Here is the situation on Saturday, June 22, 2024.
Fighting
- Ukraine’s energy ministry has said that overnight Russian drones and missiles have attacked the country’s energy transmission systems in southern and western Ukraine. Two energy workers have been injured as a result of these attacks on Zaporizhia Oblast.
- Ukraine has said it was dispatching reinforcements to an embattled strategic hilltop town of Chasiv Yar in the eastern Donetsk region, a vital flashpoint whose capture could accelerate Russian advances deeper in the industrial territory.
- The Ukrainian military has launched a wave of drones that struck three oil refineries inside southern Russia overnight, a security official said on Friday. Russian regional authorities in the Krasnodar region said four people were injured, including oil refinery workers, as a result of drone strikes.
Politics and diplomacy
- Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been criticised for telling the BBC in an interview that the European Union and NATO’s eastward expansion “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- Japan has unveiled trade restrictions against firms in China, India, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan over their alleged support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
- The European Union has agreed to start membership negotiations with embattled Ukraine and Moldova next week. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the talks an “historic step”.
- Ukraine believes a second summit to consider its proposals for peace with Russia could be hosted by a country in the Global South, a senior official told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Friday.
- German prosecutors have arrested three men – a Russian, a Ukrainian and an Armenian – on suspicion of spying for a foreign intelligence service. According to Germany’s Der Spiegel weekly, the suspects were acting on behalf of Russia.
Weapons
- The White House has announced that it will rush delivery of “hundreds” of Patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine by redirecting planned shipments to other allied nations as the United States scrambles to counter increased Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
- The Pentagon has given Ukraine approval to use US-supplied missiles to strike targets inside Russia across more than just the front lines near northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region if acting in self-defence.
