Closing summary
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday Ukraine was “more positive” about the prospects of getting permission from its western allies to conduct long-range strikes on targets inside Russia. Zelenskiy said allies should supply the weapons for such strikes.
The Kremlin said on Monday that Russian president Vladimir Putin had arrived for a state visit in Mongolia, which lies on the route of a planned new gas pipeline connecting Russia and China. Russia has been in talks for years about building the pipeline to carry 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas a year from its Yamal region to China via Mongolia, Reuters reported.
A deputy commander of Russia’s Leningrad military district has been detained on suspicion of accepting a 20 million rouble (£169,900/ $224,000) bribe, Russia’s investigative committee said on Monday, in the latest in a string of corruption probes. Gen Maj Valery Muminjanov, according to investigators, helped several companies win contracts to provide the military with clothes in exchange for the money, the committee said in a statement.
Warsaw has a “constitutional duty” to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine that are on course to hit Polish territory, Poland’s foreign minister told the Financial Times in an interview published on Monday. The Polish top diplomat’s remarks come a week after the Nato country’s airspace was breached by what the army said was likely a drone after Russia pummelled neighbouring Ukraine with deadly strikes.
Russia pounded Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv with missiles early on Monday, while falling debris from the downed weapons injured at least two people, sparking fires and damaging homes and infrastructure, officials said. Reuters reports that Ukraine’s air defence units destroyed more than 10 cruise missiles and nearly 10 ballistic missiles, the city’s military administration said on the Telegram messaging app.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba urged Kyiv’s partners to grant permission for long-range strikes into Russia after Moscow staged a missile attack on Kyiv on Monday. “In defending itself against these two barbaric war machines, Ukraine is forced to fight with hands tied behind its back. Isn’t this absurd?” Kuleba said on X. He added that Russia fired North Korean missiles on Monday, and called on Asian partners to consider increasing military aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s “provocation” in Russia’s Kursk region has failed to stop the Russian military from advancing in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the RIA news agency cited Russian president Vladimir Putin as saying on Monday. Putin, on a trip to Russia’s Tuva region, said Russian forces were reclaiming territory in the Kursk region “by square kilometres” and the Ukrainian incursion force there would “be dealt with”.
Russian forces are fighting in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Selydove and Ukrainsk, pro-Russian bloggers said on Monday, as Moscow’s forces try to smash through part of Ukraine’s defensive line. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the purported Russian advance, Reuters reported. Russian forces, which control 18% of Ukraine, have been advancing in eastern Ukraine since the failure of Kyiv’s 2023 counter-offensive to achieve a major breakthrough.
Some kindergartens will shut for a week in the Russian city of Belgorod near Ukraine’s border while several schools will hold online classes after a Kyiv attack destroyed a childcare facility on Monday, the region’s governor said. “It’s a bad morning for the Belgorod region,” the governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said in a post on social network VKontakte the day classes were set to resume after the summer vacation.
An Islamic Cultural Center in Kyiv’s Nyvky district was hit in the overnight Russian missile and drones strikes, badly damaging a mosque inside the facility. Refat Chubarov, a leader of the Crimean Tartar community in Ukraine said the building would need repairs in a post on Facebook. President Zelenskiy also wrote a post on X about the strike saying Russia “has no regard for spiritual or human values, and no respect for any religion or faith.”
Russian forces have taken control of the village of Skuchne in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the RIA news agency cited Russia’s defence ministry as saying on Monday. Skuchne is located in the Pokrovsk district of the region, where Russian forces have accelerated their advance in recent weeks.
A boiler house at a water plant in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district was partially destroyed by a Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian capital early on Monday, mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app.
The West is openly persecuting Russian journalists, president Vladimir Putin said in remarks published on Monday, days after Moscow banned dozens of US journalists from entering the country. “In order to hide from inconvenient facts, from truthful information, the West, which considers itself the standard of freedom, has launched an open persecution against Russian correspondents,” Putin told the Mongolian newspaper Onoodor on the eve of his visit to the country, according to a transcript provided on the Kremlin’s website.
The Finnish government wants to ban Russians from buying property in Finland, the Nordic country’s defence minister Antti Hakkanen said on Monday. “Today we’re sending out for consultations a proposal that aims to ban property transactions that have a Russian background,” Hakkanen told a press conference.
Ukrainian forces destroyed 22 out of 35 missiles and 20 out of 23 attack drones launched by Russia on Monday morning, Ukraine’s Air Force said. It said on the Telegram messenger that it had destroyed nine ballistic missiles and 13 cruise missiles in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Poltava, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Russia will make changes to its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons in response to what it regards as western escalation in the war in Ukraine, state media quoted deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Sunday. The existing nuclear doctrine says Russia may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state. Some hawks among Russia’s military analysts have urged Putin to lower the threshold to “sober up” Russia’s enemies in the west.
Polish and allied aircraft were activated early on Monday to ensure the safety of Polish airspace after Russia launched airstrikes on Ukraine, the Operational Command of the Polish armed forces said. “In the south-eastern part of the country there may be an increased noise level related to the commencement of operations in our airspace by Polish and allied aircraft,” the command said on X. South-east Poland borders Ukraine.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Ukraine live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
Putin arrives in Mongolia, key link in planned gas pipeline to China
The Kremlin said on Monday that Russian president Vladimir Putin had arrived for a state visit in Mongolia, which lies on the route of a planned new gas pipeline connecting Russia and China.
Russia has been in talks for years about building the pipeline to carry 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas a year from its Yamal region to China via Mongolia, Reuters reported.
The project, Power of Siberia 2, is part of Russia’s strategy to compensate for the loss of most of its gas sales in Europe since the start of the Ukraine war. It is the planned successor to an existing pipeline of the same name which already supplies Russian gas to China and is due to reach its planned capacity of 38 bcm a year in 2025.
The new venture has long been bogged down over key issues such as the pricing of the gas. However, Putin said on the eve of his visit that preparatory work, including feasibility and engineering studies, were proceeding as scheduled.
He is due to hold talks with Mongolian president Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh on Tuesday.
Ukraine urged Mongolia last week to arrest Putin on a warrant issued by the international criminal court warrant last year, when it accused him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.
