At least two people have been killed and seven injured after “massive shelling” pummelled the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, officials say. City mayor Vadim Lyakh called on residents to evacuate after Russian forces struck a market and a residential area.
The governor of the Donetsk region has also urged 350,000 civilians to evacuate in light of an imminent Russian offensive. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that getting people out is necessary to save lives and to enable the Ukrainian army to better defend towns from the Russian advance.
Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk said on Wednesday that fighting continues in the villages around Lysychansk. Serhai Haidai said “some settlements have already been under one or another control twice”. He repeated that up to 15,000 civilians remain in Lysychansk and 8,000 in Sievierodonetsk, adding “today’s videos from Lysychansk are painful to watch”.
The battle for Sloviansk is likely to be the next key contest in the struggle for Donbas as Russian forces approach within 10 miles (16km) of the Donetsk town, the UK Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday. Russian forces from the eastern and western groups of forces are likely now about 16km north of Sloviansk as central and southern groups of forces also pose a threat to the town, according to the latest British intelligence report.
Russia’s defence ministry has claimed its forces destroyed two advanced US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) rocket systems and ammunition depots in eastern Ukraine. It also said Russian forces destroyed two ammunition depots storing rockets for the HIMARS near the frontline in a village south of Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. These claims have not been independently verified.
The premises of a higher educational institution in the Kyiv region of Kharkiv have been destroyed by Russian weapons, according to the governor of the region, Oleh Synyehubov
The first rotation of Ukrainian soldiers has arrived in the UK for training, according to the defence secretary, Ben Wallace. The training is part of a programme that aims to train up to 10,000 new Ukrainian recruits alongside a £2.3bn military aid package.
Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin is in Ukraine today, and has visited the Borodyanka area on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv. The Irish prime minister said: “The people of Ireland stand with Ukraine and its people in the face of Russia’s immoral and unprovoked war of terror. The bombardment and attacks on civilians are nothing short of war crimes.”
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the EU needs to make emergency plans to prepare for a complete cut-off of Russian gas. The commission is working on a “European emergency plan” with the first proposals to be presented by the middle of the month, she said. “If worst comes to worst, then we have to be prepared,” she said.
Austria has begun the process of ejecting the Russian energy company Gazprom from its major gas storage facility at Haidach.
The US and other allies have called for Russian and Belarusian national governing bodies of sports to be suspended from international sport federations, prompting Russia to describe the move as “Russophobic”.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has called on all parties in the world to make efforts to protect international laws as “the world is evolving in a complicated manner”.
China is willing to deepen cooperation with Russia within multilateral frameworks including the G20, the Chinese vice-foreign minister, Ma Zhaoxu, told the Russian ambassador to China, Andrey Denisov.
Russian-backed separatists have seized two foreign-flagged ships in the Russian-occupied port city of Mariupol and claimed they are “state property”. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) informed two shipping companies that their vessels were the subject of “forcible appropriation of movable property with forced conversion into state property”.
Russia has denied reports that a Russian-flagged ship is being held and investigated by Turkish authorities in the Black Sea port of Karasu over claims its cargo was stolen from Ukraine. Turkish customs officials acted after Kyiv claimed the Zhibek Zholy was illegally transporting 7,000 tonnes of grain out of Russian-occupied Berdiansk, a Ukrainian port in the south-east of the country. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Alexei Zaitsev, said the ship was “undergoing standard procedures”.
Ukraine has asked Turkey to investigate three additional Russian ships that it alleges transported stolen grain. A 13 June letter seen by Reuters revealed that the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office asked Turkey’s ministry of justice to investigate and provide evidence on three ships that it believes to have allegedly transported stolen grain from occupied Ukrainian territories such as Kherson.
The UN has documented 270 cases of “arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance” of civilians in parts of Ukraine held by Russian and Russian-backed forces, according to the UN’s human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet. In a speech at the same session at the UN’s human rights council, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Emine Dzhaparova accused Russia of kidnappings on a “massive” scale.
Latvia will reinstate compulsory military service, its defence minister, Artis Pabriks, announced on Tuesday following growing tension with neighbouring Russia amid Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
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Nearly 9 million people have left Ukraine since Vladimir Putin invaded, the UN refugee agency has said. The UN refugee agency announced on Wednesday that 8.793 million people had crossed out of Ukraine since 24 February, while Donetsk’s governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, urged the region’s 350,000 people to flee amid reports of fresh deaths and injuries.
