Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that counteroffensive and defensive operations were taking place in Ukraine, but told reporters he would not say what stage they were at. The news comes as Ukraine's military said three civilians were killed in an overnight drone attack on the Black Sea port city of Odesa. Read our blog to see how the day's events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).
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9:16pm: Kakhovka dam burst leaves roads inaccessible, villages cut off from the world
Entire villages in southern Ukraine were flooded after the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro river burst on Tuesday. One of the river's tributaries, the Inhoulets, burst its banks, flooding fields and villages situated more than 50 kilometres north of Kherson. FRANCE 24's correspondent Gulliver Cragg toured part of the stricken area with the head of the Snihurivka military administration – the wartime equivalent of a mayor.
6:46pm: Macron urges Iran to immediately stop backing Russia in Ukraine
French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday urged his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi to "immediately end" Tehran's support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine by supplying Moscow with drones, the Elysee said.
Macron in a telephone call underlined the serious "security and humanitarian consequences" of Iran's drone deliveries "and urged Tehran to immediately end the support it thus gives to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine", the Elysee said.
4:25pm: South Africa’s Ramaphosa says he briefed China’s Xi about peace mission to Ukraine
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has briefed Chinese President Xi Jinping about an upcoming mission by African leaders to Russia and Ukraine to try to broker peace, Pretoria said Saturday.
Ramaphosa announced last month that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had agreed to receive a six-member African delegation, expected to visit this month.
Ramaphosa "has briefed" Xi, the South African presidency said in a statement. The delegation will consist of the presidents of the Republic of Congo, Egypt, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia.
Ramaphosa’s office did not specify when he spoke to Xi but said the Chinese leader "commended the initiative by the African continent and acknowledged the impact the conflict has had on human lives and on food security in Africa".
In February, Beijing released a paper calling for a "political settlement" to the conflict, which Western countries warned could enable Russia to hold much of the territory it has seized in Ukraine.
China says it is a neutral party but has been criticised for refusing to condemn Moscow for its offensive and for its close strategic partnership with Russia.
3:07pm: Zelensky says Ukrainian counterattacks are under way, declines to give details
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that counteroffensive and defensive operations were taking place in Ukraine, but told reporters that he would not say what stage they were at.
"Counteroffensive and defensive actions are taking place in Ukraine: at which stage I will not talk in detail," Zelensky said at a joint press conference in Kyiv with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
2:47pm: Trudeau announces military aid for Kyiv, says Canada will help train pilots
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a trip to Kyiv on Saturday that Canada would take part in a multinational effort to train Ukrainian fighter pilots and announced C$500 million ($375 million) worth of military aid for Kyiv.
Trudeau also told a press conference in Kyiv alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Canada was seizing a Russian-owned Antonov cargo aircraft that landed in Canada last year and starting the process of forfeiting the aircraft to Ukraine.
2:28pm: Russia says still not satisfied with Black Sea grain deal after UN talks
Russia is still not satisfied with how a Black Sea grain deal is being implemented, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said on Saturday after meeting senior UN trade officials a day earlier, the TASS news agency reported.
Russia has threatened to walk away from the grain deal on July 17 if demands to improve its own food and fertilizer exports are not met. The deal, struck in July last year, facilitates the "safe navigation" of grain, foodstuffs and fertilizers – including ammonia – for export to global markets.
"We cannot be satisfied with how this memorandum is being implemented," Vershinin was quoted as saying. "Barriers to our exports remain."
While Russian exports of food and fertilizer are not subject to Western sanctions, Moscow says restrictions on payments, logistics and insurance have amounted to a barrier to shipments.
1:52pm: Russia says Iceland’s decision to temporarily shut Moscow embassy ‘destroys’ cooperation
Russia's foreign ministry said on Saturday that Iceland’s decision to suspend its embassy operations in Moscow "destroys" bilateral cooperation.
Iceland said on Friday the operations would be suspended from August 1 due to an "all-time low" level of commercial, cultural and political relations between the countries, adding that it had asked Russia to scale back its diplomatic activities in Reykjavik.
"The decision taken by the Icelandic authorities to lower the level of diplomatic relations with Russia destroys the entire range of Russian-Icelandic cooperation," the Russian foreign ministry said.
"We will take this unfriendly decision into account when building our ties with Iceland in the future. All anti-Russian actions of Reykjavik will inevitably be followed by a corresponding reaction," it added in a statement.
When announcing its decision, Iceland said diplomatic relations had not been severed and that the embassy would be reopened once relations normalise.
1:03pm: Ukraine’s military says ‘counterattacking’ forces have made gains near Bakhmut
'Counterattacking' Ukrainian forces have advanced up to 1,400 metres at a number of sections of the front line near the eastern city of Bakhmut in the past day, a military spokesman said on Saturday.
The advance is the latest in a series of similar gains reported this week by Kyiv near Bakhmut, which Russia said it had fully captured last month after the bloodiest and longest battle since it began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
"We're trying ... to conduct strikes on the enemy, we're counterattacking. We've managed to advance up to 1,400 metres on various sections of the front," the spokesperson for the eastern military command said, when asked about fighting near Bakhmut.
Serhiy Cherevaty, the official, said in televised comments that Russian forces were themselves trying to counterattack but that they had not been successful.
Ukrainian forces, he said, had inflicted heavy Russian troop casualties and destroyed military hardware in the area.
Reuters was not able to independently verify that assertion or the situation on the battlefield.
12:59pm: Germany’s Scholz says he plans to speak to Putin soon, will urge him to withdraw troops from Ukraine
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday he planned to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone soon to urge him to withdraw Russia's troops from Ukraine.
Addressing a convention of the German Protestant church in Nuremberg, Scholz said he had spoken to Putin by telephone in the past.
"I plan to do it again soon," he said.
"It's not reasonable to force Ukraine to approve and accept the raid that Putin has perpetrated and that parts of Ukraine become Russian just like that," Scholz added, saying he would work to ensure that NATO does not get drawn into the war.
11:55am: Canada's Trudeau makes surprise visit to Kyiv
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is visiting Kyiv in a gesture of support for Ukraine.
Trudeau paid his respects at a memorial site in central Kyiv to Ukrainian soldiers who have been killed fighting pro-Russian forces since 2014.
NATO member Canada, which has one of the world's largest Ukrainian diasporas, has supplied military and financial assistance to Ukraine during the full-scale invasion launched by Russia in February 2022.
11:25am: Last reactor shut down at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in wake of dam breach
Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency says it has put the last operating reactor at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant into a “cold shutdown” – a safety precaution amid catastrophic flooding from the collapse of the nearby Kakhovka dam.
Five out of six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is occupied by Russian forces, are already in a state of cold shutdown, in which all control rods are inserted into the reactor core to stop the nuclear fission reaction and generation of heat and pressure.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian nuclear agency, said in a statement late Friday that there was “no direct threat” to the Zaporizhzhia plant from the breach of the Kakhovka dam further down the Dnipro River, which has sharply reduced water levels in a reservoir used to help cool the facility.
10:10am: UK sees mixed progress for Ukrainian, Russian forces in recent fighting
The UK's defence ministry has described mixed progress for Ukrainian and Russian forces fighting in southern and eastern Ukraine over the past 48 hours.
"In some areas, Ukrainian forces have likely made good progress and penetrated the first line of Russian defences. In others, Ukrainian progress has been slower," Britain's ministry of defence said in a statement.
"Russian performance has been mixed: some units are likely conducting credible manoeuvre defence operations while others have pulled back in some disorder, amid increased reports of Russian casualties as they withdraw through their own minefields."
9:45am: Russian strike damages infrastructure at Ukrainian military airfield
Russia fired missiles and attack drones at the central Ukrainian region of Poltava overnight, inflicting "some damage of infrastructure and equipment" at the Myrhorod military airfield, the regional governor has said.
The attack that used ballistic and cruise missiles also damaged eight private residential homes and several vehicles, Governor Dmytro Lunin said on the Telegram messenger app. No casualties were reported.
8:15am: Ukraine says three killed in Russian drone attack on Odesa
Three civilians were killed during a Russian drone attack on the Black Sea city of Odesa in the early hours of Saturday after drone debris fell on an apartment block and started a fire, the Ukrainian military said.
Air defences in the Odesa region shot down eight "Shahed" drones and two missiles in the latest in a spate of overnight air strikes on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks, a spokesperson for the southern military command said.
"As a result of the air fight, debris from one of the drones fell onto a high-rise apartment, causing a fire," the military official, Natalia Humeniuk, said in a statement.
The emergency services said 27 people, including three children, were wounded, but that the fire had been rapidly put out and 12 people were rescued from the building.
6:25am: Investigators find clues in Nord Stream pipeline probe, WSJ reports
German investigators are examining evidence suggesting a sabotage team used Poland as an operating base to damage the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September, the Wall Street Journal reports.
German investigators have fully reconstructed the two-week voyage of the "Andromeda", a 15-metre white pleasure yacht suspected of being involved in the sabotage of the pipelines that supply Russian gas to Europe, the newspaper said.
They have pinpointed that the yacht deviated from its target to venture into Polish waters, it said, citing data from the Andromeda’s radio and navigation equipment, satellite and mobile phones, Gmail accounts "and DNA samples left aboard, which Germany has tried to match to at least one Ukrainian soldier".
Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office and Poland's Office of Chancellery of the Prime Minister did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
The Washington Post reported this week that the US had learned of a Ukrainian plan to attack the pipelines three months before they were damaged by the underwater explosions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday told German media that Ukraine did not attack Nord Stream pipelines.
10:30pm, June 9: Water gradually receding in Ukraine's flooded regions
Water levels in parts of southern Ukraine that were flooded after the destruction of a Russian-held dam were beginning to fall, officials said Friday.
"Thirty-five settlements remain flooded on the right bank, 3,763 houses are under water, but the water is gradually receding," said Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson military administration.
Prokudin said water levels in his region went from an average of 5.38 to near 5 metres over the course of Friday.
He said 2,588 people had been evacuated from the Kherson region.
Key developments from Friday, June 9:
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said Ukraine had started its long-expected counteroffensive, but that Kyiv had so far failed to attain its goals, as Moscow's forces claimed to have repelled fierce Ukrainian offensives in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.
The fighting came as Ukraine's domestic security service said it intercepted a telephone call purportedly proving that Russian forces blew up the Kakhovka dam, triggering catastrophic flooding in southern Ukraine and forcing thousands of residents to flee.
Read yesterday's liveblog to see how the day's events unfolded.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
