Closing summary
The Russian military has taken control of the village of Staromaiorske in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, the Russian defence ministry said on Monday. The defence ministry said its troops “continued to advance into the depths of the enemy’s defence and liberated the settlement of Staromaiorskoye” (Staromaiorske in Ukrainian), located southwest of the Russian-held city of Donetsk.
Ukraine’s military said it damaged three Russian surface-to-air defence systems overnight in missile attacks on the 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.Ukraine may keep some of the F-16 fighter jets it is set to receive from its western allies at foreign bases to protect them from Russian strikes, Serhii Holubtsov, head of aviation within Ukraine’s air force, said. Andrei Kartapolov, head of the State Duma lower house of parliament’s defence committee, was quoted as saying earlier that F-16 jets and military airfields outside Ukraine will become legitimate targets for Moscow if they take part in combat missions against Russian forces.
Nearly 90 countries and organisations, half from Europe, have confirmed attending the Swiss-hosted Ukraine peace summit over the weekend despite Russia’s refusal to participate in the conference, Switzerland’s president said.
Viola Amherd told reporters in the Swiss capital that the summit, on Saturday and Sunday, will aim to chart a path toward possible peace nearly 28 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Vladimir Putin will visit North Korea and Vietnam in the coming weeks, Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper reported on Monday, with an official telling Reuters the Vietnam visit was planned for June 19-20 (but this has not yet been confirmed). Putin’s visit to Pyongyang is being “actively prepared”, Russian ambassador to North Korea Alexander Matsegora confirmed to the newspaper.
The head of Ukraine’s reconstruction agency has resigned a day before an international conference on the country’s long-term reconstruction, saying he had been prevented from attending after being systematically undermined by the Ukrainian government from doing his job. Mustafa Nayyem announced his resignation in a Facebook post on Monday after previously sending a strongly worded email to a number of foreign partners criticising the Ukrainian administration for a wide range of mistakes.
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Updated
Four people were injured on Monday when a mine exploded in a Russian town close to the border with Ukraine, while Ukrainian shelling hurt another three people, the regional governor said.
The people were injured in the town of Shebekino in Russia’s Belgorod region, which often comes under attack from the Ukrainian side.
The area is just a few kilometres from Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, where a Russian offensive last month aimed to create a “security zone” to prevent Ukrainian strikes.
“Four people – three self-defence fighters and an employee of the Rossiya-24 TV station – were blown up by a mine in the town of Shebekino,” Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram.
The journalist, a cameraman for the state-run TV channel, was in a serious condition and was undergoing surgery after shrapnel wounds to his abdomen and shoulder, Gladkov said, adding that one of the self-defence fighters was also hospitalised.
Three civilians were injured in an earlier Ukrainian aerial attack on the same town, Gladkov said. A man and two women were hospitalised with multiple shrapnel injuries, he said, adding that the strike had partially cut off electricity to the town.
