This is the situation as it stands on Monday, June 5, 2023.
Fighting
- The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence renewed its plea for operational silence around a long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia, posting a video with the words: “plans love silence”.
- Russia’s defence ministry said it repelled a cross-border incursion by a group of pro-Ukrainian “saboteurs”, the Interfax news agency reported.
- Pro-Ukraine groups of Russian partisans said they had captured several soldiers during a cross-border raid into southern Russia and would hand them over to Ukrainian authorities.
- Russia launched a new wave of air assaults on Ukraine, striking an airfield in a central region but failing to hit the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities said.
- A Russian air raid hit a residential district in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, killing a two-year-old girl and injuring 22 residents, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at least 500 Ukrainian children had been killed since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
- Alexander Kamyshin, a senior Ukrainian government official, expressed “disbelief” after learning that nearly half of Kyiv bomb shelters inspected in an internal audit were closed or unfit for use.
- Fighting continued around Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that has seen the longest and bloodiest battle since the war began.
Diplomacy
- Ukraine Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov rejected an Indonesian peace plan its defence minister suggested during a Singapore security summit. “It sounds like a Russian plan, not (an) Indonesian plan,” Reznikov said.
- NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said representatives from Turkey and Sweden will meet on June 12 to try to bridge their differences about the Nordic country joining the security alliance.
- China’s Defence Minister Li Shangfu warned against establishing “NATO-like” military alliances in the Asia-Pacific, saying they would plunge the region into a “whirlpool” of conflict.
Weapons
- Zelenskyy said Russia was using a network of suppliers to evade international sanctions designed to prevent it from making missiles and other weapons. He accused unnamed countries and companies of helping Russia acquire technology with an emphasis on producing missiles.
- The Kremlin said France and Germany’s supply of long-range missiles to Kyiv would lead to a further round of “spiralling tension”. Ukraine has asked Germany for Taurus cruise missiles, which have a range of 500km (310 miles), while President Emmanuel Macron has said France will give Ukraine missiles with a range that would allow it to carry out its long-anticipated counteroffensive.
