Russia-Ukraine war live: Putin thanks China and India for support during Wagner mutiny; Nato extends Stoltenberg’s mandate for year

Vladimir Putin addresses virtual summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation; Jens Stoltenberg to stay in post until October 2024

Oleksiy Danilov has described recent days of battle as “fruitful” for Ukraine in terms of destroying the resources of the Russian forces. In a post to social media, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council described Ukraine as acting “calmly” and “wisely’ in its counteroffensive. He posted:

At this stage of active hostilities, Ukraine’s defence forces are fulfilling the number one task – the maximum destruction of manpower, equipment, fuel depots, military vehicles, command posts, artillery and air defence forces of the Russian army.

The last few days have been particularly fruitful. Now the war of destruction is equal to the war of kilometres. More destroyed means more liberated. The more effective the former, the more the latter. We are acting calmly, wisely, step by step.

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

Continue reading...

US ambassador to Russia says jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in ‘good health’

Ambassador Lynne Tracey was allowed to meet the journalist in a Moscow jail in her second such visit since his arrest in March

Russia has granted the US consular access to jailed Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich after a more than two-month gap, with the US ambassador reporting him in good health.

The state department said ambassador Lynne Tracey met Gershkovich at the Lefortovo prison in Moscow on Monday, only her second such meeting with him since he was arrested on 29 March during a reporting trip in the Urals.

Continue reading...

Health fears over jailed former Georgia president after video appearance

Mikheil Saakashvili appears frail and emaciated on court video link, leading to concern about his treatment

Georgia’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili has appeared on television for the first time in months, looking frail and emaciated, fuelling concerns over the detained politician’s treatment.

The 55-year-old was almost unrecognisable and looked like a ghost of his former self when he appeared in a video link for a court hearing on Monday.

Continue reading...

Ursula von der Leyen says ‘direction of travel’ is EU membership for Ukraine

European Commission head is seeking to curb Russian influence in central and eastern Europe

The EU has said it will be impossible to envisage a future for the bloc without Ukraine and Moldova as members, in part to reduce Russian influence in east and central Europe.

While other countries such as Romania and Bulgaria took 11 years to become members of the EU, joining in 2007, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, hinted the future of the new accession candidates will be swiftly decided.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: at least 19 injured in drone attack; US ambassador meets with jailed reporter Evan Gershkovich in Moscow – as it happened

Child among people injured in attack in Sumy; Lynne Tracy visits Wall Street Journal reporter in prison after court upholds FSB request to extend his detention

In her regular operational update, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar has re-stated that Ukraine is making incremental gains in both the east and the south, and said that 37.4 sq km (14.4 sq m) of territory had been reclaimed.

On the Telegram messaging app Maliar said Ukrainian forces were advancing in the Bakhmut direction, adding that Russian forces were attacking in the Lyman, Avdiivka and Mariinka directions in the Donetsk region.

Continue reading...

Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina dies after being wounded in Kramatorsk strike

Author who had been working to document Russian war crimes since the invasion was hospitalised with skull fractures after Tuesday’s missile strike

An award-winning Ukrainian writer and war crimes researcher wounded in a Russian missile strike on a restaurant last week has died, the freedom of expression group PEN has said.

Victoria Amelina, 37, was wounded when a Russian missile destroyed the Ria Pizza restaurant in the eastern city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday, killing 12 people, including four children, and wounding dozens.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 495 of the invasion

Ukrainian and Russian troops both advancing in different areas amid ‘fierce fighting’, says Kyiv; Biden to visit UK and Finland on Nato summit trip

Ukraine has said Russian troops are advancing in four areas in the east of the country amid “fierce fighting” but reports that Kyiv’s forces are moving forward in the south. Russian troops were advancing near Avdiivka, Mariinka, Lyman and Svatove, said the deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar. “Fierce fighting is going on everywhere,” she wrote on social media on Sunday. Russian accounts said Moscow’s forces had repelled Ukrainian attacks near villages ringing Bakhmut and in areas farther south, including the strategic hilltop town of Vuhledar.

The US president, Joe Biden, will travel to Europe in a week for a three-nation trip, including a Nato summit, focused on reinforcing the international coalition backing Ukraine amid its counteroffensive against Russia. Biden is set to depart on Sunday 9 July for Britain and then head to Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, for the meeting of Nato leaders, followed by a one-day visit to Helsinki for talks with his Nordic counterparts, the White House has said.

A top Russian propagandist has accused Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin of going “off the rails” after receiving billions in public funds, as Moscow’s new narrative takes shape after Wagner’s brief mutiny. “Prigozhin has gone off the rails because of big money,” Dmitry Kiselev, one of the main faces of the Russian propaganda machine, said on his weekly television show on Sunday. Prigozhin led his forces in a short-lived rebellion against Russia’s top military brass just over a week ago in a major embarrassment for the Kremlin.

Four civilians were injured by Russian shelling in the southern city of Kherson, the prosecutor general’s office said on Sunday, including two in a direct hit on a high-rise building. Russian forces fired on the residential area from the occupied east bank of the Dnipro River, also reportedly damaging civilian infrastructure.

Award-winning Ukrainian writer and war crimes researcher Victoria Amelina, 37, has died after being wounded in a Russian missile strike in Kramatorsk, the freedom of expression group PEN has said. The attack last Tuesday destroyed the Ria Pizza restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city, killing another 12 people, including four children, and wounding dozens.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy paid tribute in Odesa to those serving in the navy on Ukrainian Navy Day on Sunday in a video posted on Twitter. The Ukrainian president said: “The enemy will in no way dictate its terms in the Black Sea.”

Two British peers were among 50 people who attended a party organised by the Russian ambassador to the UK at his residence in west London last month to mark the creation of a Russia independent of the Soviet Union. The Conservative Lord Balfe and crossbencher Lord Skidelsky attended the event at which the Russian envoy, Andrei Kelin, spoke and sought to justify the invasion of Ukraine, according to the Sunday Times.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s media holding company is to shut down, the director of one of its outlets said. Patriot Media, whose most prominent outlet was the RIA FAN news site, had taken a strongly nationalist, pro-Kremlin editorial line while also providing positive coverage of Prigozhin and his Wagner group.

Poland will send 500 police officers to its border with Belarus, Poland’s interior minister, Mariusz Kamiński, has said. Warsaw earlier announced a tightening of security because of concerns over the Wagner group’s presence in Belarus.

Energy giants TotalEnergies and Shell have defended activities linked to Russia after a critical report into their trading in natural gas despite the war in Ukraine. The campaign group Global Witness said TotalEnergies was the third-biggest player in Russian liquified natural gas last year and Shell the fourth, behind two Russian companies. Both companies said on Sunday they were tied to ongoing contracts despite pulling out of Russian partnerships after Ukraine was invaded last year.

Russia has cancelled its 2023 Maks international airshow, probably over security concerns after recent uncrewed aerial vehicle attacks inside the country, according to the UK Ministry of Defence’s latest intelligence report.

Continue reading...

Ukrainian forces gradually advance on Bakhmut; four people injured after shelling in Kherson – as it happened

Eastern Command spokesperson says Ukrainian forces are ‘pressuring’ Russian troops in Donetsk Oblast; Russian shelling hits residential area. says Ukraine

Poland will send 500 police officers to its border with Belarus, the Polish minister of the interior, Mariusz Kaminski, said on Sunday, Reuters reports.

“Due to the tense situation on the border with Belarus I have decided to bolster our forces with 500 Polish police officers from preventive and counterterrorism units,” he wrote on Twitter.

Continue reading...

British peers attended Russian ambassador’s party in London

Lords Balfe and Skidelsky were at event in June where ambassador sought to justify Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine

Two British peers were among 50 people who attended a party organised by the Russian ambassador to the UK at his opulent residence in west London last month, to mark the creation of a Russia independent of the Soviet Union.

Andrei Kelin, the Russian ambassador, spoke at the event where he sought to justify his country’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, while those attending included the Conservative Lord Balfe and cross-bencher Lord Skidelsky.

Continue reading...

Second world war British fighter planes unearthed in Ukraine

Remains of eight Hurricanes dating back to 1940s conflict found south of Kyiv

Authorities in Ukraine have discovered the remains of eight British Hurricane fighter planes dating back to the second world war.

The aircraft, found near an unexploded bomb dating from the same conflict in a forest south of Kyiv, were sent to the Soviet Union by Britain after Nazi Germany invaded the country in 1941.

Continue reading...

‘Some never came back’: how Russians hunted down veterans of Donbas conflict

Exclusive: Ukrainians who fought against separatists tell of kidnap and torture by invaders; the fate of hundreds of others is a mystery

Viktor Kushyn knew Russian soldiers were after him. He sensed it from the first day of Moscow’s full-scale war on Ukraine in February last year, when Russians occupied his village in the Kharkiv region.

So when two Russian service personnel stopped him in the street one morning in May 2022, he didn’t resist. He spent the next few days locked in a cellar with other men who, like him, had fought against Russian-backed separatists between 2014 and 2022 in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 494 of the invasion

Putin’s admission of funding Wagner could open doors for war crimes trial; Zelenskiy warns of ‘serious threat’ at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

Vladimir Putin’s admission that the Wagner group had been “fully funded” by the Russian state could make it easier for an international court to prosecute him for war crimes, experts in international law have said. In the year to May 2023 alone, Wagner reportedly received more than 86bn roubles from the state budget, or over a billion dollars.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned that a “serious threat” remains at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and that Russia is “technically ready” to provoke a localised explosion at the facility. Zelenskiy cited Ukrainian intelligence as the source of his information and called for greater international attention to the situation at the facility, the largest nuclear plant in Europe.

Air defence systems were engaged early on Sunday in repelling a Russian air attack on Kyiv, Ukraine’s air force said. Witnesses heard blasts resembling the sound of air defence systems hitting targets, but there was no immediate information about potential damage.

A 51-year-old man has been killed and two others injured by shelling in Mala Tokmachka, a village near the frontline in the south-eastern region of Zaporizhia, local officials said. The head of the local military administration, Yuriy Malashko, described the site as a “frontline community under merciless enemy fire”.

US president Joe Biden will host Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson next week to talk about transatlantic security cooperation and the war in Ukraine, the White House said. The two leaders “will review our growing security cooperation and reaffirm their view that Sweden should join Nato as soon as possible”.

Austria, a neutral country, announced its intention to join the European Sky Shield initiative, launched in 2022 by Germany against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer said the decision did not call into question the neutrality of the country but cited “a threat that has considerably worsened”. “We must and will take precautions to protect our country against the risk of drone or missile attacks,” he said.

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez pledged the EU’s “unequivocal” support for Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv on the first day of Spain assuming presidency of the bloc. Sanchez said his visit “demonstrates a clear and unequivocal political commitment” to Ukraine’s bid to join the EU.

Ukrainian president Zelenskiy has expressed frustration over the slow deliveries of weapons and lack of clarity over pilot training by “some” western nations. “There is no schedule of training missions. I believe that some partners are dragging their feet. Why are they doing it? I don’t know,” Zelenskiy said.

Two children have been injured in the Russian shelling of a residential area in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, according to the regional governor. A nine-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy were injured and are receiving medical treatment.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war live: counteroffensive will be long and very bloody, says US general – as it happened

Gen Mark Milley says no one should have any illusions about difficulty of Ukrainian offensive

Here are pictures from Friday of family and co-workers attending the funeral of a young female killed in a missile attack that hit a restaurant in downtown Kramatorsk on 27 June.

The Guardian’s Shaun Walker, Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer have written an analysis about the likely vengeful response opponents of Vladimir Putin should expect after the attempted Wagner mutiny last weekend.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia reducing its presence at nuclear power plant, says Ukraine; Pope says war seems to have ‘no end’

Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate warns that staff are leaving Zaporizhzhia as Moscow has mined power units; Pope Francis calls for peace

Overnight, the BBC has been reporting that recruitment continues at Wagner mercenary offices across Russia, despite the fallout from the weekend’s armed mutiny. It writes:

Using a Russian phone number, we called more than a dozen recruitment centres saying, if asked, that we were inquiring on behalf of a brother.

All those who replied confirmed that it was business as usual.

Continue reading...

Could Yevgeny Prigozhin really have captured Moscow?

Last week’s Wagner revolt was less an attempted coup, more an impulsive demonstration that got out of hand

Could Yevgeny Prigozhin have somehow captured Moscow last weekend? The emerging consensus – from experts and in western capitals – is probably not: the extraordinary rebellion of last Friday and Saturday was far less than an attempted coup, and more an impulsive demonstration that quickly got out of hand.

Consider the numbers involved in Saturday’s march on Moscow. The best estimates of rebel numbers are nothing like the 25,000 claimed by Prigozhin himself, probably closer to the 4,000 cited by the Institute of the Study of War. Even that is only a small part of Wagner’s total Ukraine force, generally estimated to be 15,000, the size of an army division.

Continue reading...

Oligarch hit by Ukrainian sanctions has UK residency and was given ‘golden visa’

Pavel Fuks, a Ukrainian who made a fortune in Russia and is under investigation for fraud, was granted special visa for the rich in 2012

An oligarch who made a fortune in Russia and is under Ukrainian sanctions has UK residency after being granted a special visa for the rich.

Pavel Fuks, a Ukrainian national who had sanctions imposed in 2021, is also under criminal investigation for fraud and tax evasion in his home country. But the Guardian has established that Fuks, known as a regular at an exclusive Mayfair restaurant, was granted a so-called golden visa in 2012, followed by indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 2017. “It’s effective as of today,” his spokesperson said.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: Wagner mercenaries will no longer fight in Ukraine; Putin greets crowds in rare walkabout – as it happened

Group’s chief refuses to sign contracts with Kremlin, says head of Duma defence committee; Russian president poses for selfies in Dagestan

Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that the distribution of humanitarian aid in Nevske in the Ukraine-controlled portion of Luhansk has been paused after Russian shelling.

It cites the regional governor Artem Lysohor, who said there were no casualties or injuries, but that due to the deterioration of the security situation, the humanitarian aid would be distributed later.

The rescue operations at the site of the missile strike in Kramatorsk have been completed.

A total of 12 people, including three children, died as a result of the attack. 60 people were injured, including an eight-month-old baby.

Continue reading...

Wagner mutiny has weakened Putin, says Scholz, as Russian president makes rare public visit

German Chancellor says uprising shows ‘cracks’ in autocracy in Moscow, after Vladimir Putin greeted crowds of fans in unusual tour of southern city

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said the failed Wagner mutiny last weekend has weakened Vladimir Putin’s authority, as the Russian president sought to repair the damage to his standing by meeting military staff at the Kremlin and greeting crowds on a rare public walkabout.

Speaking in a wide-ranging, hour-long interview with the ARD broadcaster, Scholz said: “I do believe he is weakened as this shows that the autocratic power structures have cracks in them and he is not as firmly in the saddle as he always asserts.”

Continue reading...

Russian general who may have known about Wagner mutiny goes missing

US intelligence claims Gen Sergei Surovikin, who has close ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin, had prior knowledge of uprising

A Russian general who previously led the invasion force in Ukraine has not been seen in public since Saturday, with US intelligence reportedly claiming he had prior knowledge of the uprising led by the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Gen Sergei Surovikin is the head of the Russian aerospace forces and formerly Moscow’s supreme commander in Ukraine. Prigozhin had welcomed his appointment to that post in 2022, calling him a “legendary figure” and “born to serve his motherland”.

Continue reading...