President reveals fighting in Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk was particularly intense and said there was ‘no justification’ for countries to delay sending aid

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The UK’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has refused to be drawn on whether she would negotiate directly with the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic over the situation of Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner. The two British men have been sentenced to death in eastern Ukraine by what Truss called a “sham trial”. She told listeners of the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme:

The two people were fighting for the Ukrainian army. They were permanently located in Ukraine and they are prisoners of war. And the case is being taken up by the Ukrainians, by the Ukrainian foreign minister.

I am doing everything I can, in the best way I can, in the way that I judge is most effective, to deliver these people’s release.

These people are prisoners of war, fighting for the Ukrainian army. And it’s important to maintain that principle. And the Russian proxies are violating the Geneva Convention. And we need to be very, very clear about that.

That’s why the best route is through the Ukrainians, and I can’t go into the details of my discussions with the Ukrainians, but I can assure you, and I can assure the families, that we’re working flat out on this.

Crews of ground attack aviation launched rocket air strikes on military facilities and equipment of units of the armed forces of Ukraine. Missile launches were carried out in pairs from low altitudes. As a result of the combat use of aviation weapons, camouflaged fortified field positions and armoured vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroyed.

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With neither side prevailing on the battlefield, there seems little prospect of negotiations.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he “simply cannot see the preconditions for ending the war” in an interview with the Financial Times.

China has always played a constructive role in the assistance to peaceful talks.

It is necessary under the present-day situation to be aware of third parties’ attempts to drag countries of the region into the conflict of world powers and to avoid their threats to take a certain side.

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A Fiji court has ruled Russian-owned superyacht Amadea be removed from the Pacific island nation by the United States because it was a waste of money for Fiji to maintain the vessel amid legal wrangling over its seizure. The yacht is linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov.

The FBI has said the $300m luxury vessel had running costs of more than $25m per year, and the US would pay to maintain the vessel after it was seized. However, the Fiji government has been footing the bill while an appeal by the vessel’s registered owner, Millemarin Investments, worked its way through Fiji’s courts.

Currently, the enemy continues to storm Sievierodonetsk, fighting continues. The Russian assault in the direction of Novookhtyrka and Voronove was also repulsed. In the area of Bilohorivka, the enemy uses sabotage and reconnaissance groups.

During the past day, ten enemy attacks were repulsed, one tank, three artillery systems, two armoured combat vehicles, one car and two ammunition depots were destroyed.

President makes rare publicised visit outside Kyiv to Lysychansk

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The Ukrainian president has visited the frontline close to the fiercest fighting between his country’s troops and Russian forces in the east, where a regional official said the situation had worsened for Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the beleaguered city of Lysychansk on Sunday, just a few kilometres south from Sievierodonetsk, the main battlefield in the east where Russia has concentrated its forces.

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On the third day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the mayor of the city of Kupyansk received a call from a Russian army commander suggesting they talk.

Russian forces were already on the outskirts of the city, in the north-eastern Kharkiv region. Mayor Gennady Matsegora released a video address explaining that he had accepted a Russian offer.