Summary
- Russian forces are currently occupying about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address to the Luxembourg parliament. The front lines of battle stretch across more than 1,000km (620 miles), the Ukrainian president said, adding that 100 Ukrainians are dying on a daily basis in eastern Ukraine, and another 450-500 people are wounded.
- Ukraine has had “some success” in the battles in Sievierodonetsk but it is too early to tell, according to Zelenskiy. “The situation there is the hardest now. Just as in the cities and communities nearby - Lysychansk, Bakhmut and others. Many cities are facing a powerful Russian attack,” he said in his latest national address.
- Some 60% of the infrastructure and residential buildings in Lysychansk, one of only two cities in the east still under at least partial Ukrainian control, have been destroyed from attacks, according to a local official. Oleksandr Zaika, head of Lysychansk City Military-Civil Administration, said 20,000 people are left in the city, down from a pre-war population of 97,000.
- About 800 people, including children, are hiding underneath the Azot chemical factory in the key eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk, according to Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk region. The UK’s ministry of defence said Russia has taken control of most of Sieverodonetsk, which has come under intense Russian shelling.
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Civilians are being urged to evacuate the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk as Russia bombing intensifies. With no water or electricity, 100 people heeded the mayor’s call on Thursday to evacuate.
- Pro-Russian officials in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine said a decree has been issued to “nationalise” state assets in the south-eastern region. The deputy head of the Moscow-imposed administration, Andrei Trofimov, said the nationalisation would affect land, natural resources, facilities in strategic sectors of the economy, as well as property owned by Ukraine as of 24 February.
- Ukraine more than doubled interest rates to 25% on Thursday in a move to try to stem double-digit inflation and protect its currency, which has collapsed since Russia’s invasion. In the first interest rates intervention since Vladimir Putin’s troops attacked on 24 February, the Ukrainian central bank’s governor, Kyrylo Shevchenko, increased the benchmark interest rate from 10% to 25%.
- Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said the alliance was in touch with Turkey to find a “united way” forward to address Ankara’s concerns over Sweden and Finland’s bid to join the pact. Stoltenberg’s latest remarks come after he told reporters yesterday that he would convene senior officials from Finland, Sweden and Turkey in Brussels in the coming days to discuss the issue.
- The White House announced a fresh round of sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, targeting Russian government officials and elites as well as several yachts linked to Vladimir Putin. The sanctions were announced as Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he was “grateful” to the US and its secretary of state, Antony Blinken, for a new $700m weapons package for Ukraine.
- EU ambassadors dropped the leader of Russia’s Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, from a proposed blacklist, according to diplomats. The removal of Patriarch Kirill from the list of sanctioned individuals allows the EU to agree on a new round of sanctions after opposition from Hungary.
- Russia has accused the son of a Conservative MP of involvement in the killing of a Chechen brigade commander in Ukraine. Russia’s National Guard said one of its commanders, the Chechen fighter Adam Bisultanov, was killed on 26 May in a clash with a “group of mercenaries from the UK and the USA” that included the “son of a British parliamentarian,” Ben Grant.
- European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said it’s in the European Union’s strategic interest but also “our moral duty” to make it possible for Ukraine to join the 30-nation bloc. “In a few weeks - we are waiting for the answer of the European Union on the issue of candidate status for Ukraine. We are very much looking forward to it,” Zelenskiy said in his latest national address.
- UN aid chief Martin Griffiths is in Moscow on Thursday and Friday to discuss clearing the way for exports of grain and other food from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. Since the invasion, Ukrainian grain shipments from its Black Sea ports have stalled and more than 20m tonnes of grain are stuck in silos, while Moscow says the chilling effect of western sanctions imposed on Russia has hurt its fertiliser and grain exports.
- Ten Russian servicemen who looted the property of Bucha residents have been identified and reported on suspicion of violating the laws and customs of war. “Pre-trial investigation in criminal proceedings is carried out by investigators of ... the National Police of Ukraine,” said Ukraine’s prosecutor general in a statement on Thursday.
