Closing summary
It is just after 8.15pm in Kyiv, and that concludes today’s Ukraine war live blog. Thank you for following along. Here is a summary of today’s events:
Kyiv said it has repelled “more than 130 enemy attacks” over the past day as Russian troops continue attempts to surround Bakhmut.
The death toll from a Russian missile strike that hit a five-storey apartment block in the southern Ukrainian city Zaporizhzhia on Thursday has risen to 13, a local official said on Sunday.
A woman and two children were killed in Russian mortar shelling of a village in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office said on Sunday.
Bakhmut’s deputy mayor Oleksandr Marchenko told CNN evacuations from the frontline have dropped to five to 10 people each day, a decline from up to 600 people leaving the city when evacuations were at their peak.
Ukraine MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze told Sky News on Sunday that tens of thousands of Ukrainian children could have disappeared in what she described as “genocide”. Klympush-Tsintsadze said the children were potentially deported to Russia.
Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Sunday that Ankara is working hard to extend the UN-backed Black Sea grain initiative. A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman indicated Moscow is unhappy with aspects of the deal, which allowed Ukraine to export grain from ports blockaded by Russia following its invasion.
Latvia’s prime minister said Western states delivering fighter jets to support Ukraine defending itself against Russia is “only a question of time”.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz told CNN it is “necessary” for Russian president Vladimir Putin to understand he will not win the Ukraine war so negotiations to end the conflict can begin. “If you look at the proposal of the Ukrainians, it is easy to understand that they are ready for peace,” he added.
The latest intelligence briefing from the UK’s Ministry of Defence says recent evidence suggests an increase in “close combat” in Ukraine, probably due to Russia’s shortage of “munitions”. It also refers to Russian mobilised reservists being ordered to assault a Ukrainian concrete strong point armed with only “firearms and shovels”. These shovels are likely to be the outdated MPL-50 entrenching tools used in hand-to-hand combat.
Two Ukrainian pilots are in Arizona to fly flight simulators and be evaluated by the US military, two US officials told Reuters. Washington remains silent as to whether it will send fighter jets or sophisticated remotely piloted drones to Kyiv.
Top commanders of what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine have briefed Russia’s defence minister on the current situation and action plans, his ministry said on Sunday.
The Russian army hit a command centre of the Ukrainian forces’ Azov Regiment in south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. The Guardian could not independently verify this.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz said it is “necessary” for Russian president Vladimir Putin to understand he will not win the Ukraine war so negotiations to end the conflict can begin.
“My view, it is necessary that Putin understands that he will not succeed with this invasion and his imperialistic aggression – that he has to withdraw troops,” Scholz said in a CNN interview that aired Sunday. “This is the basis for talks.”
“If you look at the proposal of the Ukrainians, it is easy to understand that they are ready for peace,” he added. “There must be something done. This has to be done by Putin.”
When asked whether any deal can be made to end the war – including the possibility of Ukraine not retaking Crimea or parts of the Donbas region – Scholz said no decision will be taken without Kyiv’s input.
“We told [Ukraine] that they can go for membership into the European Union,” he said. “They are working to make progress in all the criteria that are important for this. I think they know that we are ready to organize a certain way of security guarantees for the country, in times of peace, to come but we are not there yet.”
On Friday, Scholz visited the White House to meet with president Joe Biden, who praised the chancellor for Germany’s “critical military support” to Ukraine.
