Russian forces have targeted Odesa region, striking private buildings in coastal villages in the early hours of this morning, local officials are reporting.
Russian shelling in Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv has also been reported this morning. The head of the city council, Olexander Senkevich, said “A massive missile strike was launched in the south of Ukraine from the direction of the Black Sea, including with the use of aviation.”
A residential area in Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv has also reportedly been hit this morning. Kharkiv mayor, Igor Terekhov, said the attack by Russian forces was made on the city centre.
Russia is moving convoys of military equipment to Kherson, Ukraine’s military claims. In an operation update posted to the armed forces of Ukraine’s Telegram on Monday evening, the military said convoys of military equipment were seen moving through Melitopol, in the direction of Kherson.
A major fire broke out at an oil depot in the Budyonnovsky district of Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine after Ukrainian troops shelled the province, according to local media reports. No casualties or injuries have been reported so far, but the occupying forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic issued photographs which showed train tank cars on fire.
The Russian state-controlled energy company Gazprom has announced a drastic cut to gas deliveries through its main pipeline to Europe from Wednesday. The Russian gas export monopoly said it was halting the operation of one of the last two operating turbines due to the “technical condition of the engine”, cutting daily gas deliveries via the Nord Stream pipeline to 33m cubic metres a day – about 20% of the pipeline’s capacity. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on Europe to respond to Russia’s “gas war” by boosting its sanctions against Moscow.
Russian gas giant Gazprom has also sharply increased pressure in the pipeline that delivers Russian gas to Europe without prior notice, the Ukrainian state pipeline operator company has said. Such pressure spikes could lead to emergencies including pipeline ruptures, and pipeline operators are obliged to inform each other about them in advance, the operator of gas transmission systems of Ukraine (OGTSU) said.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has issued its intelligence briefing on the situation in Ukraine for the day, in which it disputes Russia’s account of Sunday’s missile attack on Odesa, saying “The Russian MoD claimed to have hit a Ukrainian warship and a stockpile of anti-ship missiles. There is no indication that such targets were at the location the missiles hit”. Russia initially told Turkey that it was not responsible for the attack. Yesterday Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov contradicted this, and said that the attack was on military infrastructure.
Ukraine says it hopes to start exporting grain from its ports this week with the first ships potentially moving from its Black Sea ports within a few days. Details of the procedures will soon be published by a joint coordination centre that is liaising with the shipping industry, deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said that Turkey expects Kyiv and Moscow to keep to their responsibilities under the recently signed grain export deal.
Ukrainian forces have bombed a customs checkpoint in the Sevsky district of Russia’s Bryansk region using an explosive dropped from a quadcopter drone, according to the region’s governor.
Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov has claimed that Russian forces are holding more than 5,000 people in a queue at the checkpoint in Vasylivka in Zaporizhzhia as they try to flee the region.
Russian-imposed administrators in Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia claim to have issued 8,000 Russian passports in the area. Other members of the administration have previously said that a referendum on the region acceding to the Russian Federation will most likely be held in September.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has issued new casualty figures for children affected by the Russian attack on Ukraine. It says that 358 children have been killed and at least 690 injured since Russia’s latest invasion began on 24 February.
The possibility that Moldova could become the next territory to be invaded by the Russian Federation “is still a hypothetical scenario,” prime minister Natalia Gavrilitsa told CNN, saying “We are worried, of course. If the military actions move further into the southwestern part of Ukraine and toward Odesa, then of course, we are very worried.”
British defence secretary Ben Wallace has condemned those who choose to “sit on the fence” with Putin, saying the Russian President will “in the end eat the fence and then eat you”. Wallace, who was on a visit to Bratislava on Monday, made the comments during a joint conference with Slovakian defence minister Jaroslav Nad in Bratislava.
Russia’s top diplomat said Moscow’s overarching goal is to topple Zelenskiy’s government. Speaking to envoys at an Arab League summit in Cairo on Sunday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Moscow is determined to help Ukrainians “liberate themselves from the burden of this absolutely unacceptable regime”.
