Summary
That’s all for our live coverage of the war in Ukraine for today. In case you missed anything, here’s a quick rundown of all the latest developments.
US general and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley has said Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be very difficult and achieving gains will take a long time. “This is going to take six, eight, 10 weeks. It’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody. And no one should have any illusions about any of that,” he said.
Vladimir Putin’s admission that the Wagner Group was funded by the Russian state could make it easier to try him for war crimes, experts in international law has said.
A 51-year-old man has been killed by shelling in Mala Tokmachka, a village near the frontline in the southeastern region of Zaporizhia, local officials said.
President Zelenskiy has said that a “serious threat” remains at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and that Russia is “technically ready” to provoke a localised explosion at the facility.
Two children have also been injured in Russian shelling of a residential area in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, according to the regional governor.
Last week’s mutiny by the Wagner Group serves as a “vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin’s war on his own society and his own regime”, CIA Director William Burns has said.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has addressed the Ukrainian parliament after his country assumed the presidency of the European Union. He said that Ukraine would win the war against Russia and, in time, be granted access to the bloc.
Sánchez also announced that Spain had allocated €55m to support small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine.
The number of Russian casualties since the start of the war now stands at more than 228,000, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence. The ministry also claimed Russia had lost 4,041 tanks, 7,863 armoured vehicles, and 3,519 drones.
Man killed by shelling in Zaporizhzhia
A 51-year-old man has been killed by shelling in the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, according to the head of the local military administration.
In a post on Telegram, Yuriy Malashko said the shelling had hit the village of Mala Tokmachka, which he described as a “frontline community under merciless enemy fire”.
The village is about 25 miles east of the Dnipro River and immediately on the current border between Ukrainian- and Russian-controlled territory.
Malashko added that two people – a 40-year-old woman and a 39-year-old man – had been injured in the shelling and were receiving treatment.
He urged local to “take care and go to safe places!”
Updated
Last week’s mutiny by the Wagner Group shows the “corrosive effect” the war in Ukraine is having on Russian society, the CIA director has said.
Williams Burns was speaking at an event hosted by the Ditchley Foundation, which stages conferences focusing on British-American relations, in Oxfordshire. It comes after it was revealed he had made a secret trip to Ukraine to meet with President Zelenskiy and intelligence officials.
“It is striking that [Wagner leader Yevgeny] Prigozhin preceded his actions with a scathing indictment of the Kremlin’s mendacious rationale for the invasion of Ukraine and of the Russian military leadership’s conduct of the war,” he said.
Before launching the mutiny, Prigozhin released a series of audio messages in which he accused Russia’s military leaders of trying to “deceive the public, deceive the president and tell a story that there was some crazy aggression by Ukraine, that – together with the whole Nato bloc – Ukraine was planning to attack us”.
Burns continued: “The impact of those words and those actions will play out for some time – a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin’s war on his own society and his own regime.”
Updated
Putin claims on Wagner funding 'could make it easier to try him for war crimes'
Vladimir Putin’s efforts to end a coup by the Wagner group may have made it easier for an international court to prosecute him, and the Russian state, for war crimes committed by the mercenary fighters, according to experts in international law.
After the mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin said the mercenaries had been “fully funded” by Russian authorities. In the year to May 2023 alone, they received more than 86bn roubles from the state budget, or over $1bn, he added.
“Those words potentially have very significant consequences in terms of exposing the Russian state to responsibility for the acts of Wagner, and Putin personally and individually as the leader of the Russian state,” said Philippe Sands KC, a professor of law at UCL and the author of East West Street, a book about the origin of international humanitarian law.
Read the full story here:
Updated
Two children have been injured in Russian shelling in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, according to the regional governor.
Writing on Telegram, Oleksandr Prokudin said the shelling hit a residential area and that a nine-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy were injured. He said both were receiving medical treatment.
Kherson, which sits on the western bank of the Dnipro River near the frontlines of the conflict, has been the target of heavy shelling since Ukrainian forces freed it from Russian occupation during a counteroffensive late last year.
In the previous post, you’ll find pictures of damage done to homes in the city during the shelling on Saturday.
Updated
Here are some picture’s of the damage to homes in Kherson taken on Saturday after Russian shelling.
Updated
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for more international attention to be paid towards the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Reuters reports.
He warned on Saturday that a “serious threat” remained at the plant and said Russia was “technically ready” to provoke a localised explosion at the facility. Zelenskiy cited Ukrainian intelligence as the source of his information.
“There is a serious threat because Russia is technically ready to provoke a local explosion at the station, which could lead to a [radiation] release,” Zelenskiy told a joint news conference in Kyiv with visiting Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez.
He gave no further details. Ukrainian military intelligence has previously said Russian troops had mined the plant.
He also urged sanctions on Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom.
Updated
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has thanked the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, for his “important visit and support of our people” on Twitter.
Sánchez visited Kyiv on Saturday and addressed Ukraine’s parliament, telling lawmakers that their country would win the war against Russia and that their bid to join the EU, while deserved, would not be an “easy process”.
On Twitter, Zelenskiy added: “It is extremely symbolic that this visit takes place on the very first day of the Spanish presidency of the EU. Our common European home cannot be imagined without Ukraine, without our courage and commitment to freedom and justice.”
Pedro Sánchez @sanchezcastejon, Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your important visit and support of our people!
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 1, 2023
It is extremely symbolic that this visit takes place on the very first day of the Spanish Presidency of the EU. Our common European home cannot be imagined without… pic.twitter.com/PgiRBd3iyN
Updated
Media outlets from “unfriendly countries” are due to be banned from Belarus.
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has signed a law allowing media from “unfriendly countries” – those that have imposed sanctions on Belarus – to be banned, Pul Pervovo, a state outlet that reports on Lukashenko’s activities, said on Saturday.
Updated
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said a serious threat remains at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant because Russia is technically ready to provoke a localised explosion at the facility, Reuters reports.
Earlier, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate claimed Russia was reducing its presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. It said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of the Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”.
Updated
The CIA director, William Burns, made a secret trip to Ukraine where officials outlined a strategy to take back control of Russian-occupied territories and bring the war to an end, reports the Washington Post.
Overnight the Post reported that Burns had recently travelled to Ukraine to meet Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Ukrainian intelligence officials. During the trip, the officials revealed a Ukrainian strategy to recapture territories occupied by the Russians as well as their endgame to open peace talks with Moscow with a view to ending the war. The newspaper reports:
“… in private, military planners in Kyiv have relayed to Burns and others bullish confidence in their aim to retake substantial territory by the fall; move artillery and missile systems near the boundary line of Russian-controlled Crimea; push further into eastern Ukraine; and then open negotiations with Moscow for the first time since peace talks broke down in March of last year.”
The Post also reported that Kyiv would agree not to forcefully recapture Crimea from Russia in exchange for western security guarantees. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Updated
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, addressed Ukraine’s parliament on Saturday, telling lawmakers that their country would win the war against Russia and that their bid to join the EU, while deserved, would not be an “easy process”.
Recalling Spain’s own accession process, which began in 1977 after the country transitioned from dictatorship to democracy, Sánchez said the process requires “changes, reforms, and sacrifices”, but that the experience taught his country “important lessons”.
“Reforms make your governance and economy better, more modern, and more transparent,” Sánchez said. “They bolster international confidence and proximity. They attract investment. And, in time, they will grant you access to our European Union.”
Sánchez started Spain’s six-month presidency of the European Council of the EU today and wasted no time underlining his support for Kyiv with the visit. During the trip he also announced a €55m aid package for Ukraine.
Updated
Summary of the day so far
Here is an overview of today’s stories so far:
The top US military officer, army general Mark Milley, has warned that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be very difficult and that achieving gains will take a long time and be “very, very bloody”. “No one should have any illusions about any of that,” he said in Washington.
The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has arrived in Kyiv to meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He addressed the Ukrainian parliament. He is visiting Kyiv on the first day of Spain’s six-month presidency of the European Council.
Ukraine’s defence ministry claims its forces have killed more than 228,000 Russian military personnel since the invasion began last year. The ministry also claims Russia has lost about 4,041 tanks, 7,863 armoured vehicles and 3,519 drones. Figures from Ukraine’s defence ministry suggest there were almost 20,000 deaths among Russian military forces in June alone.
The CIA director, William Burns, travelled to Ukraine recently and met with intelligence counterparts and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a trip that was not reported at the time, a US official has confirmed to Agence France-Presse. According to the Washington Post, which first reported the visit, Ukrainian officials shared plans to take back Russian-occupied territory and begin ceasefire negotiations by the end of the year.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive plans are hobbled by the lack of adequate firepower, from modern fighter jets to artillery ammunition, the country’s military commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said in an interview published on Friday.
The CIA director, William Burns, called the Russian spy chief, Sergei Naryshkin, after last week’s aborted mutiny in Russia to assure the Kremlin that the United States had no role in it, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have reported. The call was the highest-level contact between the two governments since the attempted mutiny, the WSJ said.
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said he is certain Russian tactical nuclear weapons deployed in his country will never be used. Lukashenko and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, have acknowledged that some tactical weapons have arrived in Belarus and the remainder would be put in place by the end of the year. Lukashenko said on Friday: “As we move along, we become more and more convinced that they [the weapons] must be stationed here, in Belarus, in a reliable place.”
A teacher and another employee of a school in the Donetsk region have been killed after the building was shelled, according to a report from Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster.
Pope Francis said there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine as his peace envoy wrapped up three days of talks in Moscow.
Russia is reducing its presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate has claimed. It said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”.
Ukrainian prosecutors charged a Russian politician and two suspected Ukrainian collaborators with war crimes over the alleged deportation of dozens of orphans from the formerly occupied southern city of Kherson, some of them as young as one, Reuters reported.
The US is strongly considering sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to boost its counteroffensive against Russian forces, according to several news reports that cite Biden administration officials.
Ukraine has conducted nuclear disaster response drills in the vicinity of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, regional officials say.
Updated
Ukraine claims to have killed over 228,000 Russian soliders since invasion began
Ukraine’s defence ministry claims its forces have killed over 228,000 Russian military personnel since the invasion began last year.
The ministry also claims Russia has lost about 4,041 tanks, 7,863 armoured vehicles and 3,519 drones.
On 1 June, the ministry claimed Ukrainian forces had killed 208,370 Russian military personnel. These figures suggest there were almost 20,000 deaths among Russian military forces in June alone, according to figures released by Ukraine’s defence ministry.
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too."
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) June 30, 2023
W. Somerset Maugham
Total combat losses of the enemy from February 24, 2022 to June 30, 2023: pic.twitter.com/Pgebvn3kzb
Updated
Here are some pictures of the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, in the Ukrainian parliament on Saturday. He is visiting Kyiv on the first day of Spain’s six-month presidency of the European Council.
He is expected to meet Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, during his visit.
Updated
Russia has resumed commercial flights to Cuba for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Rossiya Airlines, part of Russia’s Aeroflot group, resumed scheduled flights to Cuba on Saturday, which had been suspended since western countries shut Russia out of their airspace in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
The first flight of what will start as a twice-weekly service took off for the Cuban resort of Varadero from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Saturday, Aeroflot said.
Russian airlines suspended flights to Cuba, Mexico and the Dominican Republic on 28 February last year, four days after the invasion, which Russia calls a “special military operation”.
The deputy prime minister for tourism, sport, culture and communications, Dmitry Chernyshenko, announced in May that regular flights to Cuba skirting the airspace of “unfriendly” countries would resume by July.
Updated
Here are pictures from Friday of family and co-workers attending the funeral of a young female killed in a missile attack that hit a restaurant in downtown Kramatorsk on 27 June.
The Guardian’s Shaun Walker, Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer have written an analysis about the likely vengeful response opponents of Vladimir Putin should expect after the attempted Wagner mutiny last weekend.
Four days after Vladimir Putin faced the most serious challenge to his 23-year leadership, the Russian president called in the country’s top media figures for a briefing in the Kremlin.
The panic of last weekend, as the troops of renegade warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin seemed set to march into Moscow, was still fresh in people’s minds. Putin, who had disappeared from public view for nearly two days as the crisis came to a head, was now holding meetings with various key players, including the editors of loyal media outlets, to project an image of calm control.
“The main message was that he is dealing with the situation,” said Konstantin Remchukov, editor-in-chief of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a newspaper with Kremlin connections, who was present at the meeting. “He is starting to investigate and will ask every question, find everything out, and draw the necessary conclusions.”
Nonetheless, as the shock of last weekend’s drama starts to wear off and those in the political elite begin to digest the import of events, which Putin himself claimed almost spilled into “civil war”, there are many questions hanging in the air.
Updated
The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has arrived in Kyiv to meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Kyiv Independent reports.
Today is Spain’s first day at the helm of the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency.
Updated
Ukrainian forces are “almost certainly” being redeployed in the east bank of the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region, the UK’s defence ministry said.
In their daily update on Thursday, the ministry said fighting had intensified in the east bank from 27 June and that Russia had “highly likely reallocated” elements of the Dnipro Group of Forces to “reinforce the Zaporizhzhia sector”.
Combat around the bridge’s head is almost certainly complicated by “flooding, destruction and residual mud” from the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam earlier this month, the ministry added.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 1 July 2023.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) July 1, 2023
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/ZYWegCkpFv
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/y4vDnqTBB3
Reuters reports that Japan’s defence ministry said late on Friday it had spotted two Russian navy ships in the waters near Taiwan and Japan’s Okinawa islands in the previous four days, following a similar announcement this week from Taiwan.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Tuesday it had spotted two Russian frigates off its eastern coast and had sent aircraft and ships to keep watch.
Japan’s government said last month that repeated Russian military activity near Japanese territory, including joint drills with Chinese forces, posed “serious concern” for Japan’s national security.
Japan and Taiwan have joined the United States and its allies in imposing wide-ranging sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine last year.
The Japanese ministry said two Steregushchy-class frigates were first spotted 70 km (40 miles) south-west of Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni, in Okinawa prefecture neat Taiwan, on Tuesday morning.
The vessels sailed back and forth through the waters between Yonaguni and Taiwan, moved eastward and were last spotted on Friday in the waters between Miyako and Okinawa islands, it said, adding Japan dispatched two vessels to monitor the Russian ships.
Russia’s Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday that a detachment of ships of the Russian Pacific Fleet had entered the southern parts of the Philippine Sea to perform tasks as part of a long-range sea passage.
Updated
The director of the CIA, William Burns, called the Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin after last weekend’s aborted mutiny in Russia to assure the Kremlin that the US had no role in it, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have reported.
Burns’ phone call with Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, took place during the week and was the highest-level contact between the two governments since the attempted mutiny, Reuters reported the WSJ as saying.
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led the armed revolt last weekend, denouncing Russia’s military leadership and threatening to “destroy” his rivals, then abruptly called it off as his fighters approached Moscow.
Joe Biden said on Monday that the uprising was part of a struggle within the Russian system and that the US and its allies were not involved in it.
Separately, Burns made a secret trip to Ukraine recently and met his intelligence counterparts and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a US official has confirmed to Agence France-Presse. It reported the official as saying the mutiny “was not a topic of discussion”.
Updated
More information has arrived on the casualties of a Russian missile attack on Friday on a village school near the frontline in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Reuters reports that Ukrainian police said two women had been killed and six people injured. A 56-year-old primary school teacher and a chief accountant, 44, died in the strike on the village of Serhiivka, the police said.
Twelve employees were the building’s only occupants, the prosecutor’s office said. Ukrainian schools were not in session for students on Friday.
Ukraine’s national police said in a statement:
Russian troops, in a direct hit, destroyed a school where civilians were located.
The Donetsk region prosecutor’s office said four men aged 54 to 69 and two women aged 24 and 34 were injured and taken to hospital, and that it had launched an investigation into the attack.
Updated
CIA chief made secret visit to Ukraine, US official confirms
The CIA director, William Burns, travelled to Ukraine recently and met intelligence counterparts and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a US official confirmed to Agence France-Presse on Friday.
The trip was not reported at the time and comes amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
During his trip Burns reaffirmed “the US commitment to sharing intelligence to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression”, the news agency quoted the US official as saying.
According to the Washington Post, which first reported the visit, Ukrainian officials shared plans to claw back Russian-occupied territory and begin ceasefire negotiations by the end of the year.
Burns “travelled to Ukraine as he has done regularly since the beginning of Russia’s recent aggression more than a year ago”, the US official said. The Post reported that the visit occurred in June.
The trip took place before the 24-hour rebellion led by the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to the official.
The mutiny, widely seen as the biggest threat to Kremlin authority in decades, “was not a topic of discussion”, the official added.
Updated
Ukrainian counteroffensive will be long and 'very bloody', says top US general
Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be very difficult and achieving gains will take a long time and be “very, very bloody”, the top US military officer has warned
Army general Mark Milley told the National Press Club in Washington that the counteroffensive was “advancing steadily, deliberately working its way through very difficult minefields ... 500 meters a day, 1,000 meters a day, 2,000 meters a day, that kind of thing”.
Reuters also reports that Ukraine has been cautious in publicly counting gains in the counteroffensive it launched last month to reclaim Russian-occupied territory. The president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, acknowledged last week that it was going “slower than desired”.
Milley said he was not surprised progress was slower than some people and computers might have predicted.
War on paper and real war are different. In real war, real people die. Real people are on those front lines and real people are in those vehicles. Real bodies are being shredded by high explosives.
Milley added:
What I had said was this is going to take six, eight, 10 weeks, it’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody. And no one should have any illusions about any of that.
Updated
Opening summary
Welcome back to our continuing live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a quick look at the latest.
The top US military officer, army general Mark Milley, has warned that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be very difficult and that achieving gains will take a long time and be “very, very bloody”.
“No one should have any illusions about any of that,” he said in Washington.
The CIA director, William Burns, meanwhile, travelled to Ukraine recently and met with intelligence counterparts and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a trip that was not reported at the time, a US official has confirmed to Agence France-Presse.
According to the Washington Post, which first reported the visit, Ukrainian officials shared plans to take back Russian-occupied territory and begin ceasefire negotiations by the end of the year.
More on those stories shortly. In other news as it approaches 9am in Kyiv:
The top US military officer, army general Mark Milley, said he was not surprised that progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive was slower than some people might have predicted. “This is going to take six, eight, 10 weeks, it’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody,” he said. “And no one should have any illusions about any of that.”
Ukraine’s counteroffensive plans are hobbled by the lack of adequate firepower, from modern fighter jets to artillery ammunition, the country’s military commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said in an interview published on Friday.
The CIA director, William Burns, called the Russian spy chief, Sergei Naryshkin, after last week’s aborted mutiny in Russia to assure the Kremlin that the United States had no role in it, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have reported. The call was the highest-level contact between the two governments since the attempted mutiny, the WSJ said.
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said he is certain Russian tactical nuclear weapons deployed in his country will never be used. Lukashenko and The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, have acknowledged that some tactical weapons have arrived in Belarus and the remainder would be put in place by the end of the year. Lukashenko said on Friday: “As we move along, we become more and more convinced that they [the weapons] must be stationed here, in Belarus, in a reliable place.”
A teacher and another employee of a school in the Donetsk region have been killed after the building was shelled, according to a report from Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster.
Pope Francis said there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine as his peace envoy wrapped up three days of talks in Moscow.
Russia is reducing its presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate has claimed. It said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”.
Ukrainian prosecutors charged a Russian politician and two suspected Ukrainian collaborators with war crimes over the alleged deportation of dozens of orphans from the formerly occupied southern city of Kherson, some of them as young as one, Reuters reported.
The US is strongly considering sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to boost its counteroffensive against Russian forces, according to several news reports that cite Biden administration officials.
Ukraine has conducted nuclear disaster response drills in the vicinity of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, regional officials say.
Updated
