President says military commandant’s office being established in city. This live blog is closed
Russia’s defence ministry said today that its forces had regained control of the settlement of Krupets in the Kursk region, Reuters reported.
Here are some of the latest images from eastern Ukraine.
Continue reading...Germany’s Bahlsen biscuit empire used workers from Nazi-occupied Poland and Ukraine from 1940 until 1945
Germany’s Bahlsen biscuit empire has apologised for the “painful” findings of a report showing that it used several times more forced labourers than previously thought during the Nazi period.
The report was commissioned after family heiress Verena Bahlsen caused outrage in 2019 by appearing to play down the hardship suffered by hundreds of people, many of them women from Nazi-occupied Ukraine, forced to work at the family business.
Continue reading...Spokesperson for Volodymyr Zelenskiy denies WSJ claims and again accuses Russia of carrying out the sabotage
The Nord Stream gas pipeline was blown up by a small Ukrainian sabotage team in an operation that was initially approved by Volodymyr Zelenskiy and then called off, but which went ahead anyway, according to claims in a report in the Wall Street Journal.
A spokesperson for the Ukrainian president has denied the claims.
Continue reading...Kyiv’s push into Russia has psychological and political advantages, but it knows Putin cannot let it lie
Nine days into Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, and Kyiv is showing increasing confidence. Two soldiers, speaking off the record by a dusty roadside a few miles from the border, said they expected logistics functions to be brought forward “inside Russia” because supply lines were becoming stretched.
Though it is a fragmentary detail – being more specific would endanger life – it demonstrates that as Ukraine’s forces continue to advance into Kursk oblast, Kyiv is gradually becoming more committed to an incursion that may have begun brightly, but the eventual outcome of which remains profoundly uncertain.
Continue reading...Biden wrote to then US ambassador to Rome on behalf of the energy firm while his father was vice-president
Hunter Biden lobbied the US government for help in securing a lucrative energy contract in Italy while his father Joe Biden was vice-president, newly released documents show.
A tranche of previously undisclosed documents now made public under a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request reveals that the president’s son wrote to the then US ambassador to Rome, John Phillips, in 2016 seeking assistance on behalf of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, of which he was a board member.
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Ukraine’s military has said its forces in the Kursk region shot down a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber.
Kristen Michal, the Estonian prime minister, has said “we must continue to show our steadfast support to Ukraine and further raise the cost of war for Russia.”
Continue reading...Kyiv says it has also launched a major drone attack on four Russian airbases and shot down an enemy jet
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said his country’s forces are continuing to advance into Russian territory after their surprise offensive, as Kyiv said it had launched a “major” drone attack on four Russian airbases.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s troops had advanced several kilometres in the largest attack on Russia since the second world war. In his nightly address on Wednesday he said Kyiv was achieving its strategic goal in the operation and reiterated his appeal to western partners to allow long-range strikes on targets inside Russia. “The bolder the partners’ decisions, the less Putin can do,” he said.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. For the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, read our full report:
Romania’s navy has carried out a controlled explosion of a mine that had drifted to its Black Sea shore, its defence ministry said. Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey have a joint taskforce to defuse stray mines, which began floating in the Black Sea after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The ministry said the navy was alerted by local officials early on Tuesday about an unidentified object that had washed up on shore near Grindul Chituc in southeastern Romania. The area is part of the Danube Delta, which Romania shares with Ukraine.
Continue reading...Confused messaging from leaders as Kremlin attempts to play down significance of events
Russian authorities are scrambling to bring the situation in Kursk under control, a week after Ukrainian forces launched a surprise attack in the region that has left a swathe of Russian territory under Kyiv’s control.
Russia used missiles, drones and airstrikes on Tuesday in an attempt to claw back territory, with one senior commander claiming Kyiv’s advance was over, even as the evacuation of residents from border areas continued.
Continue reading...Claim by Kyiv comes as Russian official admits Ukraine has seized 28 settlements during attack on border region
Ukraine’s top commander says his forces have captured 1,000 sq km (386 square miles) of Russia’s bordering Kursk region, while Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has vowed a “worthy response” to the attack and ordered his troops to “dislodge the enemy from our territories”.
With Russia still struggling to repel the surprise assault a week after it began, Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, briefed President Volodymyr Zelenskiy by video link and said the advance into Russian territory was ongoing.
Continue reading...While thousands have had to flee their homes, there is widespread feeling that the attack is a justified defence
Last Tuesday, Oksana and her family could not escape fast enough. Though they did not know it, Ukrainian regular forces had entered Russia for the first time, and Moscow’s military wasted little time in hitting back, bombing their village around seven miles from the border.
“It was 9am and the first glide bomb hit the village,” she said, and its ferocity – “very scary, much bigger” than ordinary shelling – was such that they immediately knew they had to escape. “Our neighbour drove his children first and then came back and picked me and my sister and family,” the mother of two explained.
Continue reading...Troop numbers sent into Russia are in thousands, source says; cooling tower at Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility reportedly damaged by fire
Ukrainian sources have indicated that thousands of troops have been committed to its incursion into Russia’s Kursk province, as Moscow and Kyiv traded accusations about a fire at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant 250 miles to the south.
A Ukrainian security official told the Agence France-Presse that the aim of the incursion was to destabilise Russia and string out Russian forces with light, fast-moving attacks. It remains unclear how sustainable the operation will be in the medium term amid Kremlin threats that it will be snuffed out using Russian reserves.
Continue reading...Fighting said to be continuing, with reports of power outages near nuclear power station, despite Moscow’s claim
Russia’s defence ministry claimed it prevented Ukraine from advancing further on the fifth day of the unprecedented attack into the province of Kursk, though there were reports of regional power outages after an electricity substation was hit.
Fighting was said to be taking place in three villages between seven and 11 miles from the international border – Ivashkovskoye, Malaya Loknya and Olgovka – similar locations to where Ukraine is estimated to have advanced previously.
Continue reading...Zelenskiy aide says ‘root cause of any escalation’, including into Kursk, is Moscow’s ‘unequivocal aggression’
Ukraine has publicly justified its attack into Russian territory for the first time, amid reports that its forces are advancing towards a village 13 miles (20km) inside the Kursk region on the third day of its incursion.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to the president’s office, said “the root cause of any escalation”, including into Kursk, was “unequivocal aggression” on the part of Russia in believing it could invade Ukraine with impunity.
Continue reading...Putin’s attacks on Ukraine have become more ferocious over the summer, as the invader puts pressure on defenders all along the eastern front. How is Russia’s war evolving?
Sources: Military control and advances from the Institute for the Study of War. Core mapping from OpenStreetMap. Terrain data from Mapzen. Urban areas data from Daylight map distribution.
Continue reading...Vladimir Putin convenes meeting with top officials as defence ministry acknowledges fighting is ongoing
Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region has continued into a second day, prompting Vladimir Putin to convene a meeting with his top defence and law enforcement officials.
A report from one Russia military blogger suggested Ukrainian forces had advanced northwards, possibly as far as nine miles (15km) from the border, along a highway north of the border village of Sverdlikovo and near a major natural gas transmission hub, but this could not be verified.
Continue reading...Russian military claims it repelled incursion by 300 soldiers up to six miles into Kursk border region
Moscow has said about 300 soldiers from Ukraine launched a cross-border attack into a hitherto quiet part of the front on Tuesday, with reports of fighting at a town as deep as six miles (10km) inside Russia.
Moscow’s ministry of defence said late on Tuesday that up to “300 Ukrainian militants” from Ukraine’s 22nd mechanised brigade launched the attack at 8am, supported by “11 tanks and more than 20 armoured fighting vehicles”.
Continue reading...Ukrainian city of 1 million people hit by number of deadly aerial attacks seemingly aimed at terrorising the population
At 5pm on 28 June, Lana Yefimova left work as usual, walking from her office in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Minutes later a Russian rocket hit the nine-storey apartment block opposite her workplace and crashed through the upper floors, ripping through ceilings. “I ran back to find a fire. It was huge. My colleague Yulia was hurt. She broke her pelvis. I was in shock,” Yefimova said.
Four people were killed inside the residential building at 24a Vikonkomivska Street and 12 injured, including a pregnant woman and a baby. The attack was seemingly random – another erratic death-bringing moment in Russia’s bloody war. “They want to frighten us so we leave,” Yefimova said. “It’s politics. And terror.”
Continue reading...President confirms long-awaited arrival of US-made fighter jets as Ukrainian pilots fly overhead
Ukrainian pilots have started flying F-16s, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, confirming the long-awaited arrival of the US-made fighter jets more than 29 months since Russia’s invasion.
Ukraine’s president announced the use of F-16s, which Kyiv has long lobbied for, as he met military pilots at an airbase flanked by two of the jets, with two more flying overhead.
Continue reading...Ukrainian army reports several hits on sites including Russian airfields, oil refineries and logistics
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, praised his forces on Saturday for hitting military targets inside Russia, after his army reported several strikes including on an airfield and an oil depot.
“I would like to thank each of our soldiers and all those who work in our defence industry for striking Russian airfields, oil refineries and logistics,” he said in his daily statement.
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