Yevgeny Prigozhin says children of Russian elite ‘shook their arses’ in sun while sons of poor returned in coffins

The head of the Wagner mercenary force has said that 20,000 of its fighters have been killed in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and warned that Russia could face another revolution if its leadership does not improve its handling of the war.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said 20% of the 50,000 convicts Wagner had recruited, and a similar number of its regular troops, had been killed over several months in the fight for Bakhmut.

Washington has been clear with Kyiv it does not support use of US-made equipment outside Ukraine, White House spokesperson John Kirby says. This live blog is closed

• What we know on day 455 of the invasion

Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting some quotes from Denis Pushilin, who has said that the situation for Russian forces on the flanks of Bakhmut has stabilised.

Pushilin, the Russian-imposed leader in occupied Donetsk, which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed, is quoted as saying on the Solovyov Live TV channel:

The peak of anxiety, when there was the most active phase, when the enemy tried to attack on the flanks and surround the guys in Bakhmut itself, has passed, according to my information.

I was talking with the guys who are there, including with Wagner, and they also say that combat-ready units have approached there, and this work is being done.

The night was not entirely peaceful. There have been a large number of drone attacks. Most of the air defence systems coped, but there are damages in Belgorod: cars, private houses, office buildings. The most important thing is that there are no casualties at all.

A gas pipeline was damaged in the Grayvoron District, a small fire is going on. Also, the restoration of electrical networks, which were damaged during the entry of the sabotage and reconnaissance group, is under way. All work to restore power supply in the Grayvoron district will be completed today. After that, water supply and cellular communications will be restored.

The paramilitaries who raided Belgorod include guerrillas with far-right connections, anti-Kremlin veterans and former members of Russia’s security services

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

As Russian militias opposing the Kremlin readied a daring cross-border raid into the Belgorod region this week, a man with slicked-down hair, in full camouflage and holding an automatic rifle stared into a camera lens.

“We are Russians just like you,” the man said in the video, later posted online. “We are people just like you. We want our children to grow up in peace and be free people so they can travel, study and were just happy in a free country. But this has no place in modern Putin’s Russia, rotten through and through from corruption, lies, censorship, restrictions on freedoms and repression.”

Members of militias, however, insist their operations in Belgorod are ongoing

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Moscow has claimed it repelled an attack on Russian soil led by Ukraine-aligned militias, who have insisted their campaign is continuing.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, announced on Tuesday evening that he was cancelling a “counter-terrorism regime” that introduced restrictions tantamount to martial law, while claiming Russia’s defence ministry and security agencies were still engaged in a “mopping up” campaign.

Russia claims it killed 70 attackers in repelling cross-border raid into Belgorod; Zelenskiy visits frontline marines in Donetsk region

Moscow claims to have pushed back the fighters it says launched a cross-border attack from Ukraine into the Belgorod region. There has been little clarity about who ordered the attack. Russia has claimed it was carried out by “Ukrainian militants”, dismissing reports they had self-identified as an ethnic Russian, anti-Kremlin militia. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said there were many ethnic Russians inside Ukraine, but that this did not mean they were not Ukrainian militants. Kyiv has disavowed any connection to the Russian partisan fighters, saying they act independently and are not subject to military control.

Russia’s defence ministry claims that remnants of the units it blamed for the attack have now been forced back into Ukrainian territory. In its daily briefing, the ministry said more than 70 attackers were killed. Russia’s investigative committee has opened an investigation into terrorism over the incident.

Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov had earlier warned residents against returning to their homes, saying that “The cleaning of the territory by the ministry of defence together with law enforcement agencies continues”. He confirmed that residents of nine settlements had been resettled as a result of the fighting.

Video footage posted online by one of the groups of Russian “partisans” appeared to show US manufactured military vehicles were involved in the raid including Humvees and what appeared to be International Maxxpro 1224 mine resistant vehicles. On Monday a US state department official reiterated the US policy that it did not support military action by Ukraine beyond Ukraine’s borders. The events of the past 48 hours appear to confirm assessments in US intelligence documents – leaked by US airman Jack Teixeira to Discord – that Ukraine has trained and armed Russian volunteers with Nato equipment.

Ukrainian forces still control the south-western edge of the city of Bakhmut and fighting in the city itself has decreased, deputy Ukrainian defence minister Hanna Maliar claimed on Tuesday. She wrote on the Telegram messaging app that Kyiv’s forces had made some progress “on the flanks to the north and south of Bakhmut” and that Russian forces, which say they have taken the city itself, were continuing to clear areas they control.

The Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi has halted operations because Russia is not allowing ships to enter it, in effect cutting it out of a deal allowing safe Black Sea grain exports, a Ukrainian official said on Tuesday. Ukrainian deputy renovation minister Yuriy Vaskov said that Tuesday’s inspections plan showed Russia had included only three of the 13 ships that had been submitted. All ships bound for Pivdenniy had been excluded, he said, as well as some meant to go to Odesa and Chornomorsk, calling it a “gross violation” of the Black Sea grain initiative.

Belarus has taken part in the illegal deportation of children from Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, according to a preliminary report compiled by exiled Belarusian opposition leaders. The National Anti-Crisis Management, a group of political opponents to the government of Alexander Lukashenko, said 2,150 Ukrainian children – including orphans aged six to 15 – were taken to so-called recreation camps and sanatoriums on Belarusian territory.

The training of Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 jets has begun in Poland, the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said, after the US gave its green light.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited marines on Tuesday on the Vuhledar-Maryinka defence line in the Donetsk region, as part of celebrations for the national day of Ukrainian marines.

Kyiv says Russia carrying out airstrikes on Bakhmut; Russian state-owned media says Putin informed of claim Ukrainian forces attempted to infiltrate Belgorod region. This live blog is now closed

• What we know on day 453 of the invasion

A picture is worth a thousand words and the images from the G7 summit in Hiroshima this weekend were a good example of that. Volodymyr Zelenskiy was pictured at the centre of a “family portrait” with G7 leaders at the weekend, symbolising their support for the Ukrainian president.

Just less than 10 years ago the G7 was the G8 – when Russia was a member of the group and president Vladimir Putin attended summits. Moscow was kicked out in 2014 after the invasion of Crimea.

‘Bakhmut is only in our hearts. There is nothing ... just ruins and dead Russians,’ says Ukraine’s president

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Ukraine has rejected Russian claims to have captured Bakhmut, insisting its forces still have a foothold in the Donbas city and are steadily encircling the Russian mercenaries holding the ruined town centre.

It was impossible to verify the conflicting claims in a battle of attrition for a devastated city, which has assumed symbolic importance as a measure of which side has the resilience to prevail in the war overall, as Kyiv prepares to unleash a broader counteroffensive against Putin’s occupation forces.

This blog is now closed. You can find our latest full report below:

• US to back fighter jet training for pilots, officials say
• What we know on day 450 of the invasion

European Council president Charles Michel said on Friday that the EU would call on China to step up pressure on Russia to stop its military aggression in Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Speaking on the sidelines of the G7 in Hiroshima, Michel also said that it was in the EU’s interest to maintain a “stable and constructive” cooperation with China.

We now have official confirmation of Zelenskiy’s planned in-person visit to the G7.