Summary
It is now approaching 9pm in Kyiv. Here are the main stories of the day:
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, says there can be no compromise on the president’s peace formula for Ukraine. Podolyak said this includes negotiations around “immediate ceasefires” and “negotiations here and now” that he says would “give Russia time to stay in the occupied territories”.
Two Russian missile strikes hit a residential building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Telegram.
The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff said on Monday that talks about the Ukraine war in Saudi Arabia at the weekend dealt a “huge blow” to Russia, and that the participants agreed to hold another meeting of political advisers within about six weeks.
The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Monday he had held a phone call with his US counterpart Antony Blinken during which he requested ATACMS long-range missiles. In a tweet, he said: “In our call, [Antony Blinken] and I discussed further steps to broaden global support for the peace formula and solutions to expand grain exports”
Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed Ukraine’s solidarity with Georgia in a tweet and reiterated his support of their sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, has reported that a 36-year-old man has died and another 68-year-old man has been injured after Russian attacks on Nikopol. Lysak said “the aggressor has been terrorising Nikopol since the morning. It is punding the city with heavy artillery.” As well as the casualties, he reported that “private houses, farm buildings and cars were damaged. There is damage to gas pipelines and power lines.”
Poland’s border guard has asked the defence ministry to send another 1,000 troops to the border with Belarus. Reuters reports the move comes amid an increase in attempts to illegally cross the frontier. The head of the border guard, Tomasz Praga, said this year 19,000 people had tried to cross the Polish-Belarusian border illegally, up from 16,000 last year.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, on Monday spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the phone, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement. On the war in Ukraine, Wang told Lavrov that China will uphold an independent and impartial position, actively promote peace talks and strive to find a political settlement to the issue, according to the statement, Reuters reports.
Poland’s government on Monday accused Belarus and Russia of orchestrating another migration influx into the EU via the Polish border in order to destabilise the region. The polish deputy interior minister, Maciej Wasik, told AFP reporters: “We’re talking about an operation organised by the Russian and Belarusian secret services that is getting more and more intense.”
Russia said on Monday its troops had advanced three kilometres (two miles) along the Kupiansk front in north-east Ukraine over the past three days, as it seeks to regain territories it lost earlier in its offensive. The city of Kupiansk and surrounding areas of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region were liberated by Ukrainian forces last September, but Moscow has since renewed its assault on the region, AFP reports.
Ukraine’s security service said on Monday it had detained an informer accused of helping Russia plot an attack on President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as he visited a flood-hit region, according to AFP. The SBU security service said the detained woman was gathering intelligence to try to find out Zelenskiy’s itinerary before his visit to the southern Mykolaiv region.
Ukraine has released images of prisoners of war on Monday returned by Russia. Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, announced that 22 more Ukrainian soldiers had been returned from captivity, stating that all of them are soldiers of the armed forces of Ukraine.
Yermak also reported that “the Russians shelled the village of Kucherivka, in Kupyan district, hitting a house. Two dead and three injured people are known”. The deaths were in addition to a person killed and several injured during a “difficult night” of Russian shelling of Kherson, the city’s governor Oleksandr Prokudin, has said.
A conference hosted by Saudi Arabia to discuss a peace plan for Ukraine was successful because it showed the willingness of the international community to work towards ending the war, Reuters reports a German government spokesperson as saying on Monday. A spokesperson at a news conference in Berlin said: “Germany will also continue to engage actively including in this process.”
A Ukrainian MP claimed on Monday that key parliamentary factions in Germany had “reached a consensus” to supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles with a range of 500km (310 miles), but that an official decision was yet to come. Reuters reports Germany’s defence minister said last week Berlin does not plan to supply the missiles for now and that the weapons are not the most urgent priority. A ministry spokesperson told Reuters on Monday that Berlin’s position had not changed.
Russia said on Monday a peace settlement with Ukraine was only possible if Kyiv put down its arms. Russia was not invited to the conference in Jeddah, where representatives from about 40 countries including China, India, the US and Ukraine took part in the peace summit.
Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, claimed Ukrainian forces had shot down a Russian drone over his region on Monday.
China’s foreign ministry said on Monday that recent international talks in Saudi Arabia on resolving the Ukraine crisis had helped “consolidate international consensus”. China’s special envoy for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, “had extensive contact and communication with all parties on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis … listened to all sides’ opinions and proposals, and further consolidated international consensus”, the foreign ministry said in a written statement.
The Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv, one of the nation’s most recognisable landmarks, has lost its hammer-and-sickle symbol after officials replaced the Soviet-era emblem with the country’s trident coat of arms. The move is part of a wider shift to reclaim Ukraine’s cultural identity from the communist past.
Two Russian missile strikes hit a residential building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Monday.
On Telegram, he said:
Two missile strikes. An ordinary residential building was hit. Unfortunately, there are victims.
Rescuers and all necessary services are on the scene. The rescue of people continues.
These claims have not been independently verified.
