Closing summary
It’s nearly 11pm in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand:
Russian shelling hit a crowded market in the Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka, killing at least 17 people including a child and wounding a further 32 people, according to Ukrainian officials. Videos of the aftermath of the attack, one of Russia’s deadliest strikes in months, showed fires raging in destroyed buildings and soldiers carrying body bags away from the scene.
The Russian attack came as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was in Kyiv for an unannounced visit, his first for a year to the Ukrainian capital. Russia also targeted Kyiv with ballistic missiles in the hours prior to Blinken’s arrival, with loud booms audible in the Ukrainian capital shortly before 6am, as the secretary of state’s train was approaching.
Blinken met his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, in Kyiv and held discussions with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The two-day visit will include an overnight stay in the Ukrainian capital and a visit to McDonald’s.
The US will send a new security assistance package worth up to $175m including controversial depleted uranium ammunition for Abrams tanks, the Pentagon announced. Blinken announced new aid for Ukraine totalling more than $1bn during his visit.
The situation along the eastern frontline remains difficult and the main task for Ukraine’s troops is to ensure reliable defence and prevent the loss of strongholds, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said. “The enemy does not abandon his plans to reach the borders regions,” according to Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, called for an urgent investigation into apparent drone debris discovered on its soil after Russian attacks on neighbouring parts of Ukraine. Romania, a Nato member, had repeatedly rejected claims by Kyiv that Iranian-made Russian drones fell and detonated on Romanian territory during a strike on the Ukrainian port of Izmail on Sunday night.
A Russian-occupation appointed official has acknowledged that Moscow’s forces have abandoned the Ukrainian village of Robotyne, more than a week after Kyiv announced its recapture. “The Russian army abandoned – tactically abandoned – this settlement because staying on a bare surface when there is no way to completely dig in … doesn’t generally make sense. Therefore the Russian army moved off into the hills,” Yevgeny Balitsky, the top Moscow-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region, said in an interview.
Commentators and media should not engage in a “fixation on how many hundreds of meters have been achieved today” as they monitor the pace of Ukraine’s counter offensive progress after three months, a senior western official said. Ukraine is making “incremental but methodical progress” on parts of the southern and eastern fronts, the official said, but accepted it was “slower than expected a couple of months ago”.
Ukraine’s parliament voted to approve the appointment of Rustem Umerov as the country’s new defence minister, a lawmaker said. Umerov is a leading member of the Crimean Tatar community who has represented his country in sensitive negotiations with Russia. He is replacing Oleksii Reznikov, who stepped down after 22 months in the job.
Vladimir Putin’s “gangster”-like nuclear threats require Nato to adopt a much more aggressive response, including flying more aircraft with nuclear weapons, the chief of the general staff of the Polish armed forces Gen Rajmund Andrzejczak urged.
The Wagner mercenary group will be declared a terrorist organisation, the UK’s Home Office announced. It said the decision had been taken to proscribe the group under the Terrorism Act 2000 due to “the nature and scale of the organisation’s activities as well as the threat they pose to British nationals abroad”.
That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine war blog today. Thank you for following, we’ll be back tomorrow.
Updated
Ukraine has made important progress in its counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said during a visit that was overshadowed by a Russian strike on a crowded market that killed at least 17 people.
Blinken, the first top US official to visit Kyiv since the Ukrainian counteroffensive began in early June, was speaking during a news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba where he also announced a new package of support worth more than $1bn.
Blinken said:
In the ongoing counteroffensive, progress has accelerated in the past few weeks. This new assistance will help sustain it and build further momentum.
He had earlier described the progress as important and “very, very encouraging”, Reuters reported.
