Germany says it will not be 'intimidated' by Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats
Germany said it was not deterred by Vladimir Putin’s threats to relaunch production of intermediate-range nuclear weapons if the US confirms its intention to deploy missiles to Europe.
Washington and Germany said earlier this month that the US would start deploying long-range fire capabilities in Germany in 2026 in an effort to demonstrate its commitment to Nato and European defence.
The US’s “episodic deployments” are in preparation for longer-term stationing of such capabilities that will include SM-6 and Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons that have a longer range than current capabilities in Europe.
In a speech on Sunday, Putin told the US it risked triggering a cold war-style missile crisis with the move (you can read more about this here).
“We will consider ourselves liberated from the unilateral moratorium previously adopted on the deployment of medium- and short-range strike capabilities,” Putin said during a naval parade in St Petersburg.
“We will not be intimidated by such statements,” Germany’s foreign ministry spokesperson Sebastian Fischer told a government press conference on Monday when asked about the Russian president’s comments.
Over the past day, Russian soldiers have struck 573 strikes on 10 settlements in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, the regional governor, Ivan Fedorov, has said.
One person was injured as a result of Russian attacks in the Pologiv district, he added in the post on Telegram.
The frontline Zaporizhzhia region is reported to be under regular bombardment by rockets, drones and cannons launched by Russia.
Russia says its forces have seized control of the village of Vovche in the Donetsk region
Russian forces have taken control of the village of Vovche in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine after pushing Ukrainian forces out, the Russian defence ministry said on Monday. The Guardian has not yet independently verified this claim.
On Sunday, Russian troops continued to make gains in the Donetsk province as they pushed westward toward the towns of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had taken control of two neighbouring villages about 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Pokrovsk, Progres and Yevgenivka. The day before, Moscow claimed the nearby village of Lozuvatske, one of nearly a dozen it says it has captured in the province this month.
Updated
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has described the front in Kharkiv as “one of the most difficult” and told assembled special forces that “the whole country is counting on you.”
The Ukrainian military said Monday it had repelled six Russian attacks on the Kharkiv frontline over the past day, including Vovchansk.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrives at Kharkiv region frontline
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had arrived in the area of Vovchansk in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, where Russian forces have been trying to advance since May.
“Today, I had the honour to be there to congratulate our special forces warriors on their professional day and to present them with state awards,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.
Kharkiv direction. The forward command post of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in the area of Vovchansk.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 29, 2024
Today, I had the honor to be there to congratulate our Special Forces warriors on their professional day and to present them with state awards.… pic.twitter.com/dLojqvuVD0
Vovchansk, once home to about 17,000 people, is approximately three miles (5km) from the border with Russia in north-east Ukraine.
Russian troops seized it on the first day of Moscow’s full-scale February 2022 invasion. They retreated six months later, going back up the road to the Russian city of Belgorod. In early May, they swept in again, taking over Vovchansk’s polyclinic and meat processing factory, as my colleague Luke Harding explains in this feature on Vovchansk.
Updated
Kyiv calls for UN probe on second anniversary of deadly prison attack
Ukraine has urged the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to investigate an attack on a prison in Russian-occupied Ukraine that killed dozens of people two years ago.
The attack on the Olenivka facility in the eastern Donetsk region overnight on 29 July 2022 left at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners dead and injured at least 130, Kyiv says. Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of carrying out the attack.
“Two years ago, Russians carried out a terrorist attack in Olenivka against Ukrainian PoW. I call on the UN and the ICRC to fulfil their mandate and investigate this war crime,” Ukrainian rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said.
Many of the imprisoned servicemen were from the Azov battalion, which surrendered to Russian troops after their siege of the port city of Mariupol.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said on Monday that Russian officials had blocked independent investigators from accessing the site.
“Russia must be held accountable for this. And it will be. There is no scenario in which the murderers will remain unpunished,” Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
The intelligence arm of the Ukrainian defence ministry previously claimed to have evidence that local Kremlin-backed separatists colluded with the Russian FSB, the KGB’s main successor agency, and mercenary group Wagner to mine the barrack before “using a flammable substance, which led to the rapid spread of fire in the room”.
Russia claimed that Ukraine’s military used US-supplied rocket launchers to strike the prison in Olenivka.
The total combat losses of Russian troops in Ukraine from 24 February 2022 to 29 July 2024 amounted to about 576,000 people, including 1,310 people over the past day, the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine said. These figures have not been independently verified by the Guardian.
Updated
Vladimir Putin has congratulated Nicolas Maduro on his re-election as president of Venezuela, saying Moscow enjoyed a strategic partnership with the South American state and that Maduro was always welcome in Russia.
Maduro and his opposition rival Edmundo Gonzalez have both claimed victory in the presidential election as Washington and other foreign governments cast doubt on official results that gave the incumbent a win.
“Russian-Venezuelan relations have the character of a strategic partnership,” Putin said in a message to Maduro, the Kremlin said.
“I am confident that your activities at the head of state will continue to contribute to their progressive development in all directions.”
“This fully meets the interests of our friendly peoples and is in line with building a more just and democratic world order,” Putin said. “I would like to confirm our readiness to continue our constructive joint work on topical issues on the bilateral and international agenda.” “Remember that you are always a welcome guest on Russian soil,” he added.
Updated
Russia inflicting heaviest assaults on strategic city of Pokrovsk, Ukraine's military says
Russian forces are staging their heaviest assaults near the strategic eastern city of Pokrovsk, Kyiv’s military has said. This is in line with what Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his evening address (see opening summary for more details on that).
The general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine said in a battlefield update that fighting on the Pokrovsk front was the fiercest anywhere in the east of Ukraine, adding that Ukrainian forces had fought off 52 Russian assaults there in the last 24 hours.
“The greatest concentration of enemy attacks was around Zhelanne and Novooleksandrivka,” it said, citing two villages that lie to the east of Pokrovsk.
Pokrovsk, a transport hub with a prewar population of 61,000, lies on a main road that serves as an important supply route to other embattled Ukrainian-held outposts, such as the towns of Chasiv Yar and Kostiantynivka.
In a post on Telegram, the general staff of the armed forces added:
On the border with the Chernihiv and Sumy regions, the enemy maintains a military presence, conducts sabotage and intelligence activities, attacks populated areas from the territory of the Russian Federation, and increases the density of mine and explosive barriers along the state border of Ukraine.
Ukraine is significantly outgunned by Russia’s bigger army on the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) frontline.
Updated
Eleven people, including three children, were injured in Russian strikes on the Kherson region on Sunday, governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.
He said “critical infrastructure facilities”, a playground and residential quarters of populated areas of the region were targeted by the Russian military, adding that warehouse premises, garages and private vehicles were also damaged in the attacks.
Updated
The Japanese minister of education, culture, sports and science, Masahito Moriyama, has arrived in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
In a Facebook post, the Japanese embassy in Ukraine wrote that the minister plans to hold a series of meetings with Ukrainian officials to discuss joint projects and opportunities for further cooperation “in the cultural and educational spheres”.
Moriyama’s visit comes a month after Ukraine and Japan signed a 10-year security agreement on the sidelines of the G7 summit which Volodymyr Zelenskiy said had defence assistance, humanitarian aid and technical/financial cooperation at its core.
Russian authorities have issued arrest warrants for nine prisoners under contract with the country’s armed forces who escaped from a military training ground in Russia’s Belgorod region, according to local media reports.
The escaped convicts, who joined the Russian armed forces likely in exchange for the opportunity of parole, include two convicts convicted of murder, three for causing bodily harm, one for unlawful confinement, and the others for unspecified lesser offences, according to local outlet Pepel Belgorod.
According to a wanted posters shared by Pepel Belgorod, the inmates allegedly escaped on 26 July and 27 July. No details were provided as to how the alleged managed to escape the training grounds.
The warrants indicate that the escaped convicts are likely within the vicinity of the city of Belgorod.
Moscow has been recruiting convicts for its war since summer 2022, first under the auspices of the Wagner mercenary company and then directly under the Russian defence ministry.
Toward the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, prisoners, even those convicted of violent crimes, were promised a pardon after completing a six-month military contract.
As we mentioned in the opening summary, several thousand soldiers and civilians gathered at Kyiv’s Independence Square on Sunday to commemorate the second anniversary of an explosion that killed more than 50 Ukrainians that Russia held in the Olenivka prison barracks (you can read more about it here).
Impassioned speakers at the ceremony urged the Ukrainian government to work harder to get the soldiers freed in a prisoner exchange.
Here are some pictures of the ceremony:
Updated
Opening summary
We are restarting our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine and will give you the latest updates throughout the day.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said fighting in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine is “extremely challenging” and that Russian forces have continued to focus most of their offensive operations in the area in the direction of Pokrovsk.
Zelenskiy said in his evening address:
It is extremely challenging in the Donetsk directions, and it is in the Pokrovsk direction that there have been the biggest number of Russian assaults these weeks – the most intense enemy attacks are precisely there.
Everyone who stops these Russian strikes and destroys this Russian offensive potential is performing one of the most important missions in this war.
His comments came after Russia said on Sunday that its forces had captured two villages in the Donetsk region, Progres and Yevgenivka, a few kilometres apart, as they pushed towards the city of Pokrovsk, northwest of the regional capital.
Despite the tense situation near Pokrovsk, “Ukraine has the strength to achieve its goals,” Zelenskiy added in his address.
In other developments:
Ukraine air defence systems destroyed one guided air missile and nine out of the 10 attack drones that Russia launched overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Monday.
Kyiv launched more than two dozen drones on the Russian region of Kursk in several waves of attacks that started Saturday night and damaged an oil depot, Russian officials said on Monday. Nineteen drones launched from Ukraine were destroyed by Russia’s air defence systems overnight, Russia’s defence ministry wrote on Telegram. That follows 19 drones that Andrei Smirnov, Kursk’s governor, said defence systems destroyed over the region on Sunday.
A utility infrastructure facility in the Voronezh region caught fire briefly from the falling debris of a destroyed Ukraine-launched drone, the governor of the southwestern Russian region that borders Ukraine said on Monday. The fire was quickly extinguished.
Vladimir Putin has warned the US that if Washington deploys long-range missiles in Germany from 2026, Russia will station similar missiles within striking distance of the west. The US would start deploying long-range fire capabilities in Germany in 2026 in an effort to demonstrate its commitment to Nato and European defence, Washington and Germany said earlier this month. “The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” Putin said in a speech to sailors on Sunday. “We will take mirror measures to deploy, taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world.”
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit Ukraine in August, various Indian media outlets have reported in recent days, which would be his first visit to the country since Russia invaded in February 2022 and would come just weeks after he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had expressed unhappiness and disappointment with Modi’s visit to Russia. India has refrained from directly criticising Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, while urging the two nations to resolve their conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.
Ukrainians urged their government to do more to get Russia to release prisoners of war, voicing their anger on Sunday at a ceremony commemorating the second anniversary of an explosion that killed more than 50. Several thousand soldiers and civilians gathered at Kyiv’s Independence Square to commemorate the second anniversary of an explosion that killed more than 50 Ukrainians that Russia was holding in the Olenivka prison barracks.
Updated
