Summary
It is approaching 9pm in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and here is a roundup of today’s main news.
Three people including a child were killed and at least 11 people were injured in an early morning missile attack on Kyiv that hit apartment buildings, two schools and a children’s clinic, according to city authorities. The attack, on International Children’s Day, reportedly involved 10 Iskander short-range missiles, and there was only a few minutes’ warning before they hit. Most of the damage appeared to be from falling debris after the incoming missiles were intercepted by the capital’s air defences. Nearly 500 children have been killed in military attacks in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Two people were wounded when an unknown device detonated in the Russian city of Belgorod, the governor of the region said today. On Telegram, Vyacheslav Gladkov said “a drone fell on the road”. Two men were injured and one of them was hospitalised with a suspected concussion.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, reiterated his position in favor of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, condemning Russia’s invasion.
The Agence France-Presse news agency held a memorial ceremony at its Paris headquarters today for the journalist Arman Soldin, who was killed last month in Ukraine. AFP’s global news director, Phil Chetwynd, confirmed journalists would be gradually returning to frontline reporting in Ukraine next week.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, thanked the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, for the transfer of Storm Shadow long-range missiles to Ukraine.
Starlink, the satellite communications service started by Elon Musk, has a Department of Defence contract to buy those satellite services for Ukraine, the Pentagon has said.
Russian access to Faroe Islands’ north Atlantic ports will be restricted to exclusively fishing in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Faroese government is trying to reduce Russian activities at its ports due to the risk of espionage and after criticism over the renewal of the bilateral fisheries accord at the end of November.
Tortoise media reports that the owner of the Independent and London’s Evening Standard newspaper, Alexander Lebedev, has been targeted for sanctions by Ukraine.
The Russian state-owned media agency Tass is reporting that 11 people from the Belgorod region who were affected by shelling today have been admitted to hospital.
Ukraine’s ministry of renovation and infrastructure has said the UN-brokered Black Sea grain export deal has been halted again because Russia has blocked registration of ships to all Ukrainian ports. The UN and Turkey brokered the grain initiative between Moscow and Kyiv last July to help tackle a global food crisis aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a leading global grain exporter.
Taiwan has donated more than £4m to Lithuanian-led reconstructions projects in Ukraine, a Lithuanian government investment agency said on Wednesday. The funds will go towards rebuilding a school in Borodianka and a nursery in Irpin, the Central Project Management Agency said.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv wanted to receive a “clear” decision on its future in the Nato military alliance when the bloc’s leaders meet for a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month.
Heavy shelling has prompted a partial evacuation of civilians from the region of Belgorod, Russia, as soldiers repelled three attempted incursions along its border with Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked leaders of the European Political Community for their continued support “against Russian aggression” on Twitter. The summit is the second meeting of the EPC, which will bring leaders from across the continent together in Moldova.
The mayor of Kyiv has asked for a district administrator and the head of a medical facility to be suspended while investigations continue into the circumstances of the deaths. Reports say they were stuck outside a locked air raid shelter when they were struck by falling debris. Law enforcement officers are investigating the claims.
Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, has announced there will be an inspection of the operation of air shelters in his city tonight.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, announced that events to celebrate International Children’s Day in the city had been cancelled as a result of the overnight barrage.
Tass reports that authorities in Belgorod are denying there has been a border incursion in Russia.
Eight people were wounded by overnight shelling that continued into the morning in the Russian town of Shebekino that damaged multiple buildings, the governor of the local Belgorod region said on Thursday. Vyacheslav Gladkov also reported that two teachers at a rural school in Novopetrovka received shrapnel wounds and had been hospitalised after the building was struck by fire from the Ukrainian armed forces, and said state maths exams in Shebekino had been cancelled as a result of continued cross-border shelling.
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Thursday that Russia’s defence ministry, border guards, emergency services and local authorities were constantly reporting to Vladimir Putin on the situation in Belgorod.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged the international community to put concrete “security guarantees” in place in Ukraine and its neighbour Moldova to give the countries enduring protection against Russia. First to arrive at the summit of 47 European leaders in Moldova, the Ukrainian president said he would also be speaking on Thursday to partner countries about putting in place a “potential air jets coalition” and a coalition providing Patriot missiles.
Nato foreign ministers are meeting in Oslo, where the French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said the Nato alliance needed to think about what kind of security guarantees it could give Ukraine, and Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said the time had come for Nato members to find a concrete answer to the question of how Ukraine could become a member.
Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, also in Oslo, said the time had come for Turkey and Hungary to ratify his nation’s Nato membership application. “We have fulfilled all our commitments,” Billström said. The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said he would soon travel to Turkey to discuss Sweden’s Nato membership.
Russia’s Federal Security Service claimed on Thursday that it had uncovered a US National Security Agency plot using previously unknown malware to penetrate specially made backdoor vulnerabilities in iPhones.
Updated
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, reiterated his position in favor of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, condemning Russia’s invasion.
The comments came after a meeting in Brasília with Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, who is making an official visit to Brazil on 1-2 June 2023.
The Brazilian leader said he also hoped for a “balaced” trade agreement between Mercosur and the EU that could support Brazil’s push for reindustrialisation and sustainable development.
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The Agence France-Presse news agency held a memorial ceremony at its Paris headquarters today for the journalist Arman Soldin, who was killed last month in Ukraine.
AFP’s chair, Fabrice Fries, said:
Since the announcement of Arman’s death on 9 May, the emotion has not subsided. I even have the feeling it has grown as we all become aware of Arman’s extremely endearing and sunny personality.
Soldin, a video coordinator in Ukraine, was killed in a rocket attack in the east of the country.
His death sparked an outpouring of sympathy and tributes across the world.
“Arman had the rare ability to find moments of life and even poetry amid the horror,” France’s culture minister, Rima Abdul Malak, said at the ceremony.
Soldin, 32, was part of a team of AFP reporters embedded with Ukrainian soldiers near the besieged city of Bakhmut. They were walking back to their car near the village of Chasiv Yar when they were targeted by a series of Grad rockets that grew increasingly close.
AFP’s global news director, Phil Chetwynd, confirmed journalists would be gradually returning to frontline reporting in Ukraine next week and that the company was investigating how best to adapt to the changing situation on the ground.
He said:
We assume a certain level of risk by choosing to report on this conflict, as we have done with conflicts throughout history.
At least 11 journalists have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on 24 February 2022, according to figures from Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanks Rishi Sunak for UK transferring long-range missiles to Ukraine
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, thanked the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, for the transfer of Storm Shadow long-range missiles to Ukraine.
In a tweet, he said:
I thank you Britain and Mr Prime Minister personally for the assistance provided to Ukraine. For the leadership in creating a tank and aviation coalition, in particular in readiness to start training Ukrainian pilots.
I am always glad to talk with a true friend of Ukraine, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom @RishiSunak, for these are always very meaningful meetings with a powerful result for our common security!
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 1, 2023
Today, I noted the recent transfer of Storm Shadow long-range missiles to 🇺🇦.… pic.twitter.com/06rEN8YTEz
Sunak said it is “always a privilege to meet my friend Volodymyr Zelenskiy” and posted a photo of them together on Twitter.
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This map shows the Belgorod, a region and city in Russia near the border of Ukraine. Two people were wounded when an unknown device detonated in the city today. Belgorod is more than 600km from Moscow but is just over half an hour’s drive from the border with Ukraine, making it a vital stop for Russian supply lines and vulnerable to conflict.
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Starlink, the satellite communications service started by Elon Musk, now has a Department of Defence contract to buy those satellite services for Ukraine, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The US defence department statement said:
We continue to work with a range of global partners to ensure Ukraine has the resilient satellite and communication capabilities they need. Satellite communications constitute a vital layer in Ukraine’s overall communications network and the department contracts with Starlink for services of this type.
An anti-Kremlin group released drone footage it claimed showed Russian military equipment being destroyed in Russia’s Belgorod region. The video was released by the Freedom of Russia Legion, which says it was formed in spring 2022 “out of the wish of Russians to fight in the ranks of the armed forces of Ukraine against Putin’s armed gang”.
Russian access to Faroe Islands’ north Atlantic ports will be restricted to exclusively fishing
Russian access to Faroe Islands’ north Atlantic ports will be restricted to exclusively fishing in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The government said:
Only fishing vessels exclusively conducting fisheries under the bilateral agreement between the Faroe Islands and Russia will be allowed to enter Faroese ports.
The activities of Russian fishing vessels in port will be restricted to crew change, bunkering, provisioning, landing and transshipment.
Maintenance services will be prohibited and the purchase of goods restricted.
The Faroe Islands are a Danish autonomous territory, sitting between Scotland and Iceland.
The Faroese government is trying to reduce Russian activities at its ports due to the risk of espionage and after criticism over the renewal of the bilateral fisheries accord at the end of November.
The agreement, renewed annually since 1977, lays out quotas on several species, including cod, haddock, whiting and herring in the Barents Sea for Faroese fishers and off the Faroe Islands for Russians.
According to the fisheries ministry, the fish caught under the accord accounts for 5% of gross domestic product.
Russia became a key commercial partner of the Faroes since they and neighbouring Iceland fell out with the European Union – including Denmark – between 2010 and 2014 over mackerel and herring quotas.
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Two wounded after drone hits Russian city near Ukraine, says governor
Two people were wounded when an unknown device detonated in Russia’s city of Belgorod, the governor of the region said today.
On Telegram, the Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said:
According to preliminary data, a drone fell on the roadway.
The governor said two men were injured and one of them was hospitalised with a suspected concussion.
The Belgorod mayor Valentin Demidov said the explosion went off near a petrol station, adding the blast took place “not far from the ground,” AFP reports.
Local officials were inspecting nearby buildings to see if they were damaged, Demidov said.
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Russian owner of UK newspapers sanctioned by Ukraine – reports
Tortoise media reports that the owner of the Independent and London’s Evening Standard newspaper, Alexander Lebedev, has been targeted for sanctions by Ukraine.
It states that Ukraine’s decision to impose sanctions on Lebedev was “made by the country’s national security and defence council on 19 October 2022, but has not previously been reported.”
Lebedev, a Russian citizen who has not been sanctioned by the UK in its efforts to stop the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, bought the Evening Standard and Independent newspapers more than a decade ago. He has hosted former UK prime minister Boris Johnson at lavish parties in London and at a villa in Umbria.
Johnson gave Lebedev’s son a seat for life in the UK’s upper house of parliament despite security warnings from MI5, according to previous reporting by Tortoise. The Cabinet Office has told parliament that “Lord Lebedev is a man of good standing.” Lord Lebedev has said that he has “no links to the Kremlin”.
The sanctions block Lebedev, who owns substantial tourism assets in occupied Crimea, from moving funds out of Ukraine and from making financial transactions within the country.
The designation suggests that Lebedev is a “person directly or indirectly controlled by residents of a foreign state or acting in their interests”.
Updated
Russian state-owned media Tass is reporting that 11 people from the Belgorod region who were affected by shelling today have been admitted to a hospital in Belgorod.
The head doctor of the hospital, Roman Protsenko, told Russian media that four of them were in intensive care, with one undergoing surgery. He said that in total there were 27 civilians in the hospital with injuries due to the conflict, none of which were so serious that the patients needed to be transferred to Moscow.
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Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that its correspondents can hear explosions in Kherson.
This is not uncommon: the southern portion of the region, on the left bank of the Dnipro River, is occupied by Russian forces, with Kyiv’s government in control of the northern portion of the region, which is one that the Russian Federation has claimed to annex.
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Ukraine’s ministry of renovation and infrastructure has said the UN-brokered Black Sea grain export deal has been halted again because Russia has blocked registration of ships to all Ukrainian ports.
The UN and Turkey brokered the Black Sea grain initiative between Moscow and Kyiv last July to help tackle a global food crisis aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a leading global grain exporter, Reuters reports.
Russia agreed in May 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.
The Ukrainian ministry said on Facebook:
The Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul [which oversees the initiative] has announced that it is impossible to draw up an inspection plan for 1 June due to another unjustified refusal of the Russian delegation to register the incoming fleet for participation in the Initiative.
It said Russia registered only one incoming ship for inspection in the last two days of May and had given no explanation for the move, which the ministry said was a “gross violation” of the initiative.
Ukrainian officials have said that since mid-April, Russia has “unreasonably restricted” the work of the Black Sea grain deal.
It said 50 vessels were waiting for inspection in Turkish territorial waters and that they were ready to deliver 2.4m tonnes of Ukrainian food abroad. Some vessels had been waiting for inspections for more than three months.
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Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainan president’s office, tweeted that countries across the continent reaffirmed their commitment to supporting Ukraine at the second European Political Community summit.
The second European Political Community summit.
— Andriy Yermak (@AndriyYermak) June 1, 2023
There have already been meetings with the 🇲🇩🇲🇰🇦🇱🇪🇺 leaders. Talked about 🇺🇦, and the fact that we're defending not just ourselves, but the whole Europe as well. Everyone confirmed commitment to stand with us until we win. pic.twitter.com/Gn2FHBoIrQ
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has said it is concerned that the looming escalation of hostilities in Ukraine could see civilians “[pay] the highest price”.
The aid organisation said it was preparing for a potential increase in needs.
George Readings, IRC’s global crisis analysis lead, said:
Humanitarian organisations are seriously worried that the looming escalation of hostilities is likely to inflict even more civilian harm in Ukraine with severity we have not seen since the start of full-scale war.
Already the recent increase in aerial attacks is causing a higher level of distress among affected populations, including IRC’s teams who are working to provide humanitarian assistance to communities impacted by the war.
We are concerned that this escalation could witness use of weapons and tactics that cause even greater loss of civilian life. We have seen similar shifts happen in other conflicts, where civilians paid the highest price for violations of international humanitarian law committed with impunity.
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Taiwan has donated more than £4m towards Lithuanian-led reconstructions projects in Ukraine, a Lithuanian government investment agency said on Wednesday.
The funds will go towards rebuilding a school in Borodianka and a nursery in Irpin, the Central Project Management Agency said in a statement.
The Lithuanian government has donated €9.8m (£8.4/$9.2m) towards the rebuilding, and the Taiwanese contribution will be used to buy educational equipment.
Roy Chun Lee, the Taiwanese deputy minister of foreign affairs, said:
Taiwan sees Ukraine as our own image in a different continent. We both face authoritarian regimes which do not shy from using force to impose its worldview.
If one day Taiwan is facing an increased level of military intimidation from China, we will be looking for your assistance as well, just as we are helping Ukraine.
In 2022, China downgraded its diplomatic ties with Lithuania and told multinationals to sever ties with Lithuania or face being shut out of the Chinese market, after the opening of a representative office by Taiwan in Vilnius.
China views self-ruled and democratically governed Taiwan as its territory and has stepped up pressure on countries to downgrade or sever their relations with the island.
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Here are some more of the images of the aftermath of a Russian strike on Kyiv, where falling debris killed three people trying to reach shelter, including a child and her mother.
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Volodymr Zelenskiy said today that Kyiv had not set a date for a summit that would set parameters to end the war because Kyiv was working to bring as many nations as possible to the table.
Ukraine has proposed a peace summit for several months but it has so far not materialised given it would not include Russia and aims to attract countries beyond Kyiv’s allies, Reuters reports.
“We are organising a summit – we want to involve as many countries as possible, that’s why we did not set the date yet,” Zelenskiy told reporters on arrival at a gathering of more than 40 European leaders in Moldova.
At the G7 meeting in Japan in May where he met leaders of non-aligned countries including India, and earlier at an Arab League summit, Zelenskiy laid out Kyiv’s plan to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and proposed a global summit for July.
Several locations in Scandinavia have been mooted, with Denmark offering to host. There is also possibility of staging it in Lithuania before a Nato heads of state meeting in the capital, Vilnius, on 10-11 July, a European diplomatic source said.
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At the European Political Community summit, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had discussed ways to implement the Ukrainian peace formula with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.
He also emphasised the need to lift export restrictions on Ukrainian agriculture.
As part of my participation in the European Political Community Summit, I met with President of the European Commission 🇪🇺 @vonderleyen. We discussed specific ways to implement the Ukrainian Peace Formula and consolidate global support for Ukraine's peace initiative. We also…
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 1, 2023
In an earlier tweet, Von der Leyen said: “Ukraine has made impressive progress on its EU path. We are by your side, we will work hard together to reach this goal.”
Updated
The UN humanitarian coordinator Denise Brown has condemned the killing of a child in Kyiv today, as Ukraine celebrates Children’s Day.
In a statement, she said:
Once again, I am shocked and saddened by the death of a child and other civilians during yet another massive missile attack by the Russian armed forces on Kyiv today. My thoughts are with the families of the dead and wounded.
On Children’s Day in Ukraine, I want to express my deepest condolences to the families of the more than 1,500 children who have been killed or injured in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The UN is also extremely concerned and is carefully monitoring reports of the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to the Russian Federation.
The war also had a devastating effect on the mental health and wellbeing of children, including the millions who were forced to flee for their lives. The humanitarian community will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that they receive the urgent support they need for as long as it is needed.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv wanted to receive a “clear” decision on its future in the Nato military alliance when the bloc’s leaders meet for a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month.
At a summit of 47 European leaders in Moldova, he also said he wanted progress on Ukraine’s path to the EU, which Kyiv applied to join last year after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
Zelenskiy said:
This year is for decisions. In summer in Vilnius at the Nato summit, the clear invitation to the members of Ukraine is needed and the security guarantees on the way to Nato membership are needed.
In [autumn], on our accession to the EU, a clear, positive decision is needed. And we are also preparing for a peace summit, which will guide the world to jointly implement the peace formula.
Updated
Heavy shelling has prompted a partial evacuation of civilians from the region of Belgorod, Russia, as soldiers repelled three attempted incursions along its border with Ukraine.
Russia has come under repeated attack in recent days, with a major cross-border incursion and, earlier this week, the biggest ever drone attack on Moscow.
Settlements in the Belgorod were briefly seized by pro-Ukrainian forces last week during an incursion.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had repelled three cross-border attacks today near the town of Shebekino, and it accused Ukraine of using what it cast as “terrorist formations” to carry out attempted attacks on Russian civilians.
The ministry said:
The selfless actions of Russian servicemen repelled three attacks by Ukrainian terrorist formations.
No violations of the state border were allowed.
The ministry said more than 30 Ukrainian fighters were killed and four armoured vehicles destroyed. These claims have not been independently verified.
Updated
In a tweet, Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked leaders of the European Political Community for their continued support “against Russian aggression”. This is the second meeting of the European Political Community, which will bring leaders from across the continent together in Moldova.
In Moldova, on the sidelines of the second summit of the European Political Community, I met with Prime Minister of the Republic of Albania 🇦🇱 @ediramaal and Prime Minister of the Republic of North Macedonia 🇲🇰 @DKovachevski. I thanked the leaders for their consistent…
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 1, 2023
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
Three people including a child were killed and at least 11 people were injured in an early morning missile attack on Kyiv that hit apartment buildings, two schools and a children’s clinic, according to city authorities. The attack, on International Children’s Day, reportedly involved 10 Iskander short-range missiles, and there was only a few minutes’ warning before they hit. Most of the damage appeared to be from falling debris after the incoming missiles were intercepted by the capital’s air defences.
Initial reports said a girl, her mother and another woman were killed. There was also a child among the wounded. Nearly 500 children have been killed in military attacks in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The mayor of Kyiv has asked for a district administrator and the head of a medical facility to be suspended while investigations continue into the circumstances of the deaths. Reports say they were stuck outside a locked air raid shelter when they were struck by falling debris. Law enforcement officers are investigating the claims.
Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, has announced there will be an inspection of the operation of air shelters in his city tonight.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, announced that events to celebrate International Children’s Day in the city had been cancelled as a result of the overnight barrage.
Tass reports that authorities in Belgorod are denying there has been a border incursion in Russia.
Eight people were wounded by overnight shelling that continued into the morning in the Russian town of Shebekino that damaged multiple buildings, the governor of the local Belgorod region said on Thursday. Vyacheslav Gladkov also reported that two teachers at a rural school in Novopetrovka received shrapnel wounds and had been hospitalised after the building was struck by fire from the Ukrainian armed forces, and said state maths exams in Shebekino had been cancelled as a result of continued cross-border shelling.
The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Russia’s defence ministry, border guards, emergency services and local authorities were constantly reporting to Vladimir Putin on the situation in Belgorod.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged the international community to put concrete “security guarantees” in place in Ukraine and its neighbour Moldova to give the countries enduring protection against Russia. First to arrive at the summit of 47 European leaders in Moldova, the Ukrainian president said he would also be speaking on Thursday to partner countries about putting in place a “potential air jets coalition” and a coalition providing Patriot missiles.
Nato foreign ministers are meeting in Oslo, where the French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said the Nato alliance needed to think about what kind of security guarantees it could give Ukraine, and Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said the time had come for Nato members to find a concrete answer to the question of how Ukraine could become a member.
Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, also in Oslo, said the time had come for Turkey and Hungary to ratify his nation’s Nato membership application. “We have fulfilled all our commitments,” Billström said. The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said he would soon travel to Turkey to discuss Sweden’s Nato membership.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed on Thursday that it had uncovered a US National Security Agency (NSA) plot using previously unknown malware to penetrate specially made backdoor vulnerabilities in iPhones.
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Here are some more of the images of the aftermath of a Russian strike on Kyiv, where falling debris killed three people, including a child.
Zelenskiy pleads for ‘security guarantees’ for Ukraine and Moldova
Lisa O’Carroll is in Moldova for the Guardian:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged the international community to put concrete “security guarantees” in place in Ukraine and its neighbour Moldova to give the countries enduring protection against Russia.
His plea at the start of a summit of 47 European leaders in Moldova came as officials confirmed that a girl, her mother and another woman had been killed in a Russian missile strike on Kyiv early on Thursday.
First to arrive at the summit in Moldova, the Ukrainian president said he would also be speaking on Thursday to partner countries about putting in place a “potential air jets coalition” and a coalition providing Patriot missiles.
“That is our new initiative and we really need it,” he said after a 20-minute meeting with the Moldovan president, Maia Sandu.
“I think security guarantees are very important not only for Ukraine, [but also] for our neighbours, for Moldova because of Russia, their aggressions in Ukraine and potential aggression in other parts of Europe,” he said.
On Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron called on the international community to offer Ukraine “tangible and credible” Israeli-style security guarantees, saying it was in the rest of the continent’s interest.
“We have to build something between the security provided to Israel and full-fledged membership,” said Macron.
Security guarantees are seen as a long-term alliance with US and European defence capabilities without full membership of Nato, which is not possible while war is ongoing as it would pull the organisation into the conflict on the ground.
Read more of Lisa O’Carroll’s report here: Zelenskiy pleads for ‘security guarantees’ for Ukraine and Moldova
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The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had shelled the border town of Shebekino using Soviet-era Grad rocket systems, setting one residential building in the town ablaze. Reuters reports Vyacheslav Gladkov said the attacks also damaged the local administration building and injured a resident.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Updated
Kyiv mayor asks for local administrator to be suspended over 'locked' shelter allegation
The mayor of Kyiv has asked for a district administrator and the head of a medical facility to be suspended while investigations continue into the circumstances of the deaths of three people during Russia’s latest strike on Kyiv.
It has been claimed that the three people were trying to access an air shelter that was locked, and while stuck outside were then struck by debris after Ukraine’s air defence intercepted missiles fired at the capital by Russian forces.
In a message on Telegram, the mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote:
I appealed to the office of the president and the government, who agree on the appointment and dismissal of the heads of the districts of the capital, about the suspension of the head of the Desnyan district, Dmytro Ratnikov, from performing his duties, while the investigation continues into whether the shelter in the polyclinic, near which three people died, was open at night. The head of the medical facility, who was appointed by the Desnyan district administration, should also be suspended.
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Lviv mayor orders inspection of operation of all air shelters in city after Kyiv deaths
Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, has announced there will be an inspection of air shelters tonight. This follows the reports that deaths in Kyiv overnight were caused because people could not get into an apparently locked shelter.
On Telegram, Lviv’s mayor posted:
This evening should be devoted to your own safety. An evening of open shelters, discussion, meetings – call it what you want, but it must be.
Today from 6pm to 8pm all shelters located in residential and non-residential premises must be open. This is an opportunity for residents to meet, check the status of their shelters and renegotiate their operation during an air alert. This applies to all shelters in the city.
If your house does not have a basement or a parking lot, you can find the nearest place on the map.
If the shelter is closed from 6pm to 8pm, or there are other problems with it, contact the city hotline at 1580
A commission will be held on all issues raised and the result will be made public.
Today, during the day, districts are inspecting communally owned shelters. Managers of these establishments should monitor the condition and availability, but also check the signs that inform how to get to this shelter from the street if you are not a local. All information stands must be updated, made visible and understandable.
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Here are some of the latest images sent over the news wires of people sheltering this morning in Kyiv.
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Russia's FSB claims to have uncovered US spy plot using Apple phones
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed on Thursday that it had uncovered a US National Security Agency (NSA) plot using previously unknown malware to penetrate specially made backdoor vulnerabilities in iPhones.
The FSB said several thousand Apple phones had been infected, including those of domestic Russian subscribers.
The Russian spy agency also said phones belonging to foreign diplomats based in Russia and the former Soviet Union, including those from Nato members, Israel, Syria and China, had been targeted.
“The FSB has uncovered an intelligence action of the American special services using Apple mobile devices,” the FSB said.
Apple and the NSA did not immediately respond to emailed requests from Reuters for comment.
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Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said police would patrol when air alerts take place during curfew hours to ensure that air shelters are open.
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The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Russia’s defence ministry, border guards, emergency services and local authorities were constantly reporting to Vladimir Putin on the situation in the Belgorod region, Reuters reports, citing the state-owned news agency Tass.
The Belgorod region, which neighbours Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, has been under heavy shelling in recent days, with claims and denials that there has been an incursion by Russian anti-Kremlin partisans today.
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Tass reports that authorities in Belgorod are denying there has been a border incursion in Russia. It writes:
The operational headquarters of the Belgorod region denied on Thursday the information spread on social networks that there was a breakthrough of troops of the armed forces of Ukraine in the Shebekin area.
“The operational headquarters officially declares that this information is false and does not correspond to reality. The situation in the Shebekinsky urban district is difficult, sounds of battle are heard, shelling is under way. The armed forces of the Russian Federation are working, but there is no breakthrough of the armed forces of Ukraine,” the message says.
Earlier my colleague Julian Borger, who is in Kharkiv, reported that a breakthrough had been claimed, citing Ukrainian-backed Russian rebel groups who said they had made another incursion into Russia
“Very soon we will see the outskirts of Shebekino,” a spokesperson for the Russian Volunteer Corps said in a video posted on Telegram. “Unfortunately, we are unable to provide evacuation for the civilians from the border area because the army of the Russian Federation is shelling these areas and in such way prevents the evacuation. Therefore, remain at home and don’t be afraid, the fighters of Russian Volunteer Corps are not fighting civilians.”
A video message from a second group, the Freedom of Russia Legion, said: “Very soon we will set off into Russia again, to bring freedom and peace.”
The statement said a rebel raid into Belgorod last month led to the capture of Russian military equipment. “Thanks to these we’ll be able to arm more of our comrades,” the spokesperson said. “We are going to liberate the entire Russia, from Belgorod to Vladivostok, in order to raise white-blue-white flag of freedom in Moscow.”
Updated
Investigation into claims of locked shelter after three killed in Kyiv
Kyiv’s mayor has confirmed that law enforcement officers are investigating the circumstances that lead to the deaths of three people including a child during Russia’s latest attack on Ukraine’s capital, amid claims they were unable to get into a locked shelter and were then struck by falling debris. He said 19 people were injured as a result of the night’s shelling.
In a post on Telegram, the city authority cited Vitali Klitschko as saying: “Law enforcement officers are investigating the polyclinic and its territory in the capital’s Desnyan district. Criminal cases have been initiated.”
He continued “A fragment of the rocket fell at the entrance to the medical facility four minutes after the air alert was announced. And people headed for shelter. Now the investigation is establishing whether the shelter was open. Were there people in it? Because, according to rescuers, after the damage to the polyclinic, a group of people were taken out of it.”
Klitschko said three schools, a kindergarten, six houses and a police station were damaged.
The attack, on what is international children’s day in many post-Soviet countries, used seven Iskander-M ballistic missiles and three Iskander-K cruise missiles, all of which were shot down, according to Ukraine’s ministry of defence. It continued a pattern of near daily strikes – 17 in May alone – using a mixture of drones, ballistic and cruise missiles, apparently aimed at demoralising the population and exhausting supplies of anti-aircraft ammunition.
In a subsequent message, Klitschko reminded residents: “In each district of the city, the heads of the institutions where the shelters are located and the heads of the districts are responsible for the work of the shelters. Heads of the district authority are responsible for access and arrangement of shelters, which are marked on the map of shelters in the capital. As for the Desnyan district, the shelter was open at the school next to the polyclinic and there were people in it.”
Updated
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has commented on the strike this morning that led to the death of a child in Kyiv. He said in a tweet:
The international day for protection of children. Russia killed a nine-year-old girl, her mother, and another woman in a missile attack on Kyiv. Those who have children, imagine what it means to lose a child. Russian terrorism must be defeated. Ukraine can do it with sufficient support.
The International Day for Protection of Children. Russia killed a 9 y.o. girl, her mother, and another woman in a missile attack on Kyiv. Those who have children, imagine what it means to lose a child. Russian terrorism must be defeated. Ukraine can do it with sufficient support.
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) June 1, 2023
Updated
Exams cancelled in part of Russia's Belgorod region after cross-border shelling
The governor of Belgorod in Russia reports that state maths exams in Shebekino have been cancelled as a result of shelling.
Vyacheslav Gladkov posted to Telegram:
I reported to the president of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin on the situation at the border. It was decided that schoolchildren from the Shebekino district will not take exams. Now a mechanism is being worked out that will allow children from the Shebekino district to enter universities without exams.
Updated
The latest air alert to sound in Kyiv was brief and has ended, but not without having an impact on the local population.
Fucking awful to hear kids screaming and running to shelters in the nearby school on an international children's protection day.
— Nika Melkozerova (@NikaMelkozerova) June 1, 2023
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region in Russia, reports on his Telegram that two teachers at a rural school in Novopetrovka received shrapnel wounds and have been hospitalised after the building was struck by fire from the Ukrainian armed forces. The claims have not been independently verified.
Updated
Another air alert has been declared in several regions of Ukraine, including Kyiv.
Ukraine’s ministry of defence has just issued this statement about the earlier attack on the capital, saying:
Last night, the Russians attacked Kyiv with seven Iskander-M ballistic missiles and three Iskander-K cruise missiles. All missiles were shot down. Unfortunately, fragments of the destroyed missiles hit an apartment building and a pediatric hospital. Three civilians, including a child, were killed, and 10 were injured.
Updated
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said during a trip to Moldova on Thursday that Ukraine was ready to be in the Nato military alliance and that Kyiv was waiting for the bloc to be ready to admit his country.
He spoke to reporters as he stood beside Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, after arriving for a summit of the European Political Community, which is being hosted by Ukraine’s neighbour.
Nato foreign ministers are discussing the issue at a meeting in Oslo.
The Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said in Norway that Ukraine must be given a strong political message of support regarding its Nato membership bid.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, sounded a more cautious note, stating that “Nato’s open-door policy remains in place, but at the same time it is clear that we cannot talk about accepting new members in the midst of a war.”
Updated
Investigation launched after claims deaths occurred in Kyiv after people unable to get into 'locked' shelter
Ukrainian media and authorities are reporting that the three people killed in Kyiv this morning had tried to get into a shelter but found it locked and then were hit by debris.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, has two recent reports on its Telegram channel. It writes:
Locals told Suspilne that it was not the first time they were unable to get to the shelter in the polyclinic in the Desnyan district of Kyiv, where debris fell that night. Mayor [Vitali] Klitschko reported that experts from the municipal security department went there to find out why the shelter was closed.
It subsequently added:
Due to the closed shelter in the Desnyan district, the Kyiv police started criminal proceedings under the article of official negligence, which caused serious consequences, the head of the ministry of internal affairs, Ihor Klymenko, said.
The head of the Desnyan district administration, Dmytro Ratnikov, said that, according to the director of the polyclinic, the night shift worker opened the central entrance: some people managed to enter, some were near the shelter, where three people died.
Director of the security department of Kyiv, Roman Tkachuk, who arrived at the scene, said that the guard tried to open the shelter, but an explosion occurred, and he is now in the hospital. At the same time, a local resident claims that after the explosion he found the guard in the shelter in a drunken state.
Tkachuk also stated that the security department did not receive complaints from people about shelters in the polyclinic – according to him, they check the shelters about which they receive complaints.
There is considerable comment about the incident unfolding on social media.
This is the reality for much of Kyiv. Many of the shelters that people relied on earlier in the war are no longer being operated 24/7. You need someone to open the locked door with a key. If that person doesn’t arrive… https://t.co/5RQHBCdxOF
— Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) June 1, 2023
Three people, including a mother and a child, were killed by Russian missile debris while standing near a *locked* shelter in #Kyiv.
— Anastasiia Lapatina (@lapatina_) June 1, 2023
An utter failure of Kyiv city authorities, who can’t provide shelters a year into the war. And this issue is endemic in many 🇺🇦 cities.
Updated
While that meeting is being held in Moldova, there is also a flurry of Nato diplomacy taking place in Oslo, where Nato’s foreign ministers are meeting. The admission process for Sweden is high on the agenda, as well as the topic of conflict in Ukraine.
The Nato alliance needs to think about what kind of security guarantees it can give Ukraine, the French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said on Thursday, Reuters reports, while Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said the time had come for Nato members to find a concrete answer to the question of how Ukraine could become a member.
Landsbergis also said there was a high expectation that the Swedish flag would be raised at Nato’s Vilnius summit in July.
Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, is in Oslo and said the time had come for Turkey and Hungary to ratify his nation’s Nato membership application. “We have fulfilled all our commitments,” Billström said.
Earlier, the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said he would soon travel to Turkey to discuss Sweden’s Nato membership.
Updated
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has arrived in Moldova. Ukraine’s president was greeted by the Moldovan president, Maia Sandu.
European leaders are gathering for the European Political Community (EPC) meeting in Moldova.
Initially envisaged by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as a platform for unity across the wider European front, the EPC will bring together the leaders of the 27 EU member states as well as 19 other countries including the UK, Ukraine, Turkey, and Moldova’s Balkan neighbours.
Updated
If you haven’t seen it yet, my colleague Julian Borger has been with Artem Mazhulin in Kramatorsk, talking to Ukrainian troops training ahead of their expected counteroffensive:
The officers and soldiers doing live-fire training in the Donetsk countryside are under no illusions about the task ahead them. Once one platoon had performed the exercise, they got out of the armoured vehicle and another platoon got in immediately to do the same drill: storm the treeline, clear the trenches and form a defensive perimeter until they are picked up. Elsewhere, soldiers from the brigade are rehearsing urban and village combat.
“We’re training in certain places where there are certain landscapes that are the exact landscapes that we will have to fight in, so we train there for every stage of the operation,” said the battalion commander, Petro Horbatenko.
“You win battles not by conquering and occupying land but by destroying your enemy and their equipment and their storage depots,” Horbatenko said. “We killed 10 of them for every one they killed of ours [in the battle for Bakhmut], and that is not counting artillery casualties. So we did kill off a lot of them, but they were mostly from the Wagner group. To them they were just meat. So it is hard to say who won.”
Read more of Julian Borger and Artem Mazhulin’s report from Kramatorsk here: ‘Fear is contagious but so is courage’ – the Ukrainian soldiers training to retake Bakhmut
Updated
Eight people were wounded by overnight shelling that continued into the morning in the Russian town of Shebekino and damaged multiple buildings, the governor of the Belgorod region said on Thursday.
Reuters reports that in a video posted on Telegram, the governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said: “In Shebekino district, there is ongoing shelling by the armed forces of Ukraine. Eight people have been wounded. There are no dead.”
He said local authorities would evacuate civilians as soon as the shelling was over.
“Of course, the lives of civilians, of the population, is under threat. Primarily in Shebekino and in the surrounding villages,” he added.
Updated
Olena Zelenska has commented on the overnight strike on Kyiv. Ukraine’s first lady tweeted:
Children’s day has always been about a safe childhood, the beginning of summer, life. Today it is about the new crimes of the Russian Federation against Ukrainian children. As a result of shelling in Kyiv, a nine-year-old girl died, and another was put in the hospital. Every affected child causes pain for the whole country. Our thoughts are with their families.
День захисту дітей завжди був про безпечне дитинство, початок літа, життя… Сьогодні ж він – про нові злочини РФ проти 🇺🇦 дітей. Внаслідок обстрілу Києва загинула 9-річна дівчинка, ще одна – в лікарні. Кожна постраждала дитина – біль для всієї країни. Наші думки з їхніми рідними.
— Олена Зеленська (@ZelenskaUA) June 1, 2023
Updated
International Children’s Day is celebrated on 1 June in many post-Soviet nations, including Ukraine, but Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, has just announced on Telegram that events scheduled in the capital to celebrate it have been cancelled.
Three people including a child were killed and at least 11 people were injured in an early morning missile attack on Kyiv that hit apartment buildings, two schools and a children’s clinic, according to city authorities.
Updated
The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Thursday that he would soon travel to Turkey to discuss Sweden’s Nato membership, Reuters reports
“I spoke with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan earlier this week and I will also travel to Ankara in the near future to continue to address how we can ensure the fastest possible accession of Sweden,” he said during a two-day meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Oslo.
Sweden and Finland began the process of attempting to join the alliance in May 2022, three months after Russia staged its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Finland joined in April 2023, but Hungary and Turkey are yet to ratify Swedish entry.
Turkey claims that Sweden’s Kurdish population harbours people that it considers to be terrorists, while Hungary has expressed concern that government ministers in Sweden have criticised Hungary’s record on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
Updated
Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, has addressed the plight of children in Ukraine in a message on Telegram. He writes:
At night, Russia again killed a child in Kyiv. Since 2014, the terrorist country has been committing crimes against little Ukrainians.
Since 24 February 2022, no one has any doubts – this is a real genocide. Forced deportation, violence, murders …
This is happening today. And there will be responsibility for this. We won’t let the enemy be silent and hide their crimes. Every case is recorded.
Our task is to return home all kidnapped children, as well as those who were forced to leave the war for other countries.
Our mission is to bring to justice all those who killed, kidnapped and forcibly “adopted” Ukrainian children in the Russian Federation.
Justice will be restored. We protect and fight for our future.
Earlier this year the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children. A panel of judges agreed there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that the Russian president and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, bore responsibility for the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children.
Updated
Despite limitations on free speech that haven’t been seen since Soviet times, “there is a realistic possibility that recent vitriolic rhetoric by nationalist figures such as Wagner group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin is emboldening opposition figures to challenge taboo topics,” the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update on the conflict.
The MoD pointed to the appearance of the opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin on Russian TV this week, in which he called for a new president to be elected in 2024 in order to rebuild normal relations with Europe.
The ministry said:
Nadezhdin has been a vocal critic of the war since the invasion, but this is highly likely the first call for Putin to be replaced on Russian state-approved TV since it began.
Updated
Going back to that Institute for the Study of War analysis, it also has some interesting things to say about the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
It suggests that the Kremlin may be attempting to sever Kadyrov’s relationship with the Wagner leader Yevgheny Prigozhin and ordering him to deploy his troops in revenge for the attempted blackmail of Vladimir Putin last month. It says:
The Russian military command has likely ordered Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov’s forces to begin offensive operations in Ukraine following the withdrawal of Wagner group forces from Bakhmut …
The claimed return of Chechen forces to offensive operations would break Kadyrovites from a nearly year-long hiatus from participating in high-intensity combat operations …
Chechen units’ limited participation on the frontlines alongside Kadyrov’s heavy emphasis on recruitment may suggest that Kadyrov is hesitant to commit his forces to grinding offensive operations in Ukraine despite his ultranationalist narratives ...
The Kremlin may also be attempting to sever Kadyrov’s relationship with Wagner group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and re-emphasize federal authority over Chechen forces ...
Kadyrov participated in Prigozhin’s blackmail attempt in early May aimed at coercing the Russian MoD to allocate additional military supplies to Wagner in Bakhmut. Kadyrov claimed that his forces would relieve Wagner forces on May 6 and even directly asked Putin to authorize the transfer of Chechen forces from other directions to Bakhmut.
Putin may have perceived Kadyrov’s behavior as a threat to his control given that Kadyrov and Prigozhin had conducted a successful joint information campaign in early October 2022 to facilitate military command changes.
Putin or the Russian military command may have ordered Kadyrov to increase the presence of his units on the battlefield in retaliation for Kadyrov’s blackmail attempt.
Updated
Summary
If you’re just joining us now, here’s a quick rundown of developments:
Three people including a child have been killed after Russia launched a wave of ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv overnight. Another 12 people including a child were injured, according to city officials. Ukraine’s air force shot down all 10 missiles launched at the city. Those killed and injured were hit by falling debris. Air raid sirens sounded briefly again at around 7.30am.
Ukrainian forces shelled the Russian border town of Shebekino in Belgorod overnight, according to the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov. Five people were injured in the attack, the fourth of its kind this week.
Emmanuel Macron has said a negotiated peace in Ukraine may have to be prioritised over putting Vladimir Putin on trial for war crimes. In a speech in Bratislava, the French president said: “If in a few months to come, you have a window for negotiation with the existing Russian political power, the question you will have is an arbitrage between a trial and a negotiation. 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 international justice ... 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 ones I can negotiate with’.”
Macron urged Nato to offer Ukraine “tangible and credible” security assurances, arguing that it was in the west’s interests to do so as Kyiv “is today protecting Europe”. Leaders will meet in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in July to discuss Nato membership for Ukraine.
The US has announced a new $300m arms package for Ukraine, including air defence systems and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition, but warned Kyiv that US weaponry should not be used for attacks within Russia. “We have been very clear with the Ukrainians privately – we’ve certainly been clear publicly – that we do not support attacks inside Russia,” said the national security council spokesman John Kirby.
A German government spokesperson has said Ukraine has the right to attack Russian territory as it qualifies as self-defence. In an interview with the German news website Deutsche Welle, Steffen Hebestreit said: “International law allows Ukraine to carry out strikes on the territory of Russia for the purpose of self-defence.”
Russia does not plan to declare martial law after Tuesday’s large-scale drone strike on Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has said. Several leading Russian officials and pro-war figures including the Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov have urged Vladimir Putin to respond to the drone attacks by declaring a state of total war.
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. Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, accused Russia of blocking all activity at the port of Pivdennyi, with 1.5m tonnes of agricultural products unable to move.
Only 500 people are left in Bakhmut, the city in the east of Ukraine that has been subject to heavy fighting in the last year, according to its 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 invasion of Ukraine.
An Iraqi citizen fighting with Wagner was killed in Ukraine in early April, the first confirmed case of someone from the Middle East dying in the conflict, Prigozhin told Reuters. Abbas Abuthar Witwit died on 7 April, a day after arriving at a Wagner hospital in the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, the RIA FAN news site also reported.
Russia claimed it destroyed Ukrainian naval forces’ last major warship, 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.
Analysis from the Kyiv Post suggests 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 533 of them were destroyed by the Ukrainian air force, including 401 Shahed-136 drones that cost about $20,000 each.
The Russian security council deputy chair, Dmitry Medvedev, said Britain was Moscow’s “eternal enemy”. Any British officials who facilitated the war in Ukraine could be considered legitimate military targets, he said.
Updated
All-clear sounds in Kyiv after early morning air raid siren
The all-clear has been given once again in Kyiv after air raid sirens sounded for a second time in the early hours of Thursday morning.
It came as Ukraine’s armed forces said the air force had shot down 10 out of the 10 Iskander short-range ballistic missiles that were launched at Kyiv overnight.
In their regular morning update, they also said the air force had launched 15 of its own strikes on Russian troops and military equipment, two of them on anti-aircraft missile systems.
Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has given another update on the shelling of the Russian border city of Shebekino. He says five people were injured in attacks which took place at midnight, at 3:40 and at 5:15.
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine fired at the center and outskirts of the city,” he added.
A private residential building took a direct hit, he said, and several other buildings were damaged.
Today’s raids are the 18th wave of strikes launched by Russia on Kyiv since the beginning of May. Usually they take place at night, but on Monday there was another such daytime attack, as Julian Borger reported.
One person was injured in that attack which began at 11am and which appeared to be part of efforts to exhaust Ukraine’s air defences.
News agencies have sent more photos from the scene of the clinic where three people were killed in the overnight strikes.
Britain’s ambassador appears to have been interrupted in the middle of a boxing session:
Air raid siren sounds halfway through my morning punch up. Fine I will stop and go to shelter. But these are coming with me. pic.twitter.com/yeipnNovB4
— Dame Melinda Simmons (@MelSimmonsFCDO) June 1, 2023
Air raid sirens sound in Kyiv once again
Air raid sirens are sounding once again in the Ukrainian capital, where the time is just after 7.30am, in a rare daylight attack by Russia.
Meanwhile, Kyiv’s military administration has just updated its information on the overnight strikes, and now says three people were killed including one child – not two children as it had said earlier.
Another 12 people were injured, including one child, it said in a Telegram post.
Thursday’s first attack began at around 3:00 am, when cruise and ballistic missiles were fired on the city, officials said.
Updated
This blog is pausing here for a short while, but we’ll be back to bring you any breaking news.
In the meantime you can find all our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here.
Wires are also posting new photos from the Russian city of Shebekino in the Belgorod border region, which Russian officials say was shelled for the fourth time this week by Ukrainian forces.
Some analysis here from the Institute for the Study of War on the recent attacks on Russian territory. The US-based think tank says official responses from Moscow “remain likely insufficient to satisfy the Russian ultranationalist information space’s desire for escalation in the war”.
Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, who has evacuated children from border areas, has called on Russian forces to capture Kharkiv in order to create a barrier between Belgorod and Ukraine.
But Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Gladkov’s statements earlier this week and on Wednesday said that Moscow did not plan to declare martial law following Tuesday’s drone attack on Moscow.
The think tank adds:
Former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin criticized Peskov, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu for their reluctance to address attacks against Russian territory.
Russian milbloggers have complained about the lack of Russian military escalation to secure border areas in Belgorod and Kursk oblasts since at least September 2022, often criticizing the Kremlin for underreacting to attacks against Russian territory and failing to fully dedicate itself to the war effort.
The evacuations and Peskov’s comments are largely consistent with Putin’s unwillingness and inability to meaningfully escalate the war short of full-scale general and economic mobilization, as ISW has previously assessed.
Updated
Belgorod shelled overnight, governor says
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, says the city of Shebekino has also been shelled overnight.
In a Telegram post, Vyacheslav Gladkov said “shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine went on for an hour”. Two people were injured, he said.
He also said the Russian air defences in the region had worked. The Guardian is not able to verify the attack, which would be the fourth time Ukrainian artillery has shelled Shebekino this week.
Another image from the overnight strikes has come through on the wires, courtesy of Kyiv’s military administration, this time of the clinic in Desnyan which officials say was heavily damaged.
The night’s attack was launched by ground-based missile systems, Serhii Popko, the head of Kyiv military administration has said in a Telegram post.
All targets detected were destroyed by Ukraine’s air defences, he said and casualties were caused by falling debris. An update on the type and number of missiles used in the strike would be given later by the Air Force, he said.
In Desnyan district three people including two children were killed and up to 10 others injured when debris fell on a clinic and an adjacent multi-storey residential building, he said.
In Dnipro district a residential building was damaged, parked cars caught fire and debris fell on to a roadway.
All-clear sounds in Kyiv
The all-clear has been given in Kyiv, about an hour after air raid sirens sounded.
It’s still not clear whether the attack involved drones or missiles. Reuters reports:
Discussions on social media suggested it was a missile attack, given the short time between the declaration of the air raid alert and the impact.
The first images are coming in from the latest Russian strike on Kyiv. This shot from Kyiv’s military administration shows a residential building damaged by falling debris in the city’s Desnyan district, where three people including two children have died.
As we wait for more information from Kyiv to come in, here’s a bit of context. The past week has marked the first time that Moscow has come in for a large-scale drone attack since it launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Nobody was injured in Tuesday’s raid by more than 30 drones but they were part of a series of drone strikes and sabotage operations behind enemy lines that have intensified in recent weeks ahead of a much anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The attack on Moscow came as Russia has launched an increasing number of attacks on Kyiv, including a rare daytime raid on Tuesday, over the past month.
The attacks appear to be an effort to exhaust Ukraine’s air defences.
Three killed as Russia launches overnight strike on Kyiv
At least three people have been killed, including two children, after Russia launched another overnight wave of strikes on the Ukrainian capital, city officials have said.
A clinic and an adjacent home were struck by falling debris in Kyiv’s eastern Desnyan district, the city’s military administration said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. Another four people were injured and taken to hospital.
Debris also fell on the nearby district of Dnipro, according to the mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko.
In total 14 people were injured in the attack with nine hospitalised and another five treated at the scenes, he said.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Livingstone.
Kyiv has once again been hit by Russian strikes overnight, with at least three people killed and another four injured so far, according to the city’s military administration. Falling debris hit a clinic in the city’s Desnyan district as well as an adjacent house. Two of the dead were children, according to the city’s mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko.
Debris also fell on the capital’s Dnipro district, where another person was injured according to Klitschko.
Other key developments:
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said a negotiated peace in Ukraine may have to be prioritised over putting Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, on trial for war crimes. In a speech in Bratislava, he said: “If in a few months to come, you have a window for negotiation with the existing Russian political power, the question you will have is an arbitrage between a trial and a negotiation. 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 international justice ... 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 ones I can negotiate with’.”
Macron also urged Nato to offer Ukraine “tangible and credible” security assurances, arguing that it was in the west’s interests to do so as Kyiv “is today protecting Europe”. Leaders will meet in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in July to discuss Nato membership for Ukraine.
The US has announced a new $300m arms package for Ukraine, including air defence systems and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition, but warned Kyiv that US weaponry should not be used for attacks within Russia. “We have been very clear with the Ukrainians privately – we’ve certainly been clear publicly – that we do not support attacks inside Russia,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
A German government spokesperson has said Ukraine has the right to attack Russian territory as it qualifies as self-defence. In an interview with German news website Deutsche Welle, Steffen Hebestreit said: “International law allows Ukraine to carry out strikes on the territory of Russia for the purpose of self-defence.”
Russia does not plan to declare martial law after Tuesday’s large-scale drone strike on Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has said. The Kremlin’s comments came after several leading Russian officials and pro-war figures including Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov urged Putin to respond to the drone attacks by declaring a state of total war.
Russia said Ukrainian artillery hit the Russian town of Shebekino on the Ukrainian border for a third time this week, injuring four people, while drones attacked two oil refineries 65-80km east of Russia’s biggest oil export terminals. Russian officials did not attribute blame for the drone attacks and said a fire at one of the terminals was put out.
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. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address accused Russia of blocking all activity at the port of Pivdennyi, with 1.5 million tonnes of agricultural products unable to move.
Only 500 people are left in Bakhmut, the city in the east of Ukraine that has been subject to heavy fighting in the last year, according to its 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 invasion of Ukraine.
An Iraqi citizen fighting with Wagner was killed in Ukraine in early April, the first confirmed case of someone from the Middle East dying in the conflict, Prigozhin told Reuters. Abbas Abuthar Witwit died on April 7, a day after arriving at a Wagner hospital in the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, the RIA FAN news site also reported.
Russia claimed it destroyed Ukrainian naval forces’ last major warship, 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.
Analysis from the Kyiv Post suggests 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 533 of them were destroyed by the Ukrainian air force, including 401 Shahed-136 drones that cost about $20,000 each.
The Russian security council deputy chair, Dmitry Medvedev, said Britain was Moscow’s “eternal enemy”. Any British officials who facilitated the war in Ukraine could be considered legitimate military targets, he said.
