Evening summary
The time in Kyiv is almost 9pm. Here is a round-up of the day’s headlines:
The Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, has said he is “absolutely certain” that by the end of the week the alliance will have “unity and a strong message” on the future membership of Ukraine. Speaking at a joint press conference with the Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nausėda, in Vilnius before the summit, he also said that Sweden had met previously agreed conditions agreed with Turkey, and that it was still possible Ankara’s reticence could be overcome during the summit.
Nato allies on Monday reached agreement on regional plans detailing how the alliance would respond to a Russian attack, overcoming a Turkish blockage one day before leaders meet for a summit in Vilnius, three diplomats told Reuters. Nato had for decades seen no need for large-scale defence plans, as it fought smaller wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and felt certain post-Soviet Russia no longer posed an existential threat.
Associated Press reports that Putin has met with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner leader, just days after a short-lived rebellion by the mercenary chief and his private army. According to the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, a three-hour meeting took place on 29 June, which also involved commanders from the military company Prigozhin founded. Prigozhin has had a longstanding conflict with Russia’s top military brass which on 24 June culminated in an armed mutiny in which he led his fighters into Russia.
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has said he wants to work with allies to discuss a pathway for Ukraine to join Nato, but the exact mechanism is up for discussion, his spokesperson said on Monday, following talks with the US president, Joe Biden. The spokesperson said it would not be appropriate for Ukraine to join Nato when the war with Russia was going on, but Sunak believed Ukraine’s “rightful place” was within alliance.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has thrown a surprise obstacle in the way of a plan from Joe Biden for Swedish accession to Nato by announcing he wanted Turkey’s stalled application to join the EU to be included in the package. Speaking at the airport before departing for the Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Turkish president said: “First, let’s pave the way for Turkey in the European Union and then we will pave the way for Sweden just as we did for Finland.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Turkey’s EU bid is not linked to Sweden’s accession to Nato, after Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appeared to introduce a new hurdle for Sweden to clear before joining the military alliance. The Turkish president told reporters in Istanbul: “Turkey has been waiting at the door of the EU for over 50 years now, and almost all of the Nato member countries are now members of the EU.”
Norway will extend the presence of its Nato forces in Lithuania until 2024, its government said on Monday. Norway has been a part of Nato’s Enhanced Forward Presence in Lithuania since 2014, Reuters reports the government said in a statement, adding that its contribution consists of about 150 people.
Reuters reports that Russia will continue to co-operate with Beijing and can count on China’s “friendly shoulder”, the speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament said on Monday after meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. “We can count on a firm and reliable friendly shoulder in China,” Valentina Matvienko said.
The Australian government will send a surveillance aircraft to Germany to help monitor the flow of military and humanitarian supplies into Ukraine. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announced the deployment after talks with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin on Monday, a day before attending a Nato summit in Lithuania where the war in Ukraine will dominate discussions.
Ukrainian forces have registered “a definite advance” on the southern flank of the eastern city of Bakhmut, according to Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar. In a Telegram post Maliar said there was no change in positions on the northern flank. She did not give any further details but attention in recent days has focused on the village of Klishchiivka, lying on heights to the south of Bakhmut. Earlier, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said they were “making progress” around the city. Russian forces captured Bakhmut in May but are thought to be struggling to maintain control of it.
A joint investigation by the Russian investigative journalism outfits Meduza and Mediazona released this morning estimates that about 47,000 Russian soldiers and contract fighters have died since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. The figures were calculated based on data from the beginning of the war until 27 May 2023. Russia has not released official figures for those killed in action since September 2022, when it said 5,937 soldiers had died in what Moscow calls its “special military operation”. The numbers were widely seen as implausibly low. Ukraine’s military has claimed to have killed over 230,000 enemy combatants.
Russia is “almost certainly struggling with a crisis of combat medical provision, after suffering an average of about 400 casualties a day for 17 months,” the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update.
Four people died and 11 were injured after Russia’s bombing of a residential area of the frontline town of Orikhiv in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region while distribution of humanitarian aid was taking place, the governor of the region said on Monday. Yuriy Malashko said those killed included three woman and a man, all in their 40s.
Russia’s ministry of defence has published an image of Valery Gerasimov for the first time since the failed Wagner uprising of 24 June. Gerasimov was one of the military leaders that Yevgeney Prigozhin had been railing against for weeks before ordering his mercenaries to march on Moscow.
Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba posted to social media to say “following intensive talks, Nato allies have reached consensus on removing MAP from Ukraine’s path to membership. I welcome this long-awaited decision that shortens our path to Nato”. The “membership action plan” (MAP) is a process by which the alliance enters negotiations with a prospective member about political, economic, defence and security issues.
The US president, Joe Biden, has arrived in London for talks with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak.
Turkey’s foreign ministry said that foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, and US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, discussed the expansion of Nato in a phone call ahead of the alliance’s summit in Lithuania. Turkey and Hungary are yet to ratify Sweden’s accession to the alliance.
A substantial announcement on Germany delivering military hardware to Ukraine is expected over the course of this week’s Nato summit, a senior government official said in Berlin on Monday.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region in Russia, has posted his daily operational update to Telegram. He listed a number of settlements in the region which he claims have seen cross-border shelling from Ukrainian forces. He reported no casualties, although he did detail some damage to power lines.
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-imposed leader of occupied Donetsk, has said that presently the Russian authorities in the region are unable to proceed with demining in the Bakhmut area due to shelling by Ukrainian forces.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Ukraine live blog for this evening. Thanks for following along.
Nato allies on Monday reached agreement on regional plans detailing how the alliance would respond to a Russian attack, overcoming a Turkish blockage one day before leaders meet for a summit in Vilnius, three diplomats told Reuters.
Nato had for decades seen no need for large-scale defence plans, as it fought smaller wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and felt certain post-Soviet Russia no longer posed an existential threat.
But with Europe’s bloodiest war since 1945 raging just beyond its borders in Ukraine, it is now warning that it must have all planning in place well before a conflict with a peer adversary such as Moscow might erupt.
Turkey had been blocking approval of the plans over the wording on geographical locations such as Cyprus.
Nato leaders gather in Vilnius on 11-12 July for a summit that will discuss Sweden’s membership and the alliance’s future relationship with Ukraine.
