Closing summary
The blog is now closing. Below is a roundup of today’s stories:
Wagner mercenaries will no longer fight in Ukraine after their chief refused to sign contracts with the Kremlin. Yevgeny Prigozhin refused to sign any contracts with the Kremlin, according to the head of the Duma defence committee, Andrei Kartapolov.
Reports have emerged that Gen Sergei Surovikin has been detained in Russia. The Financial Times and Associated Press have reported this. Three people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that Surovikin was being detained while sources citing US and Ukrainian intelligence reports spoke told the AP. Surovikin’s daughter told the website Baza that “nothing happened to [Surovikin], no one arrested him and now everyone is at their jobs”. The general, who previously led the invasion force in Ukraine, has not been seen in public since Saturday. The New York Times, citing anonymous US intelligence sources, reported that Surovikin had prior knowledge of the uprising led by the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, with whom he had well publicised links. Surovikin is the head of the Russian aerospace forces and was formerly Moscow’s supreme commander in Ukraine.
Russia has ruled out Switzerland as location for peace talks, saying it had “lost its status as a neutral state” after supporting EU sanctions. Russia’s ambassador to Switzerland said Moscow could not accept any Swiss-hosted peace summit on Ukraine after it joined EU sanctions against his country, adding that Switzerland had lost its reputation for neutrality.
Ukrainian forces are advancing “slowly but surely” on the frontlines in the east and south-east of the country as well as around the longstanding flashpoint of Bakhmut, senior military officials have said. Ukrainian commander-in-chief Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi told the chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, that his forces had “succeeded in seizing the strategic initiative”.
The Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar, speaking on national television, said forces had made advances in sectors in the south designated by two occupied towns – Berdiansk and Mariupol. “Every day, there is an advance,” Maliar said. “Yes, the advances are slow, but they are sure.”
Mike Pence met Volodymyr Zelenskiy during surprise Ukraine trip. Pence is the first Republican presidential candidate to meet Zelenskiy during the campaign. He told NBC News: “Coming here just as a private citizen – being able to really see first-hand the heroism of the Ukrainian soldiers holding the line in those woods, see the heroism of the people here in Irpin that held back the Russian army, to see families whose homes were literally shelled in the midst of an unconscionable and unprovoked Russian invasion – just steels my resolve to do my part, to continue to call for strong American support for our Ukrainian friends and allies.”
The death toll in a Russian rocket attack on a packed pizza restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk has risen to 12, including four children. Ukraine’s state emergency service said at least 56 people were injured, some critically, when two Iskander missiles were fired into the restaurant in the city centre on Tuesday evening. The regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said rescue attempts had ended. The UK’s ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, described the strike as “heartbreaking”. Russia’s defence ministry claimed it killed two Ukrainian generals and up to 50 officers in a missile attack when referring to this attack.
Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency has arrested a local man whom it accused of helping the Russians carry out the attack on Kramatorsk. The SBU said it had arrested an employee of a gas transportation company who helped coordinate the strike and allegedly sent video footage of the cafe to the Russian military. It provided no evidence for the claims.
Putin said on Wednesday that he “didn’t doubt” that he had the support of Russians during the mutiny. In a meeting with the head of the southern Russian province of Dagestan, parts of which were aired on state television, he said: “I did not doubt the reaction in Dagestan and in all of the country.”
Putin made a rare public walkabout in Derbent on Wednesday, including shaking hands with people, which was shown on Russian state television.
The distribution of humanitarian aid in Nevske in the Ukraine-controlled portion of Luhansk has been paused after Russian shelling.
The Russian-imposed acting governor of occupied Kherson region has denied claims that Ukrainian troops had succeeded in establishing any kind of bridgehead over the Dnipro at the location of the Antonivskyi Bridge. He has also claimed that Russian forces repelled multiple landing attempts in the area.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he had rejected calls from Washington and Kyiv to arm Ukraine due to “concerns that I don’t think any of the western allies of Ukraine have”. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said Israel needed “freedom of action” in Syria, where Israel often bombs Iranian targets near Russian forces. He said he also had fears that Israeli weaponry could be captured in Ukraine and turned over to Iran, specifically the Iron Dome air defence system, which was developed with the US.
Poland expects the EU to help it fund measures to strengthen its eastern border, a deputy minister said on Thursday, after Warsaw announced a tightening of security due to concerns over the presence of Wagner group troops in Belarus.
The Hungarian parliament’s house committee has rejected a proposal to schedule a vote on the ratification of Sweden’s Nato membership for next week.
The EU should not “lower the bar” on membership for Ukraine in terms of corruption and democracy, Denmark’s foreign minister has warned in an interview with the Financial Times, saying that to do so would risk “importing instability”. Lars Løkke Rasmussen told the newspaper that Denmark supported EU membership for Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and the western Balkans, but that “geopolitical circumstances” did not justify skating over governance reforms.
Russia said it was opening criminal cases against what it claimed to be 160 mercenaries from 33 different countries who were operating on behalf of Ukrainian forces in the country.
Updated
An aide of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has told Reuters that Ukraine wants to receive an invitation to begin the process of joining Nato at the military alliance’s summit next month, and that Zelenskiy will not attend if leaders do not show “courage”.
Chief diplomatic adviser Ihor Zhovkva said that Kyiv wanted the Nato summit – due to be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 11-12 July – to deliver a response to the application for Nato membership that Ukraine filed on 30 September last year.
“This application is now on the tables of the leaders of Nato allies. The Vilnius summit would be a very good start to respond to this application. And by respond, we mean invitation for membership, which is only the first stage,” he said.
Kyiv has said it understands Ukraine cannot join Nato until the war with Russia is over. “What we are asking for is to start the procedure,” he said.
“If there is no result at the Vilnius summit, [Zelenskiy] doesn’t have reason and time to go,” said Zhovkva.
“The president will not travel … to the summit if the leaders will tend to or will show a deficit of courage, while Ukraine – with all its courage, will and strength and high morale – is fighting against Russian aggression,” he said.
“When Finland and Sweden submitted an application for membership last year, immediately in June last year the allies responded to the application … inviting them to membership with Nato,” he added.
Updated
