Summary
It is just approaching 9pm in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and here is a roundup of today’s news.
The west may at some stage have to negotiate with Vladimir Putin or the existing Russian leadership even as it pursues international justice against them, Emmanuel Macron has said.
In a speech in Moldova, he said: “The timing issue – and this is where I want to be very transparent and honest with you. The question is if in a few months to come, you have a window for negotiation with the existing Russian political power, the question will be an arbitrage between a trial and a negotiation, I will be very frank with you. And you will have to negotiate with the leaders you have, de facto, even if the day after you will have to judge them in front of them of the international justice. So this is a question of articulation. Because otherwise you can put yourselves just in an impossible situation where you say: ‘I want you to go to jail, but you are the only one I can negotiate with.’”
Macron also said that Ukraine needed security assurances. Leaders will meet in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in July to discuss Nato membership for Ukraine.
Russia does not plan to declare martial law after Tuesday’s large-scale drone strike on Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has said.
Figures from Russia, including the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said Putin should declare martial law nationwide to “sweep away that terrorist gang”.
Only 500 people are left in Bakhmut, the city in the east of Ukraine which has been subject to heavy fighting in the last year, according to the city’s mayor. The figure from Oleksii Reva, reported by the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, is a tiny fraction of its prewar population of 70,000.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, has said he has asked prosecutors to investigate “crimes” committed by senior Russian defence officials before and during the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has claimed it destroyed the last major warship of the Ukrainian naval forces, the Yuri Olefirenko, which it said was stationed in the southern port of Odesa. The Russian air force said it attacked the ship on 29 May. Ukraine has not commented.
Russia has said it will evacuate children from villages near its border with Ukraine, after several days of shelling of the Belgorod region. “The situation in [the border village of] Shebekino is worsening,” the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Telegram.
Analysis from the Kyiv Post has claimed that about 90% of the 500 missiles and drones launched by Russia in May in attacks on Ukraine failed, to the cost of $1.7bn. It said that 533 of them were destroyed by the Ukrainian air force. It includes 401 Shahed-136 drones, which cost about $20,000 each.
The Russian security council deputy chair, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Wednesday that Britain was Moscow’s “eternal enemy” and that any British officials who facilitated the war in Ukraine could be considered legitimate military targets.
A 60-year-old man has been killed in the shelling of Vovchansk in Kharkiv.
Germany’s government spokesperson has said Ukraine has the right to attack Russian territory as it qualifies as self-defence. In an interview with German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Steffen Hebestreit said: “International law allows Ukraine to carry out strikes on the territory of Russia for the purpose of self-defence.”
The UN has proposed that Kyiv, Moscow and Ankara start preparatory work for the transit of Russian ammonia through Ukraine as it tries to salvage a deal allowing safe Black Sea grain exports, a source close to the talks has told Reuters.
That’s all for today. Thanks for following along.
• This article was amended on 1 June 2023 to more accurately reflect Emmanuel Macron’s comments. In addition, an earlier version said that German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle was a newspaper.
Updated
The Ukrainian foreign ministry has said it is concerned after four Tatar people from Crimea were jailed in a Russian court in Rostov-on-Don.
They were arrested on “politically motivated” charges, a statement by the ministry said, for alleged “terrorist activities”.
One, Jebbar Bekirov, was jailed for 17 years, and the others, Rustem Tairov, Rustem Murasov and Zavur Abdulayev, were sentenced to 12 years in prison.
“These new falsified and worthless ‘sentences’ only show that Russia is resorting to all kinds of crimes in the temporarily occupied territories with the aim of destroying centres of freedom of thought and religion that are not under the control of its punitive bodies. Violence and repression cannot be the answer to the right to express one’s beliefs and defend one’s identity,” the statement adds.
Updated
Russia has said it will respond to what it called Germany’s “provocative” decision to shut down four out of five Russian consulates in the country by revoking their licences.
Berlin’s decision came after Moscow announced it would limit the number of German officials in Russia to 350.
“There can be no doubt in Berlin that these ill-considered, provocative actions will not go unanswered by us,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement, Reuters reports.
The west may at some stage have to negotiate with Vladimir Putin or the existing Russian leadership even as it pursues international justice against them, Emmanuel Macron has said.
In a wide-ranging speech at an EU leaders’ conference in Moldova, the French president also set out plans for a fast enlargement of the EU; reconciliation between the east and west of Europe; and a clear path to Nato membership for Ukraine.
He said Russia had lost all legitimacy, but that if the coming Ukrainian counter-offensive did not meet its military objectives, there would have to be an assessment of the nature of future European support for Ukraine. At the same time, he said that Ukraine was defending not just its own borders, but those of Europe.
He called for continuity in US policy towards Ukraine, but said the EU had to prepare for the possibility of a Republican administration being elected by strengthening its own defences.
In the frankest remarks yet by a European leader about the need to negotiate with Putin, Macron said: “The timing issue – and this is where I want to be very transparent and honest with you. The question is if in a few months to come, you have a window for negotiation with the existing Russian political power, the question will be an arbitrage between a trial and a negotiation, I will be very frank with you.
“And you will have to negotiate with the leaders you have, de facto, even if the day after you will have to judge them in front of them of the international justice. So this is a question of articulation. Because otherwise you can put yourselves just in an impossible situation where you say: ‘I want you to go to jail, but you are the only one I can negotiate with.’”
Updated
UN offers new proposal on Black Sea grain deal
The UN has proposed that Kyiv, Moscow and Ankara start preparatory work for the transit of Russian ammonia through Ukraine as it tries to salvage a deal allowing safe Black Sea grain exports, a source close to the talks has told Reuters.
As the preparatory work starts, the UN wants parallel talks to be held on widening the Black Sea deal that was agreed last July to include more Ukrainian ports and other cargoes, said the source.
Russia agreed this month to a two-month extension of the deal, but has said the initiative will cease unless an agreement aimed at overcoming obstacles to Russian grain and fertiliser exports is fulfilled.
Ukraine and Turkey have agreed to the new proposal, intended to improve operations in the Black Sea grain export corridor, but Russia has not yet responded, the source said.
The UN had no immediate comment.
The UN and Turkey brokered the Black Sea grain initiative between Russia and Ukraine last July to help tackle a global food crisis aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a leading global grain exporter.
Updated
About 500 people left in Bakhmut, says mayor
Only 500 people are left in Bakhmut, the city in the east of Ukraine which has been subject to heavy fighting in the last year, according to the city’s mayor.
The figure from Oleksii Reva, reported by the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, is startling when compared with its prewar population of 70,000.
Both Russia and Ukraine have claimed they are in control of the city in recent weeks.
The forces of Wagner group, the Russian paramilitary organisation headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, have been fighting there on Russia’s behalf. Prigozhin has voiced his fury over a lack of supplies.
Updated
A great piece of analysis here from the Kyiv Post, which has looked into the cost of Russian missile attacks launched on Ukraine in May.
Its investigation found that about 90% of the 500 missiles and drones launched at Ukraine failed, at a cost to the Russians of more than $1.7bn.
The news website said that after looking at day-to-day information released by Ukraine’s air force, 563 missiles and Iranian-made Shahed drones were used to attack Ukraine.
It said that 533 of them were destroyed by the Ukrainian air force. It includes 401 Shahed-136 drones, which cost about $20,000 each.
The bulk of the apparent cost to the Russian government as part of the wider war effort came from the amount spent on missiles.
The website admits that it is only data that has been released by Ukraine and has not been independently verified. It adds that it made “conservative assumptions where it was necessary”.
Updated
Germany’s government spokesperson has said Ukraine has the right to attack Russian territory as it qualifies as self-defence.
In an interview with German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Steffen Hebestreit said: “International law allows Ukraine to carry out strikes on the territory of Russia for the purpose of self-defence.”
However, Hebestreit said he did not believe German weapons should be used for the attacks.
The statement comes a day after a drone attack on Moscow damaged several high-rise buildings. Russia accused Ukraine of orchestrating the attack, but Ukrainian officials have denied responsibility.
That morning, Russia launched yet another drone attack against Kyiv, targeting the capital for the 17th time in May. One person was killed and at least 13 others were injured.
Updated
A 60-year-old man has been killed in the shelling of Vovchansk in Kharkiv.
A statement by the region’s military administration posted on Telegram said: “A 60-year-old man died today in Vovchansk as a result of enemy shelling.”
The city is north-east of Kharkiv city and less than 4 miles from the Russian border.
The administration also reported that a 52-year-old woman was taken to hospital with shrapnel wounds.
Updated
More from Emmanuel Macron’s speech to the security forum in Bratislava in Slovakia, as he called on the west to give Ukraine “tangible and credible” security guarantees.
Stressing that Ukraine “is today protecting Europe”, Macron said it was in the west’s interest that Kyiv have security assurances from Nato, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
“That is why I’m in favour, and this will be the subject of collective talks in the following weeks … to offer tangible and credible security guarantees to Ukraine,” he added.
He said various Nato members could provide these guarantees for the time being as Ukraine waits to join the alliance.
“We have to build something between the security provided to Israel and full-fledged membership,” Macron said.
The French head of state delivered the speech during a visit to Slovakia. At the Globsec event, focused on regional security issues, comes in the long runup to the Nato summit in Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, on 11 and 12 July.
Macron recalled that he once called the western defence alliance “brain dead”, but said Russia’s invasion last year “had jolted Nato awake”.
“We need to help Ukraine today with all means to carry out an effective counter-offensive” against Russian forces, Macron said.
“It’s what we are currently doing. We have to intensify our efforts because what will happen in the next few months offers a chance even for … a lasting peace.”
Macron also called on EU nations to buy European arms and acquire in-depth strike capabilities.
“It is up to us Europeans to in the future have our own ability to defend ourselves,” he said.
“A Europe of defence, a European pillar within Nato, is indispensable. It’s the only way to be credible … in the long-term,” he said.
Macron will next visit Moldova on Thursday where he will meet with fellow European leaders, including from outside the EU.
Updated
Ukrainian authorities have claimed that 27,000 Ukrainian civilians are being held on Russian territory.
The Ukrainian parliament commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets, said during a briefing, reported by the Ukrinform news website: “According to our data, more than 27,000 civilian hostages are being held by the Russian Federation. This is a huge number of our citizens who are actually held captive by the Russians.”
Asked whether there had been any progress on the release of UNIAN news agency journalist Dmytro Khilyuk from Russian captivity, the press conference said that there had been no progress.
“Unfortunately, he has not returned to Ukraine yet. I will not say that we will return him in the near future. I am used to saying real things,” the ombudsman said.
Lubinets said he had repeatedly raised this issue with the Russian side and would continue to raise it.
Updated
Russia does not plan to declare martial law after Tuesday’s large-scale drone strike on Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has said.
His comments came after several leading Russian officials and pro-war figures urged the president, Vladimir Putin, to respond to the attacks by declaring a state of total war.
On Tuesday, Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman head of Chechnya whose forces have been fighting in Ukraine, said the Kremlin should declare martial law nationwide and use all its resources in Ukraine “to sweep away that terrorist gang”.
The Wagner mercenary group chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, similarly said Moscow had to “mobilise the whole of society right now”.
Hardline nationalists have for weeks called on the Kremlin to announce a new round of mobilisation, a widely unpopular move that the Kremlin has so far cavoided.
Putin appeared to play down the attack, and Russian state media touted that there was “no panic” in the city after the unprecedented incident.
Tuesday’s raids on Moscow were the latest in a series of drone strikes and sabotage operations behind enemy lines that have intensified in recent weeks before a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive. The attacks pale in comparison with Russia’s deadly assaults on Ukrainian cities that have hit large residential buildings or crowded business centres and killed dozens.
Read more here: Russia not planning to declare martial law after Moscow drone attacks, says Kremlin
Updated
Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, has dismissed US statements that it does not want to see the situation in Ukraine escalate, after this week’s drone attack on Moscow. On her Telegram channel, Zakharova said:
That’s funny. They broke the house themselves, doused it with gasoline, set fire to it themselves, planted fireworks and firewood themselves, and now they are declaring an ‘unwillingness to escalate’. The ‘war of the west’ in a hybrid format has been going on for a long time.
Updated
Sweden should become a full member of the Nato military alliance as soon as possible and before the Nato Vilnius summit in July, the Norwegian foreign minister, Anniken Huitfeldt, said on Wednesday.
“There is absolutely no reason for holding Sweden back,” Reuters reports she said on the eve of a two-day Nato meeting of foreign ministers in Oslo.
Updated
A dispatch from Shaun Walker at the Globsec forum in Bratislava, which the French president has addressed this afternoon.
It’s the third and final day of the Globsec forum and Emmanuel Macron has given a keynote speech on Ukraine and European security.
The speech, as my colleague Patrick Wintour reported this morning, was intended to reassure sceptical central and eastern and European elites that France is not looking to force Ukraine to make concessions at the negotiating table, noting that any peace deal should not involve the acceptance of lost territory.
After speaking in French, Macron answered questions from the audience of politicians and diplomats in English. Asked by the Ukrainian MP Maria Mezentseva how the international community should go about ensuring justice is done for Russian war crimes, up to and including the political elite, Macron first said the international community should support attempts to gather evidence, but injected a note of realism when it came to the international criminal court’s arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin.
“The timing issue – and this is where I want to be very transparent and honest with you,” he said. “The question is if in a few months to come, you have a window for negotiation with the existing Russian political power, the question will be an arbitrage between a trial and a negotiation, I will be very frank with you.
“And you will have to negotiate with the leaders you have, de facto, even if the day after you will have to judge them in front of them of the international justice. So this is a question of articulation. Because otherwise you can put yourselves just in an impossible situation where you say: ‘I want you to go to jail, but you are the only one I can negotiate with.’”
Updated
More details here of Ukraine’s shelling of Russia’s Belgorod border region.
“In Shebekino, fragments of artillery shells damaged one car and a section of the roadway. There are breakages in the power lines. Operational and emergency services are on the scene,” Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.
No casualties have been reported.
The Kremlin said earlier on Wednesday that it was concerned about reports of shelling in Belgorod, which has repeatedly come under fire from Ukraine’s neighbouring Kharkiv region.
Updated
Wagner chief says 'crimes' committed by Russian officials before and during invasion should be investigated
The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has said he has asked prosecutors to investigate “crimes” committed by senior Russian defence officials before and during the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Prigozhin openly feuded with the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and other top officials for month, accusing them of sabotaging Russia’s military by incompetence.
“Today I have sent letters to the investigative committee and the prosecutor’s office of the Russian Federation with a request to check on the fact of the commission of a crime during the preparation and during the conduct of the SMO [special military operation] by a host of senior functionaries of the defence ministry,” Reuters quoted Prigozhin as saying.
“These letters will not be published due to the fact that the investigative authorities will deal with this.”
The defence ministry did not immediately comment.
Updated
The German government is revoking the licenses of four of the five Russian consulates in the country, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry said on Wednesday according to Reuters.
The move comes in response to Moscow’s decision to limit the number of German officials in Russia to 350, the spokesperson said, adding that the withdrawal is to be completed by the end of the year.
German consulates in Kaliningrad, Ekaterinburg and Novosibirsk will be closed, leaving only the German embassy in Moscow and the consulate in St Petersburg in operation.
Updated
Ukraine has responded in the latest diplomatic war of words with the EU over the trade bloc’s ban on grain exports.
The Ukraine agriculture ministry has said the ban is helping Vladimir Putin.
“Continuation of restrictions means putting additional weapons in Putin’s hands against unity in Europe,” it tweeted. “Current restrictions must be cancelled.”
Several of Ukraine’s neighbours, including its staunch ally Poland, imposed temporary restrictions on Kyiv’s agricultural products last month.
The European agriculture commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, called on Tuesday for restrictions on grain imports imposed by some EU states to be extended at least until the end of October. Hungary has asked them to be extended until 2024.
They are scheduled to end on 5 June.
Updated
Russia claims to have sunk Ukraine's last warship
Russia has claimed it has destroyed the last major warship of the Ukrainian naval forces, which it said was stationed in the southern port of Odesa.
“On 29 May, a high-precision strike by the Russian air force on a ship anchorage site in the port of Odesa destroyed the last warship of the Ukrainian navy, the Yuri Olefirenko,” the Russian army said in its daily briefing.
AFP was not able to independently confirm the claim.
A spokesperson for the Ukrainian navy declined to comment.
The Yuri Olefirenko is a medium-size landing ship for troops and vehicles.
Initially named Kirovograd, the ship was renamed in 2016 in honour of a Ukrainian marine killed near Mariupol in 2015.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, decorated its crew in June 2022.
Updated
Russian politicians have drafted a bill to ban legal or surgical sex changes, as Moscow sharpens its conservative turn during the Ukraine offensive.
Russia has for years been an inhospitable environment for anyone whose views differ from the hardline interpretation of “family values” promoted by the Kremlin and the Orthodox church.
Pressure had been building on LGBTQ+ activists in recent years but has intensified as troops fight in Ukraine, AFP reports.
The conflict is increasingly portrayed in Russia as an existential fight against the “decadent” west.
The bill – submitted on Tuesday – would prohibit “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person”, according to the website of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament.
This would include “the formation of a person’s primary and (or) secondary sexual characteristics”.
Updated
Russia has said it will evacuate children from villages near its border with Ukraine, after the region has been shelled for several days.
“The situation in (the border village of) Shebekino is worsening,” the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Telegram, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“We are starting today to evacuate children from the Shebekino and Graivoron districts,” Gladkov said, referring to the most affected border areas.
“Today, the first 300 children will be taken to Voronezh” – a city about 155 miles (250km) further into Russia.
Shelling overnight in Shebekino injured four people, he said.
Russia has already been accused of in effect kidnapping children from the other side of the border, in the east of Ukraine, and rehoming them in Russia. The deportations have been called a war crime by the UN.
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
Drones attacked two oil refineries just 40-50 miles (65-80km) east of Russia’s biggest oil export terminals on Wednesday, sparking a fire at one and causing no damage to the other, according to Russian officials. At around 2am BST a drone struck the Afipsky oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region, causing a fire that was later extinguished, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said. Another drone crashed into the Ilsky refinery, about 40 miles east of Novorossiisk.
Five people have been killed and 19 injured in the shelling of a village in Russian-occupied Luhansk region, according to the Telegram channel of Russian-installed officials there.
Serhiy Lysak, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, has reported on Telegram that an eight-year-old child has been injured in the shelling of the village of Mezhyrich near Pavlohrad in his region.
The governor of Belgorod, a Russian region that borders Ukraine, has claimed that four people were injured in Ukrainian shelling on a town close to the border. Two people were hospitalised as a result of the artillery strike on Shebekino, Vyacheslav Gladkov said, adding that it was the third time in a week the town had been hit.
The Russian security council deputy chair, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Wednesday Britain was Moscow’s “eternal enemy” and that any British officials who facilitated the war in Ukraine could be considered legitimate military targets. Medvedev, the hawkish longtime ally of Vladimir Putin, was responding to the British foreign secretary James Cleverly’s remark that Ukraine had a right to project force beyond its own borders, said Britain’s “goofy officials” should remember that Britain could be “qualified as being at war”.
Emmanuel Macron will make a diplomatic push to reassure central and eastern European countries that France understands that the continent’s security environment has been permanently changed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a speech to a security forum in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, on Wednesday, Macron will call for a “strategic awakening” and highlight the work France has done to protect Nato’s eastern flank, including posting 1,250 French troops in Romania and 300 in Estonia. He will also stress the French role in unlocking the supply of battle tanks to Ukraine.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, accused Ukraine on Tuesday of seeking to “frighten” Russians after Moscow was targeted with a large-scale drone attack for the first time in the 15-month war. He said that Ukraine had chosen the path of attempting “to intimidate Russia, Russian citizens [with] attacks on residential buildings” and added that the drone attacks were “clearly a sign of terrorist activity”. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine order by Putin in February 2022, the UN reports that almost 24,000 Ukrainian civilians have died.
Updated
The Kremlin said on Wednesday President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would hold a meeting in the foreseeable future, although it was not yet agreed when and where the meeting would take place.
Putin congratulated his “dear friend” Erdoğan after the latter’s victory in Turkey’s presidential election on Sunday.
Reuters notes that Ankara has conducted a diplomatic balancing act since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February last year, opposing western sanctions on Russia, while retaining close ties with both Moscow and Kyiv, hosting an early attempt at peace talks, and helping to broker the Black Sea grain initiative.
Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, reports:
Ursula von der Leyen, the EU commission president, speaking at a security conference in Bratislava, suggested Nato members could give Ukraine security guarantees on the way to Nato membership through what she described as member states offering Ukraine deterrence by denial.
With a Nato summit in Vilnius in July, debate is intensifying on what form of security guarantees can be provided to Ukraine stopping short of full membership, something that is seen as impossible while Ukraine remains at war with Russia. Ukraine is looking for a clear timetable and milestones but the US is reluctant to make such a commitment.
The EU president, without going into details, said examples from history could be used on Ukraine’s future security status, a possible reference to the position of neutrality adopted by Finland after the second world war up until its accession to the EU.
She said Nato members could provide a collection of guarantees that together represent deterrence by denial “through military equipment that can fortify Ukraine against future Russian attacks”. What was important, she said, was clarity that “Ukraine’s friends would be there for the long term”.
Broadly, deterrence by denial means convincing an adversary that “an attack will not succeed because the defences are strong”, while deterrence by retaliation, Nato’s previous concept, means threatening an adversary to “retaliate for an attack if it is carried out” to force the adversary to refrain from it. The denial strategy was adopted by Nato at its Madrid summit, but the implications for the defence of Ukraine in terms of troop stationing has not been fully spelled out.
She once again ruled out a peace plan with Russia based on a frozen conflict, saying the threat of a repeat of Russia’s invasion would cease only when all Russian military and equipment had left Ukrainian soil.
She added the EU had realised that it was not enough for the EU simply to tell Ukraine that the door was open for Ukraine’s eventual membership of the EU, but active steps have to be taken by the EU to bring itself closer to applicant states.
Updated
Here is a recap of what we know about two overnight attacks on oil refineries inside Russia:
Drones attacked two oil refineries just 40-50 miles (65-80 km) east of Russia’s biggest oil export terminals on Wednesday, sparking a fire at one and causing no damage to the other, according to Russian officials.
At around 2am BST a drone struck the Afipsky oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region, causing a fire which was later extinguished, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said.
Reuters reports the Afipsky refinery lies 50 miles east of the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, one of Russia’s most important oil export gateways.
Novorossiisk, together with the Caspian pipeline consortium (CPC) terminal, bring about 1.5% of global oil to market.
Another drone crashed into the Ilsky refinery, which lies about 40 miles east of Novorossiisk, Russian state-owned news agencies Tass and RIA reported, citing local officials.
There was no immediate information on who launched the drone but Russia has accused Ukraine of increased attacks on targets inside the country. Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia.
Updated
If you were looking for something to listen to today, the Today in Focus podcast features my colleague Peter Beaumont discussing the issue of missing children in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials say 16,000 children have been deported from Ukraine to Russia, but some estimates are much higher.
In March, the international criminal court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, alleging they were responsible for the “war crime of unlawful deportation” of children.
Peter recounts the story of 15-year-old Alina, who was tricked into fleeing to Russia by her best friend’s mother. He tells Nosheen Iqbal why this system of camps, fostering and adoption is being used as a tactic of war.
Save Ukraine is a charity that supports families trying to get their children back. Olga Yerokhina, a spokesperson for the charity, tells Iqbal about the terrible ordeal families go through to be reunited. She says the system of removing children is driven by “the desire to destroy Ukraine, to destroy Ukrainian identity”.
You can listen to it here: Tracking down Ukraine’s abducted children
Here are some of the latest images of Ukrainian troops near the frontline in Donetsk region that have been sent to us over the news wires:
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As I mentioned earlier, my colleague Archie Bland has been speaking to our Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth about the drone attack on Moscow for our First Edition daily briefing email. Among other questions he asked Andrew whether Putin was likely to respond – and if so, how?
Initially, at least, there has been no visible tactical response to the attacks. Nor did the attack on the Kremlin lead to specific retaliation. “But we do see ‘war hawks’ going after the military leadership,” Andrew said. “These are people who are interested in escalating the war and persuading Putin to listen to them.”
The leader of the Wagner Group of mercenaries that has been operating in Bakhmut, Yevgeny Prigozhin, responded to the attack yesterday by saying: “What are regular people meant to do when UAVs with explosives crash into their houses? As a citizen, I’m deeply outraged that these scumbags [in the Ministry of Defence] calmly sit on their fat asses smeared with expensive creams!”
Yesterday, Putin said that the people of Ukraine should understand that if Russia retaliated, but that the attack was a “response” because a Ukrainian “headquarters of military intelligence was struck two or three days ago”.
“He’s claiming that it was us who moved first,” Andrew said. “Putin doesn’t like being pressured into action: the Russians could still make a decision to escalate, but they’re not telegraphing it here. But it could change in a second. From what we’ve seen before, even if they don’t take a decision immediately, there could still be an incubation period, and then some kind of reaction.”
You can read more here: Wednesday briefing – What’s behind the drone attacks on Russia
You can sign up for First Edition here.
Russian security council deputy chair Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday that Britain was Moscow’s “eternal enemy” and that any British officials who facilitated the war in Ukraine could be considered legitimate military targets.
Medvedev, the hawkish long-term ally of Vladimir Putin, was responding to British foreign secretary James Cleverly’s remark that Ukraine had a right to project force beyond its own borders, said Britain’s “goofy officials” should remember that Britain could be “qualified as being at war”.
“The UK acts as Ukraine’s ally providing it with military aid in the form of equipment and specialists, ie de facto is leading an undeclared war against Russia,” Reuters reports Medvedev said on Twitter.
“That being the case, any of its public officials (either military, or civil, who facilitate the war) can be considered as a legitimate military target.”
Medvedev has frequently issued threats to other nation states via social media during the course of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Updated
I mentioned earlier that my colleague Archie Bland has been speaking to our Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth about the drone attack on Moscow for our First Edition daily briefing email. He asked Andrew why he thought Ukraine might have done it – if, indeed, they were responsible.
Almost 24,000 Ukrainian civilians have died during the war so far, the UN says, a figure it views as a low estimate. A Russian drone strike on Sunday was the largest on Kyiv yet; there have been 17 such attacks this month. The Kyiv School of Economics estimated that 150,000 residential buildings had been damaged or destroyed across Ukraine as of December.
Meanwhile, Moscow has been almost completely unscathed. On Monday, mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko said: “If the Russians can make Kyiv a nightmare, why do the people of Moscow rest?”
“There may be a desire to make Russians understand that the bombardment can have consequences for them,” Andrew said. “Even if nobody is killed, the sense that Moscow could be vulnerable is important.”
There is a more strategic possibility: with Ukraine’s long-trailed counteroffensive expected to start within the next few weeks, there could be merit in forcing Russia to divert air defences away from intended targets. “This could be a ‘shaping’ operation to improve the chances of Ukraine’s operations at the front,” Andrew said.
You can read more here: Wednesday briefing – What’s behind the drone attacks on Russia
You can sign up for First Edition here.
Updated
Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency reports on its Telegram channel that “an unidentified unmanned aerial vehicle fell on the territory of the Ilsky oil refinery in Kuban. The infrastructure was not damaged, there were no casualties.”
The oil refinery is in Krasnodar region, which is to the east of Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
My colleague Archie Bland has been speaking to our Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth about the drone attack on Moscow for our First Edition daily briefing email. He asked him whether the attack showed Moscow is vulnerable?
Given the possibility that the drone attack was deliberately restrained in order to avoid alienating western allies, it is difficult to draw hard conclusions about Russian defences from the claim that all of the drones were intercepted. “Ukraine’s air defences have been tested repeatedly, but we know a lot less about the Russian system,” Andrew said.
In January, defence hardware including the S-400 surface-to-air system was erected on government buildings in Moscow. While those weapons are sophisticated, there are difficulties with their use in urban areas, where large quantities of satellite data confuse the picture.
Russian officials were dismissive of the threat posed by the raid: one politician, Andrey Gurulev, said that civilians in central Moscow were more likely to be hit by an electric scooter than a drone. Even so, any perception of jeopardy among Muscovites could be important on its own.
“There was a promise that this wouldn’t happen,” Andrew said. “The area where they came down includes some of the most prestigious postcodes in Moscow, and a lot of members of the government and military live there. Putin’s residence isn’t far away. But it’s another question whether that matters politically. We’ve already passed so many watersheds that it feels as if nothing will shock the Russian populace.”
But if yesterday’s attacks are part of a new pattern, it is not impossible that that could change. “We could get closer to the point where the elite population have to actually pay attention to what’s going on and accept they have a stake in it,” Andrew said.
You can read more here: Wednesday briefing – What’s behind the drone attacks on Russia
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Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, has reported on Telegram that an eight-year-old child has been injured in the shelling of the village of Mezhyrich near Pavlohrad in his region.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Five killed in shelling of village in occupied Luhansk region – Russian-installed officials
Five people have been killed and 19 injured in the shelling of a village in Russian-occupied Luhansk region, according to the Telegram channel of Russian-installed officials there.
According to the claim, four missiles were fired from a Himars unit of the Ukrainian army, striking the village of Karpaty.
The claims have not been independently verified. Luhansk is one of four regions of Ukraine which the Russian Federation has claimed to annex.
The drone attacks targeting Moscow early on Tuesday, which have been blamed on Kyiv, were by far the largest wave launched against Russia since the start of its war against Ukraine.
There has been speculation that at least one of the drones involved was a UJ-22 produced by the Ukrainian Ukrjet company, which Russia claims has been involved in at least one previous attack. Some other experts disagree, suggesting it is another model of drone, citing differences in appearance.
Are Ukrainian drone attacks becoming more ambitious?
There have been some Ukrainian drone strikes since the beginning of this year both on Russian territory and Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine. Most drone attacks of this kind have focused on areas relatively close to the border or Russian infrastructure and logistics in occupied areas.
However, there has been an apparent pattern of recent efforts by Kyiv to hit targets deep inside Russia with drones.
In February, a UJ-22 crashed 100km from Moscow after managing to travel about 460km into Russian territory without being destroyed by air defences. In May, a pair of drones were shot down over the Kremlin.
Is it certain Ukraine was behind the attacks?
A few weeks after the Kremlin strikes, the New York Times reported that the conclusion of US intelligence agencies was the strikes originated with the Ukrainian intelligence services, although they were less certain that orders for the strikes originated from the top of the Ukrainian government. That in turn was reported to be fuelling disquiet among some officials in Joe Biden’s administration that the war risked escalating beyond Ukraine’s borders.
If it is Ukraine, why is it doing this now?
While some drone attacks fit the category of so-called shaping operations ahead of a Ukrainian counteroffensive – not least the targeting of infrastructure and logistics – these attacks appear aimed more at delivering a psychological impact. For many – not least among the wealthier Russian elites in cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg – the war has been somewhat remote from people’s experiences with the bulk of recruiting and mobilisation from outlying regions.
The attacks seem designed to bring the war home to Russia’s capital, underlying both the fact that Ukraine is capable of skirting Russian air defences repeatedly and that it has the capacity to strike deep inside Russia.
The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, says he is optimistic that Sweden will be accepted into the alliance in the next few months.
Last year, Sweden and Finland reversed decades of hesitation and formally applied to join Nato after Russia invaded Ukraine. Entry is contingent on unanimous approval from all members and Turkey has blocked Sweden, after allowing Finland to join several months ago.
Turkey has accused Sweden of allowing members of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) to settle in its country. The group is outlawed in Turkey.
Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that it was “within reach” for Sweden to join in time for the Nato summit in July.
“There are no guarantees but it’s absolutely possible to reach a solution and enable the decision on full membership for Sweden by then,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Oslo.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken, visiting Sweden, said the Swedish government had already addressed Turkish concerns.
“There is no reason for any further time. Sweden is ready now,” Blinken said.
“We urge both Turkey and Hungary – which also has not yet ratified – to ratify the accession as quickly as possible,” he said.
The state department said Blinken had pushed Sweden’s case directly Tuesday in a telephone call with Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.
Updated
Emmanuel Macron to call for European ‘strategic awakening’ after Ukraine invasion
Emmanuel Macron will make a diplomatic push to reassure central and eastern European countries that France understands that the continent’s security environment has been permanently changed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a speech to a security forum in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, on Wednesday, Macron will call for a “strategic awakening” and highlight the work France has done to protect Nato’s eastern flank, including posting 1,250 French troops in Romania and 300 in Estonia. He will also stress the French role in unlocking the supply of battle tanks to Ukraine.
At a meeting the following day in Moldova that he has largely engineered with fellow European leaders from inside and outside the EU – including Britain’s Rishi Sunak – he will stress France’s commitment to Ukraine’s victory and say he will not tolerate a frozen conflict.
An Élysée official pointed out that Macron had already agreed to an increase of more than a third in France’s planned defence spending for 2024-30 compared with 2019-25. Macron sees the increase as part of a sea change in defence spending under way with no prospect of an end to the new cold war anytime soon.
The president will argue that Europe, backed by EU funding, needs to do more to support its own armament production capacity and explore defence partnerships between member states.
Ukraine is working with British defence company BAE Systems to set up a Ukrainian base to produce and repair weapons from tanks to artillery, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday.
Zelenskiy’s comments came after he met with senior officials from BAE, including chief executive Charles Woodburn.
“We are working on establishing a suitable base in Ukraine for production and repair. This encompasses a wide range of weaponry, from tanks to artillery,” Zelenskiy said.
Restrictions on grain imports from Ukraine into the EU may need to be extended until at least the end of October, the bloc’s agriculture minister has said, despite fierce opposition from Kyiv.
The restrictions were implemented after complaints from eastern EU countries that a surplus of Ukrainian grain was driving down local prices and affecting the livelihoods of local farmers.
The EU eventually made an agreement with the five states involved – Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania – to allow them to block the import of grain from Ukraine.
Russia’s invasion last year severely limited the traditional export channel of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea, leading to the need to export overland via Ukraine’s neighbours. Farmers in some EU countries protested after a slump in prices.
European commissioner for agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, said on Tuesday that that the European Commission had not yet agreed to extend the restrictions, but that he hoped he had “managed to convince the remaining member states that this is only fair.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has already said the export restrictions on his country are “completely unacceptable”.
Governor of Russia's Belgorod region says four injured in shelling on town
The governor of Belgorod, a Russian region that borders Ukraine, has claimed that four people were injured in Ukrainian shelling on a town close to the border.
Two people were hospitalised as a result of the artillery strike on Shebekino, Vyacheslav Gladkov said, adding that it was the third time in a week the town had been hit.
On Monday, Gladkov said that two industrial facilities in the town had been hit by strikes. On Saturday, he said he had come under artillery fire when trying to enter the town, which is only about 7 km north of the border with Ukraine.
There was no immediate response from Ukraine to the latest shelling, but Kyiv rarely claims responsibility for attacks in Russia.
Both Russian and Ukrainian representatives at the United Nations stopped short of fully backing the UN nuclear watchdogs plan to prevent catastrophe at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief, Rafael Grossi, said Tuesday he was encouraged by the expressions of support from both countries to his “concrete principles.”
The safety of Europe’s largest nuclear power facility, located in Ukraine’s southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, has been a concern since Russian forces seized it over a year ago.
It has been subject to frequent shelling and ahead of an expected Ukraine counteroffensive, fears have increased that a nuclear disaster could occur amid increased military activity.
Among the IAEA’s stated principles is that there should be no attacks on, or from the plant and that no heavy weapons should be housed there.
The Russian and Ukrainian envoys at the UN blamed each other’s countries for the crisis at Zaporizhzhia, although they did not reject outright the principles put forward by the IAEA.
“Mr. Grossi’s proposals … are in line with the measures that we’ve already been implementing for a long time,” said Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, without evidence.
Ukraine’s ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said: “We take note of the director general’s principles to help ensure nuclear safety and security” at Zaporizhzhia.
White House does 'not support attacks inside of Russia'
The White House has said it is still gathering information about Tuesday’s drone strike on Moscow, but could not condone attacks inside Russia.
“We do not support attacks inside of Russia. That’s it. Period,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing.
Washington is a major supplier of weaponry to Ukraine – on the condition the country uses it to defend itself and to retake Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian forces. US officials have repeatedly said that Ukraine has agreed not to use any American provided weapons for attacks on Russian soil.
On Tuesday, US officials told the AP news agency that a new military aid package for Ukraine is expected to be announced this week and will include additional munitions for drones.
There has been no suggestion that US-made drones or munitions were used in the attacks on Moscow. There has been speculation that at least one of the drones involved was a UJ-22 produced by a Ukrainian company.
The Kremlin blamed Kyiv for Tuesday’s attack, but Ukrainian officials have denied involvement.
Ukraine drone strike caused fire at Russian oil refinery, claims local governor
A day after Russia accused Ukraine of sending drones to attack buildings in Moscow, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region said a drone was the likely cause of a fire that broke out at the Afipsky oil refinery.
The fire was soon extinguished and there were no casualties, governor Veniamin Kondratyev said. The Afipsky refinery is not far from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, near another refinery that has been attacked several times this month.
Separately, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, to the north of Ukraine, says an artillery strike wounded at least one person in the Russian town of Shebekino. He has blamed Kyiv for the attack.
There was no immediate information on who launched the attacks inside Russia, but Moscow has accused Kyiv of a number strikes in recent weeks, while increasing the intensity of its own bombardment on Ukrainian cities.
Russian drone attacks killed one person and wounded four in Kyiv on Tuesday, according to Ukrainian officials – but the skies over Ukraine were relatively quiet overnight.
Ukraine has denied responsibility for Tuesday’s drone strike on Moscow. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks in Russia.
Updated
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name’s Jonathan Yerushalmy and I’ll be with you for the next while.
Twenty-four hours after the first large scale drone strike on Moscow, Russian officials in two separate southern regions have accused Ukraine of launching attacks.
The governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region said that a drone strike was likely the cause of a fire that broke out at the Afipsky oil refinery. Meanwhile, the governor of Belgorod region accused Ukraine of carrying out an artillery strike in the town of Shebekino that left at least one person injured.
More on that shortly, in other news today:
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, accused Ukraine of seeking to “frighten” Russians after Moscow was targeted with a large-scale drone attack for the first time in the 15-month war. He said that Ukraine had chosen the path of attempting “to intimidate Russia, Russian citizens [with] attacks on residential buildings” and added that the drone attacks were “clearly a sign of terrorist activity.”
Ukrainian presidential aide, Mykhailo Podolyak, denied Ukraine was involved. However, he did he predict “an increase in the number of attacks”.
One of the drones used in Tuesday morning’s raid on Moscow appears to have been a Ukrainian manufactured UJ 22 drone produced by the Ukrjet company. Alleged footage of the drone, captured in flight during the attack, appears to match released images of the unmanned aerial vehicle which Russia has claimed has been used in other attempted attacks.
James Cleverly, the UK’s foreign secretary, told reporters that Ukraine has the “legitimate right” to defend itself and can “project force” beyond its borders. At a news conference in Estonia on Tuesday, Cleverly said: “[Ukraine] has the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself.”
The Russian defence ministry said eight drones targeted the city overnight but Russian media close to the security services wrote that the number was many times higher, with more than 30 drones participating in the attack.
Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, faced its third air raid in 24 hours on Tuesday morning. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, confirmed that 20 residents were evacuated from a damaged building. One person died and four were injured in the strike.
Restrictions on grain imports from Ukraine into the EU would need to be extended, the bloc’s agricultural minister said on Tuesday, despite opposition from Kyiv. The restrictions were implemented after complaints from eastern EU countries that a surplus of Ukrainian grain was driving down local prices and affecting local farmers.
Ukraine wants to begin work to make its Danube shipping canal deeper as early as this year, to expand its alternative routes to export grain, deputy minister of renovation and infrastructure, Yuriy Vaskov, said on Tuesday. The push for alternative export routes has taken on urgency during the war, after Russia blocked Ukraine’s traditional export routes via the Black Sea.
Sweden’s accession into Nato is “within reach”, secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday. Sweden formally applied to join Nato last year, but was blocked by Turkey over claims that Kurdish militants had settled in the country. Stoltenberg said it was “possible to reach a solution and enable the decision on full membership for Sweden by “ the Nato summit in July.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine committed to respect the five principles laid out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to try to safeguard Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The principles included that there should be no attacks on, or from the plant and that no heavy weapons should be housed there.
