Category Archives: Ukraine

Russia-Ukraine war live: Nato chief ‘absolutely certain’ summit will have ‘unity and a strong message’ on Ukraine membership

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General secretary Jens Stoltenberg comments made at press conference in Vilnius ahead of Nato summit

Russia’s ministry of defence has published an image of Valery Gerasimov for the first time since the failed Wagner uprising of 24 June. Gerasimov was one of the military leaders that Yevgeney Prigozhin had been railing against for weeks before ordering his mercenaries to march on Moscow.

In a video clip posted to the ministry’s official social media channels, Gerasimov is seen receiving reports about claimed attempts by Ukrainian forces to strike targets in Crimea, Rostov and other regions.

This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.

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US could agree to sell Turkey F-16 jets so it will allow Sweden to join Nato

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Erdoğan throws another obstacle in way of agreement by insisting Turkish EU membership be back on table

Joe Biden will try to nail down a four-country deal that would lead to Turkey allowing Sweden into Nato in return for the sale of US F-16 jets to Ankara, on the condition they are not used to threaten Greece.

But Recep Tayyip Erdoğan threw a surprise obstacle in the way of Biden’s plan by announcing he wanted Turkey’s stalled application to join the EU to be included in the package. Speaking at the airport before departing for the Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Turkish president said: “First, let’s pave the way for Turkey in the European Union, and then we will pave the way for Sweden just as we did for Finland.”

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Wagner boss met Vladimir Putin five days after mutiny, Kremlin says

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Russian president’s spokesperson says Yevgeny Prigozhin among 35 of group’s commanders invited to Moscow

The Kremlin has said the Wagner group head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, met Vladimir Putin on 29 June, five days after his mercenary fighters marched towards Moscow in an aborted rebellion.

The Russian president’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that Putin invited 35 senior Wagner commanders including Prigozhin to the Kremlin, adding that the meeting lasted three hours.

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Australia to send surveillance aircraft to Germany to help protect supplies to Ukraine

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Anthony Albanese says an E-7A Wedgetail plane will be dispatched as part of an effort to monitor logistics hubs

The Australian government will send a surveillance aircraft to Germany to help monitor the flow of military and humanitarian supplies into Ukraine.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announced the deployment after talks with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin on Monday, a day before attending a Nato summit in Lithuania where the war in Ukraine will dominate discussions.

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Anthony Albanese announces $1bn defence deal with Germany before Nato talks

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Berlin to buy 100 Boxer heavy weapon carriers made in Brisbane by German manufacturer Rheinmetall

The prime minister has touched down in Europe, confirming a deal worth more than $1bn to sell Australian-made armoured vehicles to Germany before talks at a Nato summit.

Anthony Albanese landed in Berlin on Sunday night, German time, before a scheduled meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday.

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Ukraine pessimistic about joining Nato ahead of Vilnius summit

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The US and Germany are unwilling to support Ukraine’s membership while the conflict with Russia is ongoing

Ukraine is increasingly pessimistic about taking a significant step forward in joining Nato as leaders of the western military alliance are set to assemble on Tuesday in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

Kyiv is expected to be offered a package of last-minute “enabling security guarantees” at the two day summit – an assurance from countries such as the US, UK, France and Germany that military aid and training will continue in the long term.

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Sunak needs all his persuasive powers to sway Biden on Ukraine’s Nato membership

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Meeting between US president and UK PM carries more significance than previous visits in light of recent disagreements

Joe Biden’s meeting in Downing Street on Monday with Rishi Sunak – their fifth in the past five months and the sixth since Sunak become prime minister – probably carries more significance than any other.

Never mind that it is essentially a stopover on the way to the Nato summit in Vilnius and being squeezed between tea with King Charles at Windsor Castle and a speech on climate finance.

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Joe Biden to meet Rishi Sunak at No 10 before Nato summit

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Meeting partially overshadowed by US president’s decision to send to Ukraine cluster munitions banned in Britain

Joe Biden will meet King Charles for the first time since the coronation, in a fleeting UK visit that will be used by Rishi Sunak and the US president as a “pre-meeting” ahead of joint efforts at this week’s Nato summit.

However, what will be the sixth meeting between Biden and Sunak since Sunak took office in October has been partly overshadowed by the US president’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, weapons that are prohibited by 100 countries including the UK, which currently holds the presidency of a convention banning them.

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Biden heads to Europe amid questions over cluster munitions and Nato unity

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US leader’s three-country tour aims to ‘showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage’ at a key time for the war in Ukraine

Joe Biden heads to Europe on Sunday for a swift tour dominated by the war in Ukraine, with membership of the expanding Nato military alliance and the US approval of cluster munitions likely to be key talking points. His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the trip would “showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage”.

The US president will arrive at night in London, ahead of meetings with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and King Charles, and then head to a key Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, before travelling to Helsinki to welcome Nato’s newest member, Finland.

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Moscow denounces return of Mariupol commanders sent to Turkey in prisoner swap

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President Zelenskiy flies men back to Ukraine as Russia says Turkey has violated terms

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has returned from a visit to Turkey, bringing home five former commanders of Ukraine’s garrison in Mariupol despite a prisoner exchange last year under which the men were meant to remain in Turkey.

Russia immediately denounced the release of the men. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Turkey had violated the prisoner exchange terms and had failed to inform Moscow.

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UK will not supply cluster munitions to Ukraine, says Sunak

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Prime minister rules out following controversial US move but says he will urge allies to increase other aid

Rishi Sunak has ruled out supplying Ukraine with cluster bombs, saying the UK will not follow the Biden administration’s controversial move and will instead press countries to boost their aid to Kyiv “in other ways”.

On Friday, Joe Biden defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to send widely banned cluster munitions to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government. Human rights groups criticised the White House and there was unease among some Democrats, with one calling it “unnecessary and a terrible mistake”.

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Moscow hits out as Turkey allows return of ‘hero’ Mariupol commanders – as it happened

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Moscow says men’s return to Ukraine is a ‘direct violation’ of prisoner swap agreement

From a distance of about 3 miles (5km) the drone camera zoomed in on a group of Russian soldiers. Three of them got out of a vehicle, strolled over to a cottage, and disappeared inside. “We won’t hit them yet.

“It’s better to observe,” the drone’s Ukrainian operator – call-sign “Garry” – said. “Once we’ve destroyed them, we’ll move on to the next target.”

Today we are on Snake Island, which will never be conquered by the occupiers, like the whole of Ukraine, because we are the country of the brave.

I want to thank, from here, from this place of victory, each of our soldiers for these 500 days.

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‘We have ambitious plans’: Anti-Putin forces plan fresh attacks inside Russia

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Leader of cross-border raids from Ukraine says weapons, not words, are needed to overthrow the regime in Moscow

The commander of the Freedom of Russia Legion says his fighters are planning another cross-border raid into Russia and are seeking to capitalise on disarray inside the Kremlin following the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“There will be a further surprise in the next month or so,” Caesar, a spokesperson for the anti-Putin paramilitary group, said in an interview with the Observer in Kyiv. “It will be our third operation. After that there will be a fourth, and fifth. We have ambitious plans. We want to free all our territory.”

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End justifies means for Biden in sending cluster bombs to Ukraine

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Decision to approve cluster munitions, lambasted by rights groups, exposes feeling in Washington that war is reaching crunch time

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, America’s voice at the United Nations, usually chooses her words carefully. “We have seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield,” she told the general assembly last year. “That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs – which are banned under the Geneva conventions.”

The speech can be read on the official website of the US mission to the UN. But it comes with a neat metaphor for how messy diplomacy can be. The transcript of Thomas-Greenfield’s remarks now has the words “which has no place on the battlefield” crossed out, and the word “banned” comes with an asterisk: she should have said “the use of which directed against civilians is banned under the Geneva conventions”.

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Biden says sending cluster bombs to Ukraine was ‘difficult decision’ – as it happened

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President tells CNN he took the recommendation for controversial weapons because Ukraine is ‘running out of ammunition’

The US added 209,000 new jobs in June as hiring slowed amid signs that the economy is cooling.

The rise was the weakest gain since December 2020, lower than the 240,000 jobs economists had expected and lower than the 309,000 jobs added in May. But the increase was also the 30th consecutive month of jobs gains, and the unemployment rate ticked down to the historically low rate of 3.6%.

This alarming development requires the Committee to assess White House security practices and determine whose failures led to an evacuation of the building and finding of the illegal substance.

The presence of illegal drugs in the White House is unacceptable and a shameful moment in the White House’s history.

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Joe Biden defends ‘difficult decision’ to send cluster munitions to Ukraine

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Rights groups condemn supply of widely banned weapons and fellow Democrat calls it a ‘terrible mistake’

Joe Biden has defended the “difficult decision” to send widely banned cluster munitions to Ukraine, after he was condemned by human rights groups and a fellow Democrat said it was “unnecessary and a terrible mistake”.

Cluster munitions are prohibited by more than 100 countries. They typically scatter numerous smaller bomblets over a wide area, sometimes as big as a football pitch, and can kill indiscriminately. Those that fail to explode threaten civilians, especially children, for decades after a conflict ends.

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Prigozhin wig pictures appear to be genuine, analysis shows

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Images leaked by Russian security services are consistent with one another and appear distorted due to being pictures of a digital screen

A raid on Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mansion in St Petersburg by security services has revealed his possession of some interesting items.

Among them was a wardrobe full of wigs, and photos of Prigozhin in various disguises wearing those wigs, which were allegedly taken from his personal album.

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Secret US-Russia talks over Ukraine ‘not sanctioned by Biden administration’

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Washington denies authorising former officials’ meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov

Joe Biden’s administration did not sanction or support secret meetings that former top US national security officials held with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and other Russians on potential talks to end the Ukraine war, the White House and state department have said.

America’s NBC News network reported that the former officials met Lavrov in New York in April, joined by Richard Haass, a former US diplomat and outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank in Washington, and two former White House aides, Charles Kupchan and Thomas Graham.

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