At least seven people, including five civilians, have been killed in an attack on the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk. After the attack early on Monday evening, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow had struck an “ordinary residential building”. A nearby hotel and a pizzeria used by correspondents were also damaged in the strike although it is understood that few would have been staying at the time of the strike as concerns about the potential risk of a strike on the city, which is close to the frontline, had been circulating.
Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko put the number of wounded at 81, including 39 civilians, 31 policemen, seven employees of the state emergency service and four military personnel. Two children were among those injured. Donetsk is one of the regions of Ukraine which Russia partially occupies and claimed to unilaterally annex late in 2022.
The UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine, Denise Brown, condemned the Pokrovst strikes, saying it violates any principle of humanity. She said “It is absolutely ruthless to hit the same location twice in the space of minutes, causing the death and injury of people who had quickly come to help the survivors. They are frontline responders, helping people in their most difficult times. This horrifying attack is certainly a serious breach of international humanitarian law and violates any principle of humanity”. Russia’s defence ministry on Tuesday said Russian forces had hit a Ukrainian command post.
Ukrainian special services have foiled an attempt by Russian hackers to penetrate the Ukrainian armed forces’ combat information system, the SBU security service said on Tuesday. “As a result of complex measures, SBU exposed and blocked the illegal actions of Russian hackers who tried to penetrate Ukrainian military networks and organise intelligence gathering,” the SBU said on the Telegram messaging app. The service said hackers tried to gain access to “sensitive information on the actions of the Ukrainian armed forces, the location and movement of the defence forces, their technical support”.
Senior US and western officials describe increasingly “sobering” assessments about Ukrainian forces’ ability to retake significant territory in their counteroffensive, according to CNN. A senior western diplomat told the news company “They’re still going to see, for the next couple of weeks, if there is a chance of making some progress. But for them to really make progress that would change the balance of this conflict, I think, it’s extremely, highly unlikely.”. The US representative Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat who recently returned from meetings in Europe with US commanders training Ukrainian armed forces, said: “Our briefings are sobering.”
Two men were injured and hospitalised after Russian shelling in Kozacha Lopan in Kharkiv region, Oleh Synyehubov, the governor of the region, reported.
Russian news sources are reporting that one person has died and three more were injured after Ukraine shelled the occupied city of Donetsk.
Russian state-owned news agency Tass reports that in the last 24 hours air defence in Russia’s Belgorod region has claimed to shoot down two drones. It reports that fragments from the drones damaged three households and power lines.
Interfax reports that the tanker hit in the Kerch strait by Ukrainian drones has had a metal patch welded to its hull to repair the damage, and is now ready to be towed to a shipyard.
Dozens of ships are backed up around critical Danube arteries close to Ukraine’s river gateways days after Russian drone attacks on the country’s ports. Shipping data showed at least 30 ships had dropped anchor around Musura Bay in the Black Sea, which leads into a channel that links up with Izmail further along the waterway. There were at least 20 ships anchored leading up to Izmail. The river and its mouth are Ukraine’s last remaining waterborne grain export route.
Roman Starovoyt, governor of Kursk in Russia, has claimed that a Ukraine “kamikaze” drone has fallen at the Gornalsky St Nicholas monastery in the region, injuring a child.
The British government set out 25 additional sanctions earlier for those said to be supplying drones, microelectronics and attempting to supply arms to Russia.
Ukraine’s security service said Monday it had foiled a plot to assassinate the president, after the arrest of a woman suspected of gathering intelligence about his movements. The unnamed woman was said by the security service, known as the SBU, to be gathering information about Zelenskiy’s visit to the southern Mykolaiv region where Russia was planning a major air assault.
Ukraine on Monday said it was “very satisfied” with a summit held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia over the weekend on a peace settlement. Russia was not invited. Representatives from about 40 countries including China, India, the US and Ukraine took part.
Poland’s government on Monday accused Belarus and Russia of orchestrating another migration influx into the EU via the Polish border in order to destabilise the region. Poland’s border guard has asked the defence ministry to send another 1,000 troops to the border with Belarus, which the government agreed to supply on Tuesday. The head of the border guard, Tomasz Praga, said this year 19,000 people had tried to cross the border illegally, up from 16,000 in 2022.
Russia said on Monday its troops had advanced 3km (two miles) along the Kupiansk front in north-east Ukraine over the past three days, as it seeks to regain territory. The city of Kupiansk and surrounding areas of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region were liberated by Ukrainian forces in September 2022. Moscow has renewed its assault there.
