Summary
Here the latest developments at a glance:
- Russia and Ukraine have both launched criminal investigations into strikes that have reportedly killed at least 40 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were held at a pre-trial detention centre in the village of Olenivka, after both countries blamed the other side for the deadly attack.
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Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has accused Russia of a “petrifying war crime” over the killings and called on world leaders to “recognise Russia as a terrorist state”.
- Ukraine has said it is ready for grain exports to leave its ports again but is waiting for the go-ahead from the United Nations, which it hopes it will receive later on Friday.
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Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that Russia staunchly supports China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, after Chinese president Xi Jinping warned US president Joe Biden against “playing with fire” over Taiwan in a phone callon Thursday.
- Germany’s economy minister said on Friday that putting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline into operation was not an option as this would only play into the hands of Russian president Vladimir Putin, despite growing anger over soaring energy prices in the German population and industry.
- Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a Russian operative who was subjected to US sanctions on Friday, has been charged with using political groups in the United States to advance pro-Russia propaganda, including during the invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
- The US treasury department said on Friday it had imposed sanctions on another individual alongside Ionov, as well as on four entities that support the Kreml’s global malign influence and election interference operations, including in the US and Ukraine.
- Belarus recalled its ambassador to the UK on Friday in response to what it called “hostile and unfriendly” actions by London.
- North Macedonia plans to donate an unspecified number of Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine as it seeks to modernise its own military to meet NATO standards, its defence ministry said on Friday.
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Germany will deliver 16 BIBER bridge-layer tanks to Ukrainian forces, the German defence ministry announced.
- A Ukrainian court on Friday reduced to 15 years a life sentence handed to a Russian soldier in May for pre-meditated murder in the country’s first war crimes trial.
- A Russian ammunition depot in the southern Kherson region has been destroyed, Ukrainian officials said on Friday.
- At least five people have been killed and seven injured in a strike on a bus stop in the city of Mykolaiv, according to regional governor Vitaliy Kim. Graphic images from the scene show the street littered with bodies.
- The UK defence minister, Ben Wallace, has said that Russian forces in Ukraine are in “a very difficult spot”, and said that Vladimir Putin’s strategy is akin to putting his forces through a meat grinder. In his opinion, he said Russia was “certainly not able to occupy the country. They may be able to carry on killing indiscriminately and destroying as they go, but that is not a victory”.
That’s all from me for today, thanks for following our blog.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday told US secretary of state Antony Blinken that Washington was not living up to promises regarding the exemption from sanctions for the supply of food from Russia, the Kremlin said.
A Russian foreign ministry read-out of the call also cited Lavrov as telling Blinken that Russia would achieve all the goals of its “special military operation” in Ukraine and said western arms supplies would only drag out the conflict, Reuters reports.
Updated
