Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed Ukraine has “fully cleared” Russian forces from the key eastern city of Lyman, a day after Moscow admitted its troops had pulled out after they were encircled. Ukraine’s president thanked serving Ukrainian troops for liberating Lyman.
Lyman’s recapture by Ukrainian troops is Russia’s largest battlefield loss since Ukraine’s lightning counteroffensive in the north-eastern Kharkiv region in September. Russian forces had captured Lyman from Ukraine in May and had been using it as a logistics and transport hub for its operations in the north of the Donetsk region.
The UK Ministry of Defence has described the city of Lyman as strategically crucial, owing to its “key road crossing over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defences”. Ukraine’s military has said its forces recaptured the village of Torske near Lyman in the Donetsk region.
Along with Lyman, Ukraine forces have liberated the small Arkhanhelske and Myrolyubivka settlements in the Kherson region as well, Zelenskiy said.
Kirill Stremousov, who is deputy head of the Russian-imposed authority in occupied Kherson, has said that “everything is under control” in the region. However, on Russian state TV Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Russian-imposed authority in the region, admitted that Ukrainians had gained some ground. “It’s tense, let’s put it that way,” he said.
The lower house of Russia’s parliament, the state Duma, has approved laws on annexing four Ukrainian territories into Russia. No lawmakers in the lower house voted against President Vladimir Putin’s bill and constitutional changes to incorporate the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions into Russia.
Russia’s constitutional court has already recognised the annexation of four key Ukrainian territories as lawful, effectively rubber stamping the annexation accords signed by Putin with the Moscow-backed leaders of the regions, despite widespread condemnation by the west.
The Kremlin said on Monday that it will consult with residents living in two of the Ukrainian regions it moved to annex last week – Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – on how their borders should be defined. Russia does not control the whole territory of any of the four occupied regions of Ukraine it said it would incorporate into the Russian Federation, and the borders it is claiming have remained unclear.
The EU has summoned Russia’s top diplomat in Brussels in protest at the “illegal annexation” of four Ukrainian territories. The move is part of a coordinated exercise with EU member states, Peter Stano, a foreign affairs spokesperson for the bloc, said.
Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s minister of reintegration of temporarily occupied territories, has said a “draft law on criminal liability for forced Russian passporting” of Ukrainian citizens had been approved, which was “aimed primarily at punishing the organisers of hostile passporting and their accomplices.”
Ukraine is offering the US full visibility into their list of intended Russian targets in the hopes of receiving a new set of powerful, long-range rocket systems, according to Ukrainian officials. The move essentially gives the US veto power over Ukrainian targeting of Russia and is intended to convince the Biden administration that Ukraine would not use these new weapons to strike inside Russian territory, sources told CNN.
Chechen leader and Vladimir Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov has said that his three underage sons are heading to fight in Ukraine.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, has said a 48-year-old woman was killed after Ukrainian forces fired over the border into the village of Golovchino.
Sweden’s coastguard has said it can no longer see any leaks from the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in the Baltic Sea. A smaller leak from the Nord Stream 2 was still visible during observations during an overflight on Monday morning, the coastguard said in a statement.
Lithuania’s foreign ministry has declared the top Russian diplomat in the country, Sergey Ryabokon, a “persona non grata”.
The British government’s ability to investigate the true ownership of properties has come into question after researchers found £700m of luxury homes previously linked to sanctioned oligarchs were not flagged for asset freezes.
The US and its allies would destroy Russia’s troops and equipment in Ukraine and sink its Black Sea fleet if Russia uses nuclear weapons in the country, former CIA director and retired four-star army general David Petraeus warned on Sunday.
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Smyhal, said over the weekend that 900 Ukrainian teachers have volunteered to join Ukraine’s Armed Forces to fight against Russia’s invasion since 24 February. “This is a great example of serving your people,” he said.
The body of Paul Urey, a British air volunteer who died after being captured by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine has been returned to the UK. Urey’s family raised £9,000 to repatriate his body after the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said it was unable to pay the transport costs.
A leading UK charity that has been helping the government rematch Ukrainian refugees with hosts after initial placements end or break down is to scale back its operations because it says the scheme is unworkable. Hosting arrangements are for a minimum of six months and many are coming to an end after the scheme opened in March.
Ukraine is starting to believe it can take back Crimea, according to Zelenskiy’s top representative in the region. While there’s no suggestion that Ukraine is close to being in a position to regain the annexed region, Tamila Tasheva and her team spend their days discussing the logistics of what would happen should Kyiv regain control.
