Here is the situation on Tuesday, June 11, 2024.
Fighting
- At least six people were injured after Russia fired three guided bombs on Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the attack on the country’s second-biggest city damaged at least two houses and several cars, and also started a fire.
- Four people, including a cameraman with Rossiya-24 television, were injured when a mine exploded in Shebekino in Russia’s Belgorod region close to the border with Ukraine. Three other people were hurt in Ukrainian shelling, according to regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces captured the village of Staromaiorske on the southern flank of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine’s military made no such acknowledgement in a report issued late on Monday. It said Russian forces had tried to move forward near Staromaiorske and a nearby village, Vodiane, “but were unsuccessful. The defence forces control the situation”.
- Ukraine’s military said it damaged three Russian surface-to-air defence systems in missile attacks on Ukraine’s Moscow-occupied Crimea Peninsula. The attacks struck an S-400 system in Dzhankoi and two less advanced S-300 systems near Yevpatoriya and Chornomorske, resulting in “significant losses” for Russian air defences, Ukraine’s general staff said. There was no official comment from Russia. Explosions in the area were reported on social media channels.
- The Ukrainian military appointed Vadym Sukharevskyi as commander of drone forces, highlighting the importance of drone warfare in the conflict.
Politics and diplomacy
- Switzerland said it had registered an increase in cyberattacks and disinformation in the run-up to this weekend’s peace summit on Ukraine. Ninety states and organisations have registered to take part in the talks near the central city of Lucerne from June 15-16. Russia has not been invited.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Germany for a conference on Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and recovery and is expected to also hold talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
- Mustafa Nayyem, the head of Ukraine’s State Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development, resigned, citing budget cuts and bureaucratic delays.
- Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper said President Vladimir Putin would visit North Korea and Vietnam in the coming weeks, with Russian Ambassador to North Korea Alexander Matsegora telling the paper that Putin’s visit to Pyongyang was being “actively prepared”. Relations between Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened in recent months with leader Kim Jong Un meeting Putin in eastern Russia last September. United Nations monitors say Russia has used North Korean weapons in Ukraine.
- A court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg sentenced a man to three years in a penal colony for mocking an 11-year-old boy wearing a hat with the pro-military “Z” symbol. Alexander Neustroyev was charged with hooliganism after he was caught on security camera shouting, “Stick that hat up your arse, you idiot!” at the boy as he walked past. The “Z” letter, which was painted on Russian tanks sent into Ukraine in February 2022, has become a high-profile symbol of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it rescinded the accreditation of Maria Knips-Witting, a correspondent for Austria’s public broadcaster ORF, and told her to leave the country in response to Austria’s expulsion of a journalist for Russian state news agency TASS.
Weapons
- Serhii Holubtsov, the head of aviation at the air force command of the armed forces of Ukraine, told the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that Ukraine has plans to station some of the F-16s it is being given by European allies at bases overseas due to security concerns.
