance, leaving scorched earth.”
Occupied Sievierodonetsk, meanwhile, “is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe”, the governor wrote on social media. “The Russians have completely destroyed all the critical infrastructure.”
The Guardian’s weekly wrap is here and contains a selection of crucial points from the past week’s coverage, from the fighting in Donbas and the retaking of Snake Island to the $750bn “Marshall plan” to rebuild postwar Ukraine.
Ukrainian soldiers arrive in UK for training
The Ukrainian soldiers being trained in the UK have met UK defence secretary Ben Wallace, Press Association reports, at the start of their training, which is expected to last several weeks.
Wallace said: “This ambitious new training programme is the next phase in the UK’s support to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression. Using the world-class expertise of the British Army we will help Ukraine to rebuild its forces and scale up its resistance as they defend their country’s sovereignty and their right to choose their own future.”
The training will give volunteer recruits with little or no military experience the skills to be effective in frontline combat. Based on the UK’s basic soldier training, the course covers weapons handling, battlefield first aid, fieldcraft, patrol tactics and the law of armed conflict.
The government has procured thousands of AK assault rifles for the programme, meaning Ukrainian soldiers can train on the weapons they will be using on the front line.
Updated
Summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here is a summary of the latest developments.
- Ukraine’s deputy prime minister has asked all residents in the Russian-occupied territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to “evacuate by all possible means”. “Please leave – our army will begin retaking these areas. Our determination is rock solid. And it will be very difficult later to open humanitarian corridors when children are involved,” said Iryna Vereshchuk, according to Ukrainian media.
- The first cohort of Ukrainian soldiers have arrived in the UK to be trained in combat by British forces. The programme will train up to 10,000 Ukrainians over the coming months to give volunteer recruits with little to no military experience the skills to be effective in frontline combat. Around 1,050 UK service personnel are being deployed to run the programme, which will take place at Ministry of Defence sites across the the UK.
- Luhansk’s governor said Russian forces were indiscriminately shelling populated areas on Friday, Reuters reports. “They are not stopped even by the fact that civilians remain there, dying in houses and yards,” Serhiy Gaidai said.
- Belgium will reopen its embassy in Kyiv and send a new ambassador, the Belgian prime minister confirmed. The embassy would open next week and ambassador Peter Van De Velde, whom Alexander De Croo met before he was sent to Ukraine, will represent Belgium.
- Ukraine’s military says it has destroyed two Russian command posts near Kherson, according to Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for the joint southern command of Ukraine’s armed forces.
- The Ukrainian foreign minister criticised Russia at the G20 summit in Bali, saying it prefers to follow its own rules instead of cooperating multilaterally with the international community. “I am strong supporter of multilateralism,” Dmytro Kuleba said. “But it lacks tools to protect itself from those who disrespect other nations, who prefer to play with common rules instead of playing by the rules. We have such a country at this table today – Russia.”
- The Ukrainian parliament adopted a set of new laws on Friday during its plenary session. The new laws include safety guarantees for journalists working in battle areas, improved social protection for rescuers, and postponed transitioning to keep records of the gas volumes in units of energy.
- The US is sending four more Himars, or high mobility artillery rocket systems, to Ukraine, a US senior defence official said at a press briefing on Friday. The four additional Himars will bring the total number given to Ukraine to 12. According to the official, the first eight were especially useful as the fighting in Donbas against Russian forces evolved into an artillery fight.
