A significant escalation in fighting along the frontlines in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions has been reported overnight, but there was no confirmation from Ukrainian officials that it marked the started of their long-planned counteroffensive.
Russia claimed to have repelled a “major offensive” in the Donetsk region and to have killed hundreds of Ukrainian troops, but the claims could not be independently verified. The defence ministry in Moscow said Ukraine had attacked with six mechanised and two tank battalions from two brigades.
The ministry claimed 250 Ukrainian troops had been killed, and 16 tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles and 21 armoured personnel carriers destroyed. It also claimed that Valery Gerasimov, the Russian chief of general staff, had been near the frontlines when the attack was repelled. The Russian defence ministry has consistently made exaggerated claims about the casualties its forces have inflicted.
A Moscow-backed militia leader and Russian military bloggers admitted that Ukrainian forces had achieved a breakthrough in at least one point in south-western Donetsk. Ukrainian officials made no comment, and emphasised the need for secrecy about operations in recent days as anticipation grows for a major counteroffensive.
Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Monday that Ukrainian forces had retaken part of the settlement of Berkhivka, north of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, calling it a “disgrace”.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that a 55-year-old security guard has been killed by a Russian attack on a business in Kherson, citing the head of the region, Oleksandr Prokudin.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, said three people were killed in the region yesterday as a result of Russian attacks.
The governor of the Russian region of Belgorod has said an energy facility is on fire in the region, blaming a bomb dropped by a drone. Vyacheslav Gladkov said there were no casualties and that services had not been affected. Gladkov claims Ukraine’s armed forces have fired 650 shells at the region over the past 24 hours.
Two drones have fallen on the M3 Ukraine highway, in the Russian region of Kaluga, just south of Moscow, the region’s governor has said. There was no detonation and the sites have been cordoned off by investigators, said governor Vladislav Shapsha.
A supposed radio address by Russian President Vladimir Putin heard on Monday on Russian stations in regions bordering Ukraine was fake and the result of a hack, the Kremlin said.
Poland’s agriculture minister has received a draft regulation from the European Commission extending a ban on Ukrainian grain imports until 15 September, he said on Monday.
Belgium will ask Ukraine for clarification on reports that rifles made in Belgium had been used by pro-Ukrainian forces to fight Russian troops inside Russia’s western border, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo said on Monday.
Sky News has reported it has seen documents it believes are authentic that show Iran suppling arms to Russia.
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, who has been tasked by Pope Francis to carry out a peace mission to try to help end the war in Ukraine, will visit Kyiv on 5-6 June
Russia’s Baltic fleet started naval exercises in the Baltic Sea on Monday. About 3,500 soldiers and up to 40 ships and boats will take part in the drills, which are scheduled to last until 15 June, the military said.
A two-year-old girl was found dead under the rubble of a house after a missile attack that hit several buildings near the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, the regional governor said. Another 22 people were injured, including five children, said Serhiy Lysak. Three boys – aged 15, 11 and six – were in intensive care after the strike.
A Ukrainian minister has expressed “disbelief” after learning that nearly half of Kyiv bomb shelters inspected during an initial audit were closed or unfit for use. Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries, said on Sunday that out of 1,078 shelters examined on the first day, 359 were unprepared and another 122 locked, while 597 were found to be usable.
Four people have been detained in a criminal investigation into the death of a Kyiv woman outside a locked air-raid shelter, the Kyiv regional prosecutor’s office has said. It said one person, a security guard who had failed to unlock the doors, remained under arrest, while three others, including a local official, had been put under house arrest.
