Russian forces are advancing in four sectors on the eastern front as Ukrainian troops inch forward south of Bakhmut, Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Maliar said on Sunday. Meanwhile US President Joe Biden has scheduled a trip to Europe with stops in the United Kingdom, the NATO summit in Lithuania and meetings in Finland, the White House said Sunday. Follow our blog to see how the day's events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).
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05:23am: Wagner's departure does not impact Moscow's combat potential, says Russian lawmaker
The Wagner Group's departure from Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine does not impact Russia's combat potential, TASS cited Colonel General Andrei Kartapolov, who chairs Russia's lower house of parliament's defence committee, as saying on Monday.
The influential lawmaker told the state-owned TASS agency that the Russian regular army has been able to repulse Ukraine's new offensive without Wagner fighters.
"No new wave of mobilisation will be required," Kartapolov said.
05:10am: Ukraine says Russian troops advancing in 'fierce fighting'
Ukraine said on Sunday that Russian troops were advancing in four areas in the east of the country amid "fierce fighting" but reported its forces moving forward in the south.
Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Maliar said that Russian troops were advancing near Avdiivka, Mariinka, Lyman and Svatove.
"Fierce fighting is going on everywhere," Maliar wrote on social media, adding: "The situation is quite complicated".
Ukrainian forces have made gradual progress in their counteroffensive launched last month but have so far failed to produce a major breakthrough and have urged Western allies to escalate pledges of military support
04:14am: Moscow says 700,000 children from Ukraine conflict zones now in Russia
Russia has brought some 700,000 children from the conflict zones in Ukraine into Russian territory, Grigory Karasin, head of the international committee in the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, said late on Sunday.
"In recent years, 700,000 children have found refuge with us, fleeing the bombing and shelling from the conflict areas in Ukraine," Karasin wrote on his Telegram messaging channel.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion on its western neighbour Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow says its programme of bring children from Ukraine into Russian territory is to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
However, Ukraine says many children have been illegally deported and the United States says thousands of children have been forcibly removed from their homes.
Most of the movement of people and children occurred in the first few months of the war and before Ukraine started its major counter offensive to regain occupied territories in the east and south in late August.
02:14am: No grounds to maintain Black Sea grain deal status quo, says Russian UN envoy
Russia's envoy to the United Nations in Geneva said there were no grounds to maintain the "status quo" of the Black Sea grain deal that is set to expire on July 18, the Russian news outlet Izvestia reported on Monday.
In a wide ranging interview, envoy Gennady Gatilov told the outlet that the implementation of Russia's conditions for the extensions of the agreement was "stalling." Those conditions included, among others, the reconnection of the Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank) to the SWIFT banking payment system.
"Russia has repeatedly extended the deal in the hope of positive changes," Gatilov told Izvestia. "However, what we are seeing now does not give us grounds to agree to maintaining the status quo."
Gatilov said he hopes "common sense" will prevail in the United States and there will not be the need to consider the option to denounce the New Start nuclear weapons treat, the last remaining US-Russia arms control treaty that caps the countries' strategic nuclear arsenals.
9:37pm: Wagner mercenary group moves to Belarus
As the former Wagner headquarters in Saint Petersburg is scrapped of all signs of its previous occupants, the Wagner mercenary group, a newly built military base in a town 230km north of the Ukrainian border has been spotted, said FRANCE 24's Leo Mcguinn.
According to a Ukrainian spokesperson, up to 8000 Wagner fighters may be deployed in Belarus since the failed coup in Russia a week ago.
Meanwhile exiled Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has led the armed rebellion, is reported being held up in a hotel in Minsk.
Please click on the video player below to watch the report.
6:58pm: Russian troops advancing in 'fierce fighting', says Kyiv
Russian troops are advancing in four areas of the front line in eastern Ukraine amid "fierce fighting", Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Maliar said on Sunday.
"Fierce fighting is going on everywhere," Maliar wrote on social media, adding that Ukrainian troops were also advancing in one area in the east and two areas in the south.
"The enemy is advancing in Avdiivka, Mariinka, Lyman sectors. The enemy is also moving forward in the Svatove sector," she said.
Maliar said Ukrainian troops were advancing with "partial success" on the southern flank of Bakhmut, as well as near Berdyansk and Melitopol in southern Ukraine.
In the south, she said Ukrainian forces faced "intense enemy resistance, remote mining, deploying of reserves" and were only advancing "gradually".
"They are persistently and unceasingly creating conditions for as fast an advance as possible," she said.
2:21pm: Biden to travel to UK, NATO summit, Finland, says White House
US President Joe Biden has scheduled a trip to Europe with stops in the United Kingdom, the NATO summit in Lithuania and meetings in Finland, the White House said Sunday.
Biden is set to depart July 9 for "engagements" with the UK's King Charles III and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the White House said in a statement. He will then continue to the NATO summit in Vilnius followed by a visit to Helsinki for the US-Nordic Leaders Summit.
1:04pm: 'Thin-armoured' French tanks impractical for attacks, says Ukraine commander
A Ukrainian commander has criticised the highly mobile AMX-10 RC infantry fighting vehicles – sometimes described as light tanks – supplied by the French government as "impractical" for front-line attacks, claiming one four-man crew had already died because of the vehicle's thin armour.
Kyiv said in April that the French vehicles, which are designed for armed reconnaissance and attacks on enemy tanks, were already in service.
But a 34-year-old battalion commander within the 37th Marine Brigade who uses the call sign Spartanets said the tanks' "thin armour" means they can be used as fire support, but not in front-line assaults.
"Unfortunately, there was one case when the crew died in the vehicle," the major told AFP on Friday.
"There was artillery shelling and a shell exploded near the vehicle, the fragments pierced the armour and the ammunition set detonated."
The crew of four inside were all killed, he said.
"The guns are good, the observation devices are very good. But unfortunately there is thin armour and it is impractical to use them in the front line (attack)," Spartanets said.
AMX-10s were developed in the 1970s, and French armed forces have begun to replace them with more modern vehicles called Jaguar.
11:18am: Prigozhin-controlled media group shuts down
Yevgeny Prigozhin's media holding group is to shut down, the director of one of its outlets said, highlighting the mercenary chief's worsening fortunes a week after the collapse of a brief rebellion staged by his Wagner Group fighters.
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.
"I am announcing our decision to close down and to leave the country's information space," RIA FAN director Yevgeny Zubarev said in a video clip posted late on Saturday on the holding's social media accounts.
Zubarev gave no reason for the decision.
Under a deal that halted the mutiny, Prigozhin, a former ally of President Vladimir Putin, was allowed to go into exile in Belarus and his men given the choice of joining him, being integrated into Russia's armed forces or returning home.
11:10am: Ukraine shot down three missiles and eight drones overnight – air force
Ukraine's air force said Sunday it had shot down three cruise missiles and eight attack drones deployed by Moscow's forces across the country overnight.
Ukraine's air force said that it had destroyed "all air targets" – eight Iranian drones and three Kalibr cruise missiles.
"Eight Shaheds were launched from the southeast, and three Kalibr missiles were launched from the Black Sea," the air force said in a statement.
Ruslan Kravchenko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said that three private houses were damaged by falling debris in the Kyiv region, which was targeted by a drone attack for the first time in 12 days.
A man sustained a leg injury, Kravchenko added.
11:00am: Poland to bolster security on border with Belarus, interior minister says
Poland will send 500 police officers to its border with Belarus, Minister of Interior Mariusz Kaminski said on Sunday.
The Polish Border Guard on Sunday said that 187 people tried to cross into Poland from Belarus illegally on Saturday.
"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 counter-terrorism units," Kaminski wrote on Twitter.
"They will join 5,000 border guards and 2,000 soldiers guarding the security of this border."
9:15am: ‘Everywhere is a target’ as Russia relaunches drone attacks
Reporting in the midst of a fresh air raid alert in Kyiv, FRANCE 24 correspondent Emmanuelle Chaze says that the overnight kamikaze drone attacks on the capital – which Ukrainian authorities say they successfully shot down – has shown that Russia doesn’t seem to have reassessed its strategy in the wake of the failed Wagner rebellion.
8:45am: At least one person injured in drone attack, says Kyiv official
Three private houses were damaged as a result of falling drone debris in the Kyiv region, injuring one person, the military head of the region, Ruslan Kravchenko, said on his Facebook page. The capital was targeted by an overnight drone attack for the first time in almost two weeks.
4:05am: Ultra-nationalists aim to restrict travel for Russian officials' families
The ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) is working on a bill that would temporarily ban the travel of close relatives of high-ranking officials to "unfriendly countries", the RIA state news agency reported on Sunday.
Russia considers all countries that have hit it with sanctions over its military campaign in Ukraine to be "unfriendly".
Citing a member of the Russian Duma, Sergei Karginov, RIA reported that restrictions may also affect, among others, law enforcement officers, judges, top managers of state corporations, and the board of directors of the Central Bank.
"Now, when Russia is forced to confront a group of Western countries led by the United States that provoked a conflict in Ukraine, such journeys ... are not only inadmissible, but also dangerous," RIA cited Karginov as saying.
2:51am: Russia launches first overnight drone attack on Kyiv in 12 days
Russia launched an overnight drone attack on Kyiv after a 12-day break, a Ukrainian military official said on Sunday, with air defence systems preliminarily destroying all targets on their approach.
"Another enemy attack on Kyiv," Serhiy Popko, a colonel general who heads Kyiv's military administration, said in a post on the Telegram channel. "At this moment, there is no information about possible casualties or damage."
Reuters witnesses heard blasts resembling the sound of air defence systems hitting targets. There was no immediate information about the scale of the attack.
Key developments from Saturday, July 1:
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Saturday that his visit to Kyiv on the first day of Spain's EU presidency showed the bloc's "unequivocal" commitment to Ukraine's bid to join the 27-nation bloc. And US CIA director William Burns said that disaffection with the war in Ukraine presented the spy agency with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to recruit new intelligence assets.
Read yesterday's liveblog to see how all the day's events unfolded.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
