Aiden Aslin has been told his execution in Russian-occupied Ukraine will be carried out, his family say
A British man sentenced to death by a Russian proxy court for fighting in Ukraine has been told the execution will be carried out, his family have said.
Aiden Aslin, 28, and Shaun Pinner, 48, were sentenced on charges of “terrorism” by a court that is not internationally recognised earlier this month in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).
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One of the leaders of the authorities imposed in occupied Ukraine has described the border between Russia and Ukraine as “worse than the Berlin Wall for the Germans”, according to a report from RIA Novosti.
It quotes Vladimir Rogov saying:
For us, the border with Russia is worse than the Berlin Wall for the Germans. According to various estimates, 60-68 per cent of the inhabitants of East Berlin and the German Democratic Republic [East Germany] had relatives in West Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany [West Germany]. In Ukraine, depending on the region, 73-85 percent residents have relatives in Russia. Accordingly, this border should not exist.
Continue reading...Moscow’s troops move on to city neighbouring Sievierodonetsk, after capturing all but chemical plant there
Sievierodonetsk and its neighbouring city, Lysychansk, continue to be battered by intense Russian shelling as Moscow edges closer to seizing the last pocket of resistance in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region.
Luhansk’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, said on Wednesday that Russian forces were moving towards Lysychansk, targeting the buildings of police, state security and prosecutors.
Continue reading...Video shared on social media shows an explosion at the Novoshakhtinsk plant
Dramatic footage has emerged from Russia of what appears to be a drone crashing into an oil refinery and setting off a fiery explosion in what could be an attack inside Russia’s borders.
Video shared on social media showed the unmanned aerial vehicle crashing into the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery, in Rostov, in what would be an embarrassing penetration of Russia’s air defence systems in its ongoing war in Ukraine.
Continue reading...Analysis finds 58% of rapeseed oil in Europe is burned for fuel despite soaring prices and climate impact
Europe and the UK are pouring 17,000 tons – or about 19 million bottles – of cooking oil into vehicle fuel tanks every day, even though it is up to two-and-a-half times more expensive than before 2021, according to new analysis.
The equivalent of another 14 million bottles a day of palm and soy oil – mostly from Indonesia and South America – is also burned for fuel, the research says.
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Reuters reports the Georgian prime minister, Irakli Garibashvili, has said at an economic conference in Qatar that his country is committed to joining Nato, but must solve its territorial problems with Russia first.
Georgia is sandwiched between Russia in the north, with Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan to its south. The breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are internationally recognised as part of Georgia’s territory, although a handful of states, including Russia, officially recognise them.
Continue reading...Alexander Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, from Alabama have been taken into detention in Donetsk
The Kremlin has said that two captured US volunteers are not covered by the Geneva conventions and could face the death penalty.
The remarks were made by Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, following claims in the Russian media that two of three US volunteers missing in Ukraine had been captured and were being held by pro-Russian separatist forces.
Continue reading...Brahim Saadoun’s sister Iman says marine sentenced to death by Russian proxies has been abandoned by his own government
The sister of Brahim Saadoun, the Moroccan man who was captured while serving in the Ukrainian military, has said she feared he has been abandoned by his own government and has called on the international community to “claim my brother”.
“I just want any authority, anybody who is willing to help, to come and help,” Iman Saadoun said in an interview with the Guardian, describing being left in limbo while seeking government support for him.
Continue reading...Muratov, who was awarded the gold medal in October 2021, said proceeds would go to Unicef to help children displaced by Ukraine war
The Nobel Peace Prize that Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov was auctioning off to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees has sold for $103.5m (£84.5m), shattering the record for a Nobel.
“I was hoping that there was going to be an enormous amount of solidarity,” Muratov said after the sale. “But I was not expecting this to be such a huge amount.”
Continue reading...Reports of strikes come as Russian forces said to be gathering for final assault on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk
• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates
Russian officials have said Ukraine launched missile strikes against three gas rigs in the Black Sea south of Odesa, in an apparent escalation of Kyiv’s attempts to weaken Russia’s maritime dominance.
Seven people were missing and three injured after the strikes, according to the head of occupied Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, who said a “rescue operation with the participation of patrol ships and aviation” was under way.
Continue reading...EU concerned over Moscow’s comments as people panic-buy in Baltic Sea exclave
Russia has provoked concern in Brussels after threatening to retaliate over Lithuania’s ban on the transit of some goods across its territory to Russian Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad.
The move by the government in Vilnius was described as “unprecedented” in Moscow, where the Russian foreign office said they reserved the right to respond to protect their national interest.
Continue reading...Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov will sell 23-carat gold medal in US on Monday, donating proceeds to charity
The editor of the Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta is auctioning his Nobel peace prize medal, with the proceeds to go to helping children displaced by the war in Ukraine.
Dmitry Muratov led one of the last major independent media outlets critical of Vladimir Putin’s government after others either closed or had their websites blocked after the invasion of Ukraine. In March, Novaya Gazeta announced it was suspending operations for the duration of the war after it became a crime to report anything on the conflict that veered from the government line.
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In the weeks after the Russian invasion, the Guardian spoke to five Ukrainian families who had fled the country. Nearly four months on from the invasion, the families talk about the realities of their new lives.
Back in March, Liudmyla Abdo was fresh out of a war zone. Fatigued, dazed and suffering from acute stress, she sat in Paris’s Buttes-Chaumont park and recounted her experience of fleeing Kyiv in the dead of night.
Russian ground and tactical air operations have remained focussed on the central Donbas sector over the weekend.
In the conflict to date, Russia’s air force has underperformed. Its failure to consistently deliver air power is likely one of the most important factors behind Russia’s very limited campaign success.
It cannot gain full air superiority and has operated in a risk-adverse style, rarely penetrating deep behind Ukrainian lines. Some of the underlying causes of its difficulties echo those of Russian ground forces.
Continue reading...Restaurants are filling up again as clubs welcome daytime revellers, but the city remains under a cloud of war
Walking around a small outdoor street market in a pretty Kyiv courtyard, one could be forgiven for forgetting for a brief moment that Ukraine is in the midst of a brutal war that not long ago saw some of its bloodiest fighting just a few miles from the capital.
A DJ is playing techno tunes, so beloved in a city that has been proudly calling itself the new Berlin, as locals sell vintage clothes.
Continue reading...‘We are ready. We warn partners,’ says Ukraine president, ahead of decision on membership application
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has predicted Russia will intensify its attacks this week, warning European partners that they too should be prepared for an increase in hostilities as Kyiv awaits a decision on its bid to join the EU.
The caution follows a European Commission recommendation to grant Kyiv candidate status to join – a diplomatic blow to Moscow.
Continue reading...Adviser to interior minister gives warning after Amnesty accused Russia of war crimes in country’s second largest city
Ukraine is losing territories and struggling to regain them since Russia began concentrating its military attacks on the country’s east, Ukrainian MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintzadze has said.
Klympush-Tsintzadze told Sky News that she hopes the military situation in eastern Ukraine will change soon. “Unfortunately, at this particular moment, Russia has gathered all this military capacity in the in the east of the country.
Continue reading...Oleksandr Goncharenko says unless the invaders are halted the eastern Ukrainian city will be razed and its people driven out
Thirteen miles from the Russian frontline lies Kramatorsk, a city at first glance eerily empty. The highway into the centre is deserted, with long, thin Ukrainian flags defiantly hanging above the street, held taut by wires.
If Russia’s revised goal is to seize Donbas, the last significant city Moscow’s forces will have to take is Kramatorsk, an industrial centre, that is 40 miles west of the fierce fighting at Sievierdonetsk.
Continue reading...Nato chief warns war could last years; Russia sends many reservists to Sievierodonetsk battle, says regional governor
Russia’s war in Ukraine could take years, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said. “We must prepare for the fact that it could take years. We must not let up in supporting Ukraine,” he said. “Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, also because of rising energy and food prices.”
Russia was sending a large number of reserve troops to Sievierodonetsk from other battle zones to try to gain full control of the besieged eastern city, the governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region said on Sunday. “Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, they will throw in all the reserves they have … because there are so many of them there already, they’re at critical mass,” Serhiy Gaidai said on national television.
A big explosion rocked an area near Sievierodonetsk on Saturday. Rodion Miroshnik, an official in the self-styled separatist administration of the Luhansk People’s Republic, posted a video of what he said was the cloud on the Telegram messaging app.
Five civilians were killed on Saturday in Ukrainian strikes on the eastern separatist city of Donetsk, according to local authorities. “As a result of the bombardment by Ukrainian forces, five people were killed and 12 others were wounded in the Donetsk People’s Republic,” the authorities said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Several Russian missiles hit a gasworks in the Izium district in eastern Ukraine, Kharkiv region governor Oleh Synehubov said on Saturday. “A large-scale fire broke out, rescuers localised the fire,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Reuters reported him adding that some other buildings had also been damaged.
Russian missiles destroyed a fuel storage depot in Novomoskovsk, a town in eastern Ukraine, on Saturday. According to the head of the regional administration, three people have been sent to the hospital.
The Pentagon is considering sending four additional rocket launchers to Ukraine, Politico reports. According to US defence department officials, speaking to the outlet on anonymity, the US may likely send four more high mobility artillery rocket systems, making their total number about eight. The decision would be “based on Ukrainian immediate needs,” the official told Politico.
Russia and Ukraine have carried out a prisoner exchange, the Kyiv Independent reports. Five captured Ukrainian individuals were returned to Ukraine on 18 June in exchange for five captured Russian individuals, according to the Ukrainian defence ministry’s intelligence directorate.
Yuliia Paievska AKA “Taira”, the Ukrainian captured paramedic who was freed from Russian captivity during the week, released a video thanking Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy for her release. “I always believed that everything would be exactly this, and everyone who is now on the other side, they know everything will work out,” she said.
Zelenskiy presented state awards to border guards in Odesa as he visited the troops in southern Ukraine on Saturday. “I want to thank you from the people of Ukraine, from our state, for the great work you are doing, for your heroic service,” the president said. “It is important that you are alive. As long as you live, there is a strong Ukrainian wall that protects our country.”
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives medals to Ukrainian troops in southern city as war with Russia grinds on in east
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said “Ukraine will definitely win” during a working trip to the southern city of Mykolaiv, as relentless fighting in the country’s east continued.
The president handed out medals and posed for selfies with the servicemen in what appeared to be an underground shelter, according to a video posted to his official Telegram account.
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Rockets hit a southern district of Ukraine’s central city of Kryvyi Rih on Saturday leading to at least two casualties, local authorities said in posts on messaging app Telegram.
The attack came as it was confirmed that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had visited the southern city of Mykolaiv during a working trip to the region, Reuters reported.
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