Closing summary
The blog has come to end for today. Below is a round-up of today’s stories:
Eleven Russian missiles aimed at Kyiv were shot down by the Ukrainian air defence on Monday morning which led to a wave of explosions being heard in the Ukrainian capital. One person was hospitalised as a result of the attacks. The local authority reported that the roof of a two-story building caught fire in the district as a result of falling debris, but that the fire was contained.
The adviser to the head of the office of Ukraine’s president, Mykhailo Podolyak, has suggested that any peace settlement acceptable to Ukraine would include not only a restoration of the country’s sovereign borders, but a demilitarised zone extending between 100km and 120km into Russia. Podolyak tweeted: The key topic of the postwar settlement should be the establishment of safeguards to prevent a recurrence of aggression in the future. To ensure real security for residents of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk regions and protect them from shelling, it will be necessary to introduce a demilitarisation zone of 100km-120km on the territory of Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk, and Rostov republics. Probably with a mandatory international control contingent at the first stage.”
Two people were killed and eight were wounded in a Russian attack on the city of Toretsk on Monday morning, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, said. Kyrylenko said Russian forces had used high-explosive aerial bombs in the attack at about 11:30 a.m. local time which damaged a gas station and a multi-storey building in the city.
Polish president, Andrzej Duda, said that he would sign a bill to allow a panel to investigate whether the opposition party Civic Platform (PO), led by Donald Tusk, allowed the country to be unduly influenced by Russia and as a result became too dependent on its fuel when it was in power. The PO party rejects the claims and says the law is designed to destroy support for Tusk in the lead up to the elections being held at the end of the year. Mark Brzezinski, the US ambassador to Poland, also voiced concerns. He said “The U.S. government shares concerns about laws that may ostensibly reduce voters’ ability to vote for those they want to vote for, outside of a clearly defined process in an independent court.”
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said that her government planned to increase spending on military aid to Ukraine by $2.6bn over this year and next year. Earlier this year, Denmark set up a $1b fund for military, civilian and business aid to Ukraine. Danmarks Radio, the Danish public-service broadcaster, reported that the new funds were earmarked for military aid.
Ukraine’s parliament has passed a bill that sanctions Iran for 50 years. The bill was put forward by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The bill will stop Iranian goods transiting through Ukraine and ban use of its airspace, as well as imposing trade, financial and technology sanctions against Iran and its citizens.
Ukraine reported that Russia launched up to 40 cruise missiles and about 35 drones overnight: air defence claimed to have shot down 37 missiles and 29 Shahed drones.
An unspecified military target in the western Khmelnytskyi region was struck, with the regional governor reporting that “five aircraft were disabled” and that a fire had broken out in a fuel warehouse.
In Odesa, fragments of a downed kamikaze drone hit the port infrastructure causing a fire, and rockets and drones were shot down over Lviv, Kirovohrad, Poltava and Mykolaiv regions.
Serhii Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said Russia was trying to exhaust the country’s air defences with the increased attacks, adding: “The enemy is trying to keep the civilian population in deep psychological tension.” Klitschko added: “Another difficult night for the capital. But, thanks to the professionalism of our defenders, as a result of the air attack of the barbarians in Kyiv, there was no damage or destruction of infrastructural and other objects.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin “appears to have again indirectly undermined Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authority and regime”, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has written in its latest analysis of the conflict. The US-based thinktank bases its assertion on the response given by Prigozhin to a journalist asking about Russian state media’s ban on any discussion of Wagner. Prigozhin said that officials could have benefited from their historic ability to censor information if Russia had not declared war on Ukraine. He then shifted to addressing a single, unnamed official: “If you are starting a war, please have character, will, and steel balls – and only then you will be able to achieve something.”
Foreign investors who left Russia after selling their businesses there between March 2022 and March 2023 withdrew about $36bn from the country, the state RIA news agency reports, citing analysis of data from the Central Bank.
The death toll from a Russian missile attack on a medical facility in Dnipro on Friday has risen from two to four people, according to the region’s governor.
Ukraine’s parliament has passed a bill that sanctions Iran for 50 years after it was put forward by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The Russian ally has supplied Moscow with weapons, including hundreds of drones.
The bill will stop Iranian goods transiting through Ukraine and ban use of its airspace, as well as imposing trade, financial and technology sanctions against Iran and its citizens.
Our video team has compiled an overview of Monday morning’s Russian attacks on Kyiv.
Residents ran to the city’s metro stations and other shelters after a succession of loud bangs as incoming missiles were intercepted and bursts of smoke from air defences dotted the sky.
Mark Brzezinski, the US ambassador to Poland, has voiced concerns about a bill Polish president Andrzej Duda said he would sign that would investigate whether the Donald Tusk-led opposition party allowed the country to be unduly influenced by Russia when they were in power and became too dependent on its fuel, Reuters reports.
“The U.S. government shares concerns about laws that may ostensibly reduce voters’ ability to vote for those they want to vote for, outside of a clearly defined process in an independent court,” Brzezinski told broadcaster TVN24 BiS.
Tusk is set to lead the Civic Platform (PO) party into parliamentary elections later this year. The PO party rejects the claims and says the law is designed to destroy support for Tusk in the lead up to the elections.
Under the bill, anyone who is found to have acted under Russian influence faces an effective ten-year ban from holding public office.
Reuters reports that Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, said two people have been killed and eight were wounded in a Russian attack on the city of Toretsk on Monday morning.
Kyrylenko said Russian forces had used high-explosive aerial bombs in the attack at about 11:30 a.m. local time which damaged a gas station and a multi-storey building in the city.
Rescue services were working at the site, he said, urging remaining residents to evacuate.
“Every day, the Russians purposefully hit civilians in the Donetsk region,” Kyrylenko said on the Telegram messaging app.
Here are some pictures of people in Kyiv on Monday morning taking shelter in a metro station during an air alert.
Explosions were heard in the capital on Monday as Russian troops fired 11 missiles towards the city. The missiles were destroyed by the Ukrainian air defence.
Updated
Reuters reports that the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, said on Monday that he would sign a bill to allow a panel to investigate whether the opposition party Civic Platform (PO), led by Donald Tusk, allowed the country to be unduly influenced by Russia and as a result became too dependent on its fuel when it was in power.
The PO party was in government from 2007 to 2015. Tusk, who was formerly the president of the European Council and prime minister of Poland, is to lead the party into parliamentary elections at the end of the year.
The party rejects the claims and says the law is designed to destroy support for Tusk in the lead up to the elections.
PO lawmaker Marcin Kierwinski told broadcaster TVN24: “In a normal democratic country, somebody who is president of that country would never sign such a Stalin-esque law.”
Duda said he would sign the bill because he believed it “should enter into force,” but he also said he would ask the constitutional tribunal to examine claims that it was unconstitutional.
The bill would set up an investigative commission that could deliver an initial report in September.
The parliamentary commission will investigate the period between 2007 and 2022 and will have the power to impose upon anyone found to have acted under Russian influence a 10-year ban from holding security clearance or working in roles responsible for public funds, effectively disqualifying them from public office.
During Tusk’s time in office, the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal, allowing the import of non-Russia gas, began and the nation signed a deal with Russia’s Gazprom in 2010, which the official justification of the bill mentions.
Updated
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said on Monday that her government planned to increase spending on military aid to Ukraine by $2.6bn over this year and next year, Reuters reports.
Earlier this year, Denmark set up a $1b fund for military, civilian and business aid to Ukraine.
Danmarks Radio, the Danish public-service broadcaster, reported that the new funds were earmarked for military aid.
Responding to the news on Twitter, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said: “This major contribution will further strengthen the combat capabilities of the armed forces of Ukraine in the short and medium term. Our strength is in unity!”
Grateful to the @folketinget, the Danish government and the Danish people for the decision to increase the financing of the Ukraine Fund by $2.6 billion. This major contribution will further strengthen the combat capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the short and medium…
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) May 29, 2023
Updated
The adviser to the head of the office of Ukraine’s president, Mykhailo Podolyak, has suggested that any peace settlement acceptable to Ukraine would include not only a restoration of the country’s sovereign borders, but a demilitarised zone extending between 100km and 120km into Russia. He tweeted:
The key topic of the postwar settlement should be the establishment of safeguards to prevent a recurrence of aggression in the future. To ensure real security for residents of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk regions and protect them from shelling, it will be necessary to introduce a demilitarisation zone of 100km-120km on the territory of Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk, and Rostov republics. Probably with a mandatory international control contingent at the first stage.
Earlier today a video clip circulated of Belgorod’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, suggesting that the simplest solution to cross-border shelling of Russia from Ukraine was for Kharkiv region to be absorbed into Belgorod region.
Updated
Shaun Walker is in Bratislava for the Guardian:
Kostiantin Vashchenko, state secretary of the Ukrainian ministry of defence, speaking at the Globsec forum here in Bratislava, said “only two or three” people know the date that Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive will begin, and suggested the reason it has been trailed for so long was partly to influence Russia psychologically, saying:
The counteroffensive isn’t just military – it’s also diplomatic and informational. We see our enemies are very nervous, because waiting for death is even worse than death … Nobody knows the day the offensive will start. A couple, maybe three people know. I don’t know the real date but [I think] it will be in the nearest future.
The Kyiv city administration has posted to Telegram to state that “during the daytime shelling of the capital, more than 41,000 people were in the underground” today, and that overnight “more than 9,000 citizens took refuge in subway stations, including 1,120 children”.
It claimed “this is the largest number of people who stayed at the stations at night during the current month”.
It reminded residents that “during an alarm, you can get chairs and drinking water at the stations. Keep in mind that the stations are quite chilly, so take warm clothes with you.”
Updated
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that a 61-year-old man has been killed when “Russian troops fired artillery at the village of Kozatske in the Kherson region”.
It cited the local authority.
Kozatske is on the right bank of the Dnieper River, opposite the portion of the Kherson region which is under Russian occupation.
Updated
The foreign ministers of Sweden and Turkey will meet “soon” to discuss Stockholm’s delayed bid to join Nato, the Swedish foreign ministry said on Monday.
Swedish foreign minister, Tobias Billstrom, initially told broadcaster SVT on Monday he would meet his Turkish counterpart, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, on Thursday at a gathering of Nato foreign ministers in Oslo.
“But we have been informed that Turkey’s foreign minister is not coming, so there won’t be any meeting there,” Reuters reports a spokesperson for Billstrom said, adding that the meeting would nevertheless take place “soon”.
Discussions between the two countries over Nato ground to a halt during the recent Turkish election, which Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has now won.
“I look forward to being able to shift into a higher gear and speed things up now we know what the result is,” Billstrom said.
The process is much delayed. Sweden has in the past accused Turkey over its human rights record, while Ankara is unhappy that Stockholm has, in its eyes, harboured groups that Turkey considers to be terrorists. Finland’s application to join Nato has been approved, but Sweden’s is still dependent on ratification from both Turkey and Hungary.
Updated
Olena Zelenska has posted a video clip from Kyiv this morning of children running towards air raid shelters as the alarm sounded in the capital. Ukraine’s first lady tweeted:
Kyiv. The morning after a sleepless night under fire. Anxiety again … Children screaming running for cover to the sounds of explosions is our reality. But it doesn’t have to be that way – anywhere, ever. Fear cannot be turned off – but we do not freeze, but act. Ukraine continues to fight.
The clip showed groups of children running through the street in increasing panic while some bystanders stood and watched them.
Updated
Eleven missiles ballistic and cruise missiles launched by Russia aimed at Kyiv were shot down today, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.
According to @CinC_AFU, on May 29 russians attacked Kyiv and Kyiv region with 11 missiles (Iskander-K and Iskander-M).
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) May 29, 2023
ALL MISSILES WERE SHOT DOWN.
Excellent work of the Ukrainian air defenders!
Updated
Monday’s daytime attack on Kyiv marks Russia’s 16th airstrike on the Ukrainian capital this month, Reuters reports.
This morning’s events follow on from Russian attacks over the weekend, which were the biggest drone attacks yet on the Ukrainian capital. They hit as the city prepared to mark the annual celebration of its founding. The attacks killed one person and injured two.
Updated
Shaun Walker, our central and eastern Europe correspondent, is at the Globsec conference in Bratislava today.
During one of the early sessions where central European foreign ministers discussed how Europe should deal with Russia after the war in Ukraine is over, Austria’s foreign minister, Alexander Schallenberg, was challenged over his country’s military neutrality and traditional policy of maintaining links with Russia.
He said Austria was not a member of Nato but was “never neutral as far as values are concerned”. But he said after even after a Ukrainian victory, Europe would need a policy to engage Russia.
“Whatever we do, history doesn’t change and geography won’t change. We have to be capable of making the difference between Putin and his henchmen, and the ordinary Russians. It might be difficult, but I believe there is a very important difference, which we manage to make with Iran and with North Korea,” said Schallenberg.
The Czech foreign minister, Jan Lipavsky, disagreed, saying the problem was broader than just the Russian leadership: “It’s not only about Putin, it’s Russian imperialism, it’s the idea that Russia is not sure of its borders, that it can come and with sheer force proclaim ‘This is my territory’… We need to be ready to protect Europe from this evil idea of Russian imperialism.”
The geopolitical conference draws world leaders, foreign ministers and defence ministers from across Europe and will run for the next three days, with the main topic on the agenda being the war in Ukraine for the second year running.
The best known speaker this year is the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who will address the forum on Wednesday. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was due to address the forum this morning but it’s been postponed.
Updated
RIA, the Russian state-owned news agency, reports that Russian forces hit Ukrainian airbases overnight and all their targets were destroyed, according to the nation’s defence ministry.
Ukrainian officials said earlier that Russia had struck targets across the country, using dozens of missiles and drones, Reuters reports.
Updated
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Twitter he had a phone call with the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, in which he “thanked him for [the nation’s] principled position in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and noted Cambodia’s training of Ukrainian de-mining specialists.
I had a phone call with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen @PeacePalaceKH. I thanked him for the principled position in support of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. I noted Cambodia's training of Ukrainian demining specialists. Hopefully this cooperation will…
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) May 29, 2023
Updated
Reuters reports that Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s press spokesperson, said that a “vacuum” was emerging in the area of arms control due to poor relations between a number of states and said that Russia was not to blame for the situation.
During a news briefing, Peskov was asked about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s decision to formally “denounce” an arms control treaty dating back to the end of the cold war.
During his response, Peskov said: “In this area of arms control, of strategic stability, a big vacuum is now developing, of course, which ideally would be filled urgently by new acts of international law to regulate this situation.
“This is in the interests of the whole world. But for this to happen we need working bilateral relations with a whole array of states which at the current time are lacking,” he said, adding that this was “not our fault”.
Earlier this month, Putin signed a decree symbolically denouncing the 1990 conventional forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, which placed limits on the deployment of military equipment in Europe. The decree was signed after a debate and vote in the Russian parliament.
Updated
Olexander Scherba, the ambassador for strategic communications for Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs and formerly the country’s ambassador to Austria, said on Twitter he was in the ministry’s offices in Kyiv when the explosions went off.
He said they felt “real close” and there were “16 kabooms”, he also said there was no visible destruction in the city.
As I was in my office at @MFA_Ukraine, 💥 felt real close, seconds after the siren started wailing. Around 16 kabooms. Yet, no destruction in Kyiv visible. Seems all missiles were destroyed.
— olexander scherba🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) May 29, 2023
Kyiv unscathed again, because 🇷🇺 evil is helpless vs 🌎 good.#StandWithUkraine️
• This post was amended on 29 May 2023 to correct Olexander Scherba’s former diplomatic posting.
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
At least one person has been hospitalised after a wave of explosions were heard in Kyiv on Monday morning. Mayor Vitali Kitschko said that the person had been in the Podilskyi district in the north of the city. The local authority reported that the roof of a two-story building caught fire in the district as a result of falling debris, but that the fire was contained. “The enemy used missiles of a ballistic trajectory – preliminarily Iskanders. There is a possibility that S-300 and S-400 missiles were also used,” air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat told Ukrainian TV.
Ukraine reported that Russia launched up to 40 cruise missiles and about 35 drones overnight: air defence claimed to have shot down 37 missiles and 29 Shahed drones.
An unspecified military target in the western Khmelnytskyi region was struck, with the regional governor reporting that “five aircraft were disabled” and that a fire had broken out in a fuel warehouse.
In Odesa, fragments of a downed kamikaze drone hit the port infrastructure causing a fire, and rockets and drones were shot down over Lviv, Kirovohrad, Poltava and Mykolaiv regions.
Serhii Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said Russia was trying to exhaust the country’s air defences with the increased attacks, adding: “The enemy is trying to keep the civilian population in deep psychological tension.” Klitschko added: “Another difficult night for the capital. But, thanks to the professionalism of our defenders, as a result of the air attack of the barbarians in Kyiv, there was no damage or destruction of infrastructural and other objects.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin “appears to have again indirectly undermined Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authority and regime”, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has written in its latest analysis of the conflict. The US-based thinktank bases its assertion on the response given by Prigozhin to a journalist asking about Russian state media’s ban on any discussion of Wagner. Prigozhin said that officials could have benefited from their historic ability to censor information if Russia had not declared war on Ukraine. He then shifted to addressing a single, unnamed official: “If you are starting a war, please have character, will, and steel balls – and only then you will be able to achieve something.”
Foreign investors who left Russia after selling their businesses there between March 2022 and March 2023 withdrew about $36bn from the country, the state RIA news agency reports, citing analysis of data from the Central Bank.
The death toll from a Russian missile attack on a medical facility in Dnipro on Friday has risen from two to four people, according to the region’s governor.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later on. Sammy Gecsoyler will be with you shortly to continue our live coverage for the next few hours.
Updated
Here are some of the images sent over the news wires of the daytime attack on Kyiv on Monday morning.
In the last few minutes the all clear has sounded in Kyiv, and people are able to leave shelters.
Reuters has filed a report where witnesses said that panicked Kyiv residents, some of whom initially ignored the air raid siren as they ate breakfast in cafes, rushed to suddenly take cover when the sky above the capital filled with smoke trails and blast clouds.
The underground metro was heaving with people taking shelter, many of them checking their phones, footage from the Suspilne public broadcaster and local journalists showed. With the attack taking place in daytime, many children were among those taking shelter.
Right now Russia is shelling Kyiv. Sounds of loud explosions. Kyiv metro is used as a bomb shelter. There are a lot of children here #Ukraine #RussiaIsATerroristState pic.twitter.com/I0oQPcZ9M9
— Kristina Berdynskykh (@berdynskykh_k) May 29, 2023
Russia attacks Kyiv during daytime with ballistic missiles – at least one person hospitalised
Russia fired ballistic missiles at Kyiv during a daytime attack on the Ukrainian capital on Monday morning, the Ukrainian air force said.
“The enemy used missiles of a ballistic trajectory – preliminarily Iskanders. There is a possibility that S-300 and S-400 missiles were also used,” air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat told Ukrainian TV, Reuters reports.
At least 11 explosions were heard to ring out in the capital in mid-morning, after a night in which Ukraine had already claimed to have shot down 37 missiles and 29 Shahed drones across the country
At least one person was hospitalised in the morning attack in Kyiv, according to the city’s mayor, Vitali Kitschko. They were, he said on Telegram, in the Podilskyi district. The city authority said that the roof of a two-story building caught fire in the same district as a result of falling debris, but that the fire was contained. Kitschko also shared an image of what he claimed was rocket debris on the road in Kyiv’s northern Obolonskyi district.
Head of the Kyiv region police, Andrii Nebytov, reported that a farmhouse had caught fire in one district, but that it had been extinguished without casualties.
Updated
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports on Telegram:
In Kyiv region, in one of the districts, as a result of shelling, a farmhouse was damaged and a fire broke out. It has already been extinguished; there are no victims.
It cited the head of the Kyiv region police, Andrii Nebytov.
Updated
Francis Scarr, who works at BBC Monitoring, has posted a clip from Russian TV which shows the governor of Belgorod calling for Kharkiv in Ukraine to be annexed into his region.
When asked what could be done “to make the region safe, especially the districts on the border”, Vyacheslav Gladkov replied: “Incorporate Kharkiv into Belgorod region.”
He was then asked whether that would be possible. Gladkov said: “It’s the best way of solving Belgorod’s shelling problem.”
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Belgorod Region, tells Russian state TV that Ukraine’s Kharkiv Region needs to be annexed for Belgorod to become safe pic.twitter.com/h6JbnnUWSr
— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) May 29, 2023
Updated
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said on Monday that several frontier settlements were being shelled simultaneously by Ukrainian forces.
In a statement published on the Telegram messaging app, Reuters reports that Vyacheslav Gladkov said two industrial facilities in the town of Shebekino had been shelled and that four employees had been wounded.
Updated
Mayor – at least one person hospitalised as a result of daytime attack on Kyiv
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Kitschko, reports that at least one person has been hospitalised as a result of the daytime attack on Kyiv. They were, he said on Telegram, in the Podilskyi district of the city.
Additionally, Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that the roof of a two-story building caught fire in the district as a result of falling debris, but that the fire was contained. It cited the city’s authority.
Updated
Suspilne, citing the city authority, reports that debris has also fallen in the Podilskyi district of Ukraine’s capital. That area is in the north of Kyiv, adjacent to Obolonskyi district, where there are also reports of debris.
The western Lviv region of Ukraine has also declared an air alert in the last few minutes, as journalist Iryna Matviyishyn notes.
Air raid alert in Lviv Oblast now, after multiple explosions in Kyiv. Ukrainian air defense is at work
— Iryna Matviyishyn (@IMatviyishyn) May 29, 2023
Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko has published an image of what he claims is burning debris on the roadway in the north of the city. FT correspondent Christopher Miller has included it in this tweet about the latest attack.
Kyiv Mayor Klitschko now says emergency teams are responding to areas of central Kyiv and northern Obolon district. He published this photo which he says shows a “burning rocket on the roadway in the Obolon district.” pic.twitter.com/p3paitiONL
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) May 29, 2023
Updated
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that debris has fallen on the road in the Obolonskyi district of Kyiv, which is to the north of the city, on the right bank of the Dnipro River.
It also reports that air defence forces are at work in the Chernihiv region, which is to the north-east of Kyiv.
Updated
The mayor of Kyiv has posted to Telegram to say that emergency services have been dispatched to a call near the centre of the city. Vitali Klitschko said:
Emergency services went to a call near the centre of the capital. The attack on Kyiv continues. Don’t leave the shelters!
Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko has posted to Telegram:
Explosions in the city! In the central areas. Stay in shelters!
Updated
Sound of explosions reported in Kyiv
There are reports of more explosions in Kyiv this morning. The British ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, has tweeted:
It’s all kicked off again. Mid morning crashes and explosions outside. Air defence being tested again by cowardly Russians. Back in shelter.
It’s all kicked off again. Mid morning crashes and explosions outside. 🇺🇦 Air defence being tested again by cowardly Russians. Back in shelter.
— Dame Melinda Simmons (@MelSimmonsFCDO) May 29, 2023
My former colleague Isobel Koshiw tweets:
Eleven explosions in quick succession in central Kyiv less then five mins after air raid sounded. Very loud.
11 explosions in quick succession in central Kyiv less then five mins after air raid sounded. Very loud
— Isobel Koshiw (@IKoshiw) May 29, 2023
Updated
Local media reports that water supplies have been interrupted in the small city of Snihurivka in the Mykolaiv region as a result of overnight shelling.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, offers this roundup of overnight events in the skies over Ukraine:
At night, Russia launched up to 40 cruise missiles and about 35 drones over Ukraine: air defence managed to shoot down 37 missiles and 29 “Shahed” drones. Debris fell in several districts of Kyiv and the region. There are no dead or injured.
Russia attacked targets in the Khmelnytskyi region: one of them is a military one. Five aircraft were disabled, and fires broke out in fuel and lubricant warehouses. Fires are being extinguished and the runway is being restored.
In Odesa, fragments of a downed kamikaze drone hit the port infrastructure. A fire broke out; it has already been extinguished.
A rocket was shot down over Lviv oblast: as a result of falling debris, an outbuilding and a tractor burned down. There were no injured or dead.
In Kirovohrad oblast, debris from a downed drone damaged the roof of a residential building and a railway track. There are no casualties.
Three “Shahed” drones were shot down in Mykolaiv oblast. Air defence forces also worked in the Poltava region: they shot down two missiles and a drone.
Updated
Russia hit military target overnight in Khmelnytskiy – governor
Russia hit a military target in Ukraine’s western region of Khmelnytskyi in airstrikes early on Monday and rescuers are still fighting to contain fires, the regional governor said.
“At the moment, work is continuing to contain fires in storage facilities for fuel and lubricants and munitions,” wrote the Khmelnytskyi regional governor’s office on the Telegram messaging app, Reuters reports.
The precise location has not been specified, but the Tass report of the incident further quotes the governor saying: “Five aircraft were put out of action; work has begun to repair the runway.”
Khmelnytskyi is in the west of Ukraine, some considerable distance from the frontline.
Updated
Foreign investors who left Russia after selling their businesses there between March 2022 and March 2023 withdrew about $36 billion from the country, the state RIA news agency has reported according to Reuters, citing analysis of data from the Central Bank.
Scores of the world’s biggest companies have left or scaled back their operations in Russia in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Last week, the central bank played down the impact of foreign company exits, saying that around 200 sale deals had been completed in the March 2022-23 period, with just 20% involving large asset sales, those in excess of $100 million.
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said that if any other country wants to join a Russia-Belarus union, there could be “nuclear weapons for everyone”.
Russia moved ahead last week with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, in the Kremlin’s first deployment of such warheads outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, spurring concerns in the west.
Reuters reports:
In an interview published on Russia’s state television late on Sunday, Lukashenko, president Vladimir Putin’s staunchest ally among Russia’s neighbours, said that it must be “strategically understood” that Minsk and Moscow had a unique chance to unite.
“No one is against Kazakhstan and other countries having the same close relations that we have with the Russian Federation,” Lukashenko said.
“If someone is worried … [then] it is very simple: join in the Union State of Belarus and Russia. That’s all: there will be nuclear weapons for everyone.”
He added that it was his own view – not the view of Russia.
Russia and Belarus are formally part of a Union State, a borderless union and alliance between the two former Soviet republics.
Updated
EPA photographer Oleg Petrasyuk has captured some touching images of couples saying farewell at the station in Kramatorsk , Donetsk. Ukrainian servicemen only have ten days of annual leave and so loved ones often try to meet them closer to the frontline in order to make the most of the time.
Russia’s interior ministry has put US senator Lindsey Graham on a wanted list, Russian news agency TASS has reported.
Graham visited Kyiv last week and met president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, telling the Ukrainian leader that US military aid to the country was “the best money we’ve ever spent”. Russia criticised his remarks, accusing him of praising the murder of Russians.
Reuters reports on the spat:
The release by the Ukrainian president’s office of Graham’s complete remarks showed there was no such link.
Graham said he was visiting on the 457th day of a war that Russia had assumed would be completed within three days and Graham said Ukrainians resisting the invasion reminded him of “our better selves in America. There was a time in America that we were this way, fighting to the last person, we were going to be free or die.”
“Now you are free,” Zelenskiy responded in the encounter. “And we will be.”
Graham replied: “And the Russians are dying.”
Zelenskiy then added: “Yes, but they came to our territory. We are not fighting on their territory.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and other Russian officials directly linked Graham‘s praise for the benefits of US assistance to his comments on Russians dying in the conflict.
Initial extracts of the conversation released by Zelenskiy’s office had not made clear that the two remarks were made in different parts of the conversation.
Peskov castigated the senator in comments to the Shot Telegram channel, saying: “It is difficult to imagine a greater shame for a country than having such senators.”
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev called Graham, a 67-year-old Republican, an old fool.
“The old fool Senator Lindsey Graham said that the United States has never spent money so successfully as on the murder of Russians,” Medvedev said. “He shouldn’t have done that.”
Updated
Thousands of children have been kidnapped and taken to Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, Peter Beaumont reports.
According to the Ukrainian government, 16,226 children have been deported to Russia, of whom 10,513 have been located, and more than 300 have returned. Some fear the numbers of missing could be an underestimate.
Unaccompanied children, some whose parents were killed during the siege of Mariupol, have disappeared into a Kremlin-sanctioned system now under investigation by the international criminal court.
Peter spoke to one family whose experience shed light on another aspect of the removal of Ukrainian children to Russia: how friends and even relatives have taken children, sometimes for mercenary reasons.
Wagner boss Yevgheny Prigozhin “appears to have again indirectly undermined Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authority and regime”, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has written in its latest analysis of the conflict.
The US-based think tank bases its assertion on the response given by Prigozhin to a journalist asking about Russian state media’s ban on any discussion of Wagner. Prigozhin said that officials could have benefited from their historic ability to censor information if Russia had not declared war on Ukraine. He then shifted to addressing a single, unnamed official:
If you are starting a war, please have character, will, and steel balls - and only then you will be able to achieve something.
Real achievements in building bridges, new buildings and metro stations would allow the official to stop lying, he said.
His comments were “likely targeted at Putin whom the Russian state media has routinely portrayed as a leader minutely involved with small infrastructure projects and the lives of ordinary Russian people,” the think tank said.
His criticism may have come because Putin has failed to give him a reward promised for the seizure of Bakhmut, the ISW suggested.
More than 40 missiles and drones were shot down over Kyiv early Monday, Serhii Popko, the head of the city’s military administration, has said on Telegram. Some damage was caused by falling debris but there were no casualties in what was Russia’s 15th assault on the city this month.
Russia was trying to exhaust the country’s air defences with the increased attacks, Popko said, adding: “the enemy is trying to keep the civilian population in deep psychological tension.”
Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko added: “Another difficult night for the capital. But, thanks to the professionalism of our defenders, as a result of the air attack of the barbarians in Kyiv, there was no damage or destruction of infrastructural and other objects, [or] multi-apartment residential buildings.”
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Livingstone.
The Ukrainian capital Kyiv has endured a second night of aerial assault, after suffering the largest drone attack since the beginning of the Russian invasion on Sunday. Two people died in that attack after which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked the country’s air defence forces, saying he was “grateful to each and every person”.
Air raid sirens sounded again in the early hours of Monday, with Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko reporting explosions in the Holosiiv, Podilsk, Sviatoshyn and Shevchenkivskyi districts. A house in Podilsk and a deserted building in Sviatoshyn caught fire but there were no injuries, according to Klitschko.
Rescuers also rushed to an apartment in Shevchenkivskyi after reports of smoke but it turned out to be a case of “badly burnt food on the stove,” he said. “This also happens…”
In other key developments:
Zelenskiy has put forward a bill that would sanction Russian ally Iran for 50 years due to its role in supplying Moscow with weapons, including hundreds of drones. If passed by Ukraine‘s parliament, the bill would stop Iranian goods transiting through Ukraine and ban use of its airspace, as well as imposing trade, financial and technology sanctions against Iran and its citizens.
The death toll from a Russian missile attack on a medical facility in Dnipro on Friday has risen from two to four people, according to the region’s governor.
Russian attacks near the eastern city of Bakhmut, the scene of heavy fighting in recent months, have abated slightly over the weekend, according to a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military.
Western countries left Belarus no choice but to deploy Russian tactical nuclear weapons and had better take heed not to “cross red lines” on key strategic issues, a senior Belarusian official was quoted as saying. Alexander Volfovich, state secretary of Belarus’ Security Council, said it was logical that the weapons were withdrawn after the 1991 Soviet collapse as the United States had provided security guarantees and imposed no sanctions. “Today, everything has been torn down. All the promises made are gone forever,” the Belta news agency quoted Volfovich as telling an interviewer on state television.
The EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy, Nabila Massrali, has said Russia “will be held accountable” for attacks on civilian areas. “[Russian] leadership & perpetrators will be held accountable. We remain committed to help Ukraine defend itself,” she wrote on Twitter.
The Russian ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin told the BBC that the west’s supplying of weapons to Ukraine risked escalating the conflict to levels not yet seen. Russia has “enormous resources and we haven’t just started yet to act very seriously”, he said.
Russia said its air defence systems destroyed several drones as they approached the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region near the Black Sea on Sunday. “Several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) tried to approach the territory of the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar Krai,” the region’s emergency officials said on the Telegram messaging channel. “All of them were neutralized, the infrastructure of the plant was not damaged.” It was not possible to verify the report.
South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has appointed a panel to investigate US allegations that a Russian ship collected weapons from a naval base near Cape Town last year, the presidency said in a statement. The allegations have caused a diplomatic row between the US, South Africa and Russia and called into question South Africa’s non-aligned position on the Ukraine conflict.
With Agence France-Presse and Reuters
Updated
