Closing summary
The time in Kyiv is just coming up to 9pm. Here is a roundup of the day’s main news:
Ukraine’s counteroffensive plans are hobbled by the lack of adequate firepower, from modern fighter jets to artillery ammunition, the country’s military commander-in-chief, Valery Zaluzhny, said in an interview published on Friday.
A teacher and another employee of a school in the Donetsk region have been killed after the building was shelled, according to a report from Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster.
Pope Francis said there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine as his peace envoy wrapped up three days of talks in Moscow.
Russia is reducing its presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate (GUR) has claimed. GUR said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”.
Ukrainian prosecutors charged a Russian politician and two suspected Ukrainian collaborators with war crimes over the alleged deportation of dozens of orphans from the formerly occupied southern city of Kherson, some of them as young as one, Reuters reported.
Overnight, the Russian army reportedly attacked military infrastructure facilities in the Zaporizhzhia region. Ukraine’s air force claimed four S-300 missiles and 13 Shahed drones were fired, and that air defence forces shot down 10 drones.
The US is strongly considering sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to boost its counteroffensive against Russian forces, according to several news reports that cite Biden administration officials.
Ukraine has conducted nuclear disaster response drills in the vicinity of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, regional officials say.
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Speaking at a press conference, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, has said the commission “will focus prudently on the windfall profits from the immobilised assets of the Russian central bank”.
Belgium’s prime minister said earlier on Friday that the windfall profit from Russia’s frozen assets in Europe could provide $3.27bn (£2.57bn) a year to rebuild Ukraine.
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The Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces is making slow but steady progress, US army general Mark Milley said on Friday.
“It’s going slower than people had predicted. Doesn’t surprise me,” Miley told an audience at the National Press Club. “It is advancing steadily, deliberately, working its way through very difficult minefields, etc.”
The comments came after Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, told Ukrainian television on Friday: “If we talk about the entire frontline, both east and south, we have seized the strategic initiative and are advancing in all directions.
“In the south, we are moving with varying success. Sometimes there are days when it is more than a kilometre, sometimes less than a kilometre, sometimes up to 2 kilometres,” she said. These claims could not immediately be independently verified.
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The award-winning Ukrainian writer and war crimes researcher Victoria Amelina was critically injured in a Russian missile strike on a pizza restaurant in eastern Ukraine this week.
Human activists say the attack on the crowded building, which killed 12 people including 14-year-old twins and injured at least 60 others, was a war crime.
The Ria Lounge was one of the most popular restaurants in Kramatorsk and was filled with civilians when it was hit on Tuesday evening.
“There were no military objects that could have been a legal target for the attack around that day,” PEN Ukraine and the war crimes campaign group Truth Hounds said in a statement that confirmed Amelina was among injured people.
You can read the full story by my colleague Emma Graham-Harrison here:
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Russia plans to continue supporting Mali, including by improving the combat efficiency of its armed forces and training its military and law enforcement personnel, the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told his Malian counterpart in a phone call on Friday.
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Ukraine hopes to use Spain’s rotating EU presidency to try to “gain influence” in Latin America, where several countries have opposed Kyiv’s efforts to retake territory occupied by Russia, President Zelenskiy told Spanish media.
Speaking on Friday on the eve of a visit by Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, Zelenskiy said several unspecified countries had blocked an invitation extended to him by Sánchez to take part in an EU-Latin American summit in Brussels in mid-July, Reuters reports.
“We have a peace formula, and Pedro has supported us a lot. He has a constant dialogue with Latin America and they listen to him, it’s a fact. But I’ll say frankly that some Latin American countries are blocking the decision and this invitation,” he said in comments from Kyiv aired by state broadcaster TVE.
“I want them not only to join the peace formula, but to stand against war,” Ukraine’s president added.
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Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Ukraine:
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Reuters has more on what was discussed during the telephone call with President Putin and Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister (See post at 14:02).
The Indian government said Putin, who will also join Modi on Tuesday for a virtual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, informed the prime minister about the recent developments in Russia during their conversation.
“While discussing the situation in Ukraine, PM (Modi) reiterated his call for dialogue and diplomacy,” the government said in a statement.
India remains dependent on Moscow for its defence needs and has sharply increased its imports of cheap Russian oil.
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An oligarch who made a fortune in Russia and is under Ukrainian sanctions has UK residency after being granted a special visa for rich people.
Pavel Fuks, a Ukrainian national who had sanctions imposed upon him in 2021, is also under criminal investigation for fraud and tax evasion in his home country.
But the Guardian has established that Fuks, known as a regular at an exclusive Mayfair restaurant, was granted a so-called golden visa in 2012, followed by indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 2017. “It’s effective as of today,” his spokesperson said.
All accusations against Fuks in Ukraine “are exclusively political and are not confirmed by court decisions,” the spokesperson said, adding that his lawyers “are challenging the sanctions and charges in court”. Fuks says the sanctions are legally flawed.
You can read the full story by my colleague Tom Burgis below:
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The US has expressed concern about the Russian Wagner group’s destabilising activities in Africa and accused its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, of helping to engineer the departure of UN peacekeepers from Mali, Reuters reports.
The US has information indicating Mali’s transition government has paid more than $200m (£157m) to Wagner since late 2021, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.
Updated
Summary of the day so far
Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief, Valery Zaluzhny, told the Washington Post he was frustrated by the slow deliveries of promised weaponry from the west.
A teacher and another employee of a school in the Donetsk region have been killed after the building was shelled, according to a report from Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster.
Pope Francis reportedly said on Friday there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine.
Russia is reducing its presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate (Gur) has claimed, with staff told to relocate to Crimea and military patrols scaled back. The agency’s chief, Kyrylo Budanov, has alleged Moscow has approved a plan to blow up the station and has mined four out of six power units, as well as a cooling pond.
Ukrainian prosecutors charged a Russian politician and two suspected Ukrainian collaborators with war crimes over the alleged deportation of dozens of orphans from the formerly occupied southern city of Kherson.
Overnight, the Russian army reportedly attacked military infrastructure facilities in the Zaporizhzhia region. Ukraine’s air force claimed four S-300 missiles and 13 “Shahed” drones were fired, and that air defence forces shot down 10 drones.
The US is strongly considering sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to boost its counteroffensive against Russian forces, according to multiple news reports that cite Biden administration officials.
Ukraine has conducted nuclear disaster response drills in the vicinity of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, regional officials say.
Updated
Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor has blocked media outlets linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the Wagner mercenary group which staged a brief mutiny last Saturday, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported on Friday.
Last Saturday, Russia appeared to have averted an immediate descent into civil war after Prigozhin said he would order his Wagner fighters to end their march on Moscow and return to their bases in southern Russia.
Drone strikes hit an airbase in eastern Libya used by mercenaries of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner early on Friday without causing any casualties, a military official told AFP.
AFP reports:
The origin of the overnight strikes on the Al-Kharruba airbase, about 90 miles southwest of Benghazi, was “unknown”, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The base that was hit is “where members of the Wagner group are located”, the official said, adding there were “no victims”.
Reports carried by Libyan and Arab news websites claimed that the strikes had been launched from aircraft that belong to the UN-recognised government in divided Libya.
But the government of National Unity based in the capital Tripoli denied any involvement.
Ukraine's top general frustrated at slow deliveries of promised weaponry from the west
Ukraine’s counteroffensive plans are hobbled by the lack of adequate firepower, from modern fighter jets to artillery ammunition, the country’s military commander-in-chief, Valery Zaluzhny, said in an interview published on Friday.
Zaluzhny told the Washington Post he was frustrated by the slow deliveries of promised weaponry from the west. It “pisses me off” that some in the west complain about the slow start and progress to the push against Russian occupying forces in the country’s south, he said.
Zaluzhny said his western supporters would not themselves launch an offensive without air superiority, but Ukraine was still awaiting F-16 fighters promised by its allies.
“I do not need 120 planes. I’m not going to threaten the whole world. A very limited number would be enough,” he told the newspaper.
“But they are needed. Because there is no other way. Because the enemy is using a different generation of aviation,” Zaluzhny said, adding that he had a fraction of the artillery shells that Russia was firing, the Washington Post reported.
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Teacher killed after Russian shelling of school in Donetsk
A teacher and another employee of a school in Donetsk region have been killed after the building was shelled, according to a report from Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster.
It posted to its official Telegram channel:
Russian troops shelled a school in the village of Serhiivka in the Pokrovsk district of Donetsk region: a teacher and the chief accountant were killed, and six other employees were injured. At the time of the shelling, there were 12 employees at the school. Part of the building is completely destroyed.
The post was accompanied by images that showed officials inspecting the damage.
The claims have not been independently verified.
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Ukraine’s parliament voted on Friday to return tax rates from the start of August to levels they were at before Russia’s invasion.
The move is aimed at boosting budget revenues and complying with an International Monetary Fund lending program, Reuters reports. The government introduced tax cuts and other economic measures soon after Russia’s 24 February 2022 invasion to help businesses weather the disruption caused by the war.
Ukraine depends heavily on foreign aid to finance its budget spending this year as the war is severely affecting the economy. Scrapping tax privileges and boosting budget revenues are vital conditions under the IMF’s $15.6bn (£12.3bn) lending programme.
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In Kramatorsk today, a funeral has been held for the 14-year-old twins Anna and Yuliia Aksenchenko who were among 12 people who were killed when a Russian missile hit a pizza restaurant in the eastern city on Tuesday evening.
At the ceremony, a crowd of about 30 relatives, friends and local residents gathered to pay their respects. Max Hunder was there for Reuters, and described the scene, saying that the mother of the twins looked completely drained of vitality as she sat by the graves of her daughters.
None of the family members were in any condition to speak to reporters, the girls’ godfather said.
The girls lay in coffins with open caskets, but were covered with a glistening white and gold sheet. Mourners said the girls had been dressed in wedding dresses for their burial, a custom in Ukraine for girls who die too young to marry.
Initially unable to find two wedding dresses in a city not far from the front and where wedding parlours are closed, friends and family issued an online appeal for well-wishers to donate two dresses so that the girls could be buried.
“This is a tradition. If girls become angels, go up to heaven before getting married, they are dressed in wedding dresses so they can find their other half there,” said Viktoria Kushka, 50, a teacher who taught Anna and Yuliia in first grade.
Speaking in one of the classrooms at the nearby school where the girls studied, Kushka recalled her memories of the girls, saying: “They were two little sunshines. Smiling, big light blue eyes. Always together, always supporting each other.”
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In a telephone call on Friday with the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin discussed the situation around Ukraine and how Moscow had resolved an armed mercenary mutiny, the Kremlin said.
It said that Modi had expressed support for what the Kremlin called the Russian leadership’s decisive actions in handling the mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group last Saturday, Reuters reports.
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The Russian rouble tumbled past 89 against the dollar for the first time in more than 15 months on Friday, Reuters reports.
Bank of Russia deputy governor Alexei Zabotkin said reduced export revenues and the balance of payments were determining the rouble’s weakening, which he said carried no risks to financial stability.
Moscow has said the Wagner mercenary group, which recently attempted a short-lived mutiny in Russia, would continue to work in Africa if governments on the continent decided to maintain contracts with the private military group, AFP reports.
“The future of the agreements between African countries and the Wagner private military company is above all up to the governments of the countries concerned,” Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, told reporters during a briefing.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, ordered top military commanders on Friday to strengthen Ukraine’s northern military sector following the arrival of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russian Wagner mercenary group, in Belarus.
“The decision... is for commander-in-chief (Valeriy) Zaluzhnyi and ‘North’ commander (Serhiy) Naev to implement a set of measures to strengthen this direction,” Zelenskiy said on Telegram.
He said government and military leaders had also heard a report from Ukrainian intelligence and security forces on the situation in Belarus, Ukraine’s northern neighbour, Reuters reports.
On Thursday, satellite images emerged of a military base south-east of the Belarus capital, Minsk, that appeared to show new facilities set up in recent days, suggesting the swift construction of a base for Wagner.
Russian media have reported that Wagner, whose leader, Prigozhin, arrived in Belarus on Tuesday, could set up a new base at a vacant military facility near the town of Osipovichi, about 50 miles (90km) from Minsk.
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Pope Francis warns Ukraine war seems to have 'no end'
Pope Francis said on Friday there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine as his peace envoy wrapped up three days of talks in Moscow, Reuters reports.
“The tragic reality of this war that seems to have no end demands of everyone a common creative effort to imagine and forge paths of peace,” the pope told a religious delegation from the Patriarch of Constantinople.
The Vatican said in a subsequent statement that the pope’s envoy, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, had finished his consultations in Moscow, where he had met Yuri Ushakov, one of President Putin’s advisers, and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“(The visit was) aimed at identifying humanitarian initiatives, which could open roads to peace,” the statement said. Francis has repeatedly called for an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In May, President Zelenskiy asked Francis to back Kyiv’s peace plan, and the pope indicated the Vatican would help in the repatriation of Ukrainian children taken by Russians.
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The World Bank has approved a $1.5bn loan to Ukraine to support the country’s development and reconstruction policies, according to the organisation’s press service.
The loan, as reported on by the Kyiv Post, will be used to ensure transparency in the use of public funds and to strengthen the social security system.
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Kazakhstan has announced it has uncovered online efforts to recruit its citizens to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, AFP reports.
The warning from regional officials in the Kremlin-friendly country late on Thursday follows reports in local media that Kazakhstan citizens have been killed in Ukraine.
Both the Russian military and the Wagner mercenary group have targeted citizens of the ex-Soviet country in central Asia to join their ranks.
Prosecutors in the northern Kostanay region, which borders Russia and is home to a large Russian minority, warned residents not to “succumb” to attempts on social media to enlist men into Moscow’s forces.
The region is home to about 880,000 people, 41% of whom are ethnic Russians, government figures show.
“On the territory of our region, attempts were made to recruit the local population to the territory of the Russian Federation in order to participate in the armed conflict in Ukraine,” the region’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
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Wimbledon has banned its merchandise from being sold in Russia and Belarus as part of its ongoing condemnation of the war in Ukraine.
The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) has said it will not allow any of its products to be shipped to the two countries due to Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion.
An AELTC spokesperson said:
We continue to totally condemn Russia’s illegal invasion and our wholehearted support remains with the people of Ukraine.
We will donate £1 for each ticket-holder attending the championships to the British Red Cross Ukraine relief efforts, which will result in a contribution of more than half a million pounds. We will also welcome 1,000 refugees to join us for a day at Wimbledon, with their food and transport provided.
We are maintaining the ban on broadcasting the championships in Russia and Belarus, as well as the ban on Wimbledon merchandise being sold and shipped to both countries.
You can read the full story from my colleague Emine Sinmaz below:
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More information has come in about the ice hockey player from Poland’s major league who has apparently been charged with spying for Russia (See post at 09:38).
The man, a Russian citizen, was reportedly arrested on 11 June in Silesia, southern Poland, and is believed to be part of a Russian spy ring.
According to the national prosecutor’s office, the detained man is the 14th person arrested as part of an investigation into a “spy ring collaborating with Russian special services”.
“The suspects, identified as foreigners from across the eastern border, carried out intelligence as well as propaganda activities against Poland,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Among their activities were “monitoring of railway routes” and spreading “propaganda against Nato, Poland and the Polish government’s policy”, it said.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Moscow had demanded an explanation from Poland over its arrest of Russian citizens, state news agency RIA reported.
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Russia scales back presence at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and has approved plan to 'blow it up', says Ukraine
Russia is scaling back its presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plower plant, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate (GUR) warned on Friday, with staff told to relocate to Crimea and military patrols scaled back.
The agency’s chief, Kyrlo Budanov, has said that Moscow approved a plan to blow up the station and has mined four out of six power units, as well as a cooling pond. Last week, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the Russians were plotting a “terrorist attack”.
According to the GUR, several representatives of Russia’s state nuclear energy agency, Rosatom, have already left. Ukrainian employees who stayed at the plant and signed contracts with Rosatom have been told to evacuate by Monday, preferably to Crimea, it said.
The intelligence agency named three senior individuals who had already departed: the plant’s chief inspector, the head of the legal department, and the deputy in charge of supplies. It said the number of Russian soldiers at the station and in the nearby town of Enerhodar had reduced.
Since seizing the plant last year, the Russian army has turned it into a full-blown military base. It moved hardware into the turbine halls including armoured vehicles and ammunition. Soldiers used the territory to bombard Ukrainian towns across the Dnipro reservoir.
This has mostly dried up after the Kakhovka dam downstream was blown up earlier this month. Western governments and Kyiv say Russia deliberately sabotaged the dam in order to impede Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
Former plant workers said it would be difficult to damage the reactors, which were protected by thick steel and concrete. But they said the small cooling pond – which the Russians have allegedly mined – was more vulnerable, as was a dry storage area used for spent nuclear fuel.
An explosion in the cooling pond could lead to a partial nuclear meltdown similar to the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the US state of Pennsylvania, said Oleksiy Kovynyev, a former senior engineer. In this scenario, most radiation would be contained.
But he added: “Of course, if you are an absolute maniac and open the ventilation channels this would throw out radiation.” Kovynyev said the dry storage area at the plant contained 24 spent “fuel assemblies”, sealed in 120 “hermetic” thick steel casks.
“In a normal situation they are absolutely safe. [But] if you wanted, you could destroy them. You could shell several times. This could cause a nuclear accident with radiation release.” He said he remained “optimistic” that no disaster would take place.
Before the full-scale invasion, the plant employed 11,500 workers. An estimated 2,500 remain. Some, including the plant’s Ukrainian director, have signed contracts with Rosatom. Others have refused and have had their security passes revoked. Staff receive salaries from Russia as well as Ukraine.
The GUR said on Friday that personnel remaining at the station had been instructed to “blame Ukraine in case of any emergencies”. Russia has claimed that Kyiv has endangered the station by shelling it.
Ukraine has urged the international community to pay attention to the alarming situation at the plant and to put pressure on Moscow to step back from the brink. Officials point out that Zelenskiy warned last year that the Kremlin was preparing to blow up the Kakhovka dam – something that happened seven months later.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, the probability of undermining the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant by russian invaders has greatly increased. The consequences of this can be unpredictable, I call on the entire world community to do everything in their power to stop the… pic.twitter.com/YeVmXpIcJ7
— Chief Rabbi Of Ukraine Moshe Azman (@RabbiUkraine) June 30, 2023
The chief rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Azman, urged the “entire world community” to do everything in its power to stop a possible catastrophe. This week Russia told the UN security council it had no plans to blow up the plant. It previously assured the council it would not invade Ukraine.
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Ukraine brings first charges for deporting Kherson orphans
Ukrainian prosecutors on Friday charged a Russian politician and two suspected Ukrainian collaborators with war crimes over the alleged deportation of dozens of orphans from the formerly occupied southern city of Kherson.
Reuters reports:
They are the first suspects to be charged by Ukraine, which says more than 19,000 children have been illegally transferred to Russia or Russian-held territory, officials told Reuters.
The charges brought by Ukraine’s prosecutors follow a wider investigation carried out in cooperation with The Hague-based international criminal court, the chief prosecutor of which visited the Kherson Children’s Home.
On Friday, the charges were filed in Ukraine, a pre-trial stage when prosecutors determine [whether] there is sufficient evidence to suspect a person of committing a criminal offence.
The ICC, the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal, issued an arrest warrant in March against Russian president Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, accusing them of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from orphanages and children’s homes in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
The Kremlin on Wednesday again dismissed allegations that Russia had violated children’s rights in Ukraine and said that, on the contrary, its armed forces were rescuing children from conflict zones.
Prosecution documents seen by Reuters allege that 48 orphans were taken from the Kherson regional children’s home in September and October and relocated to Moscow and Russian-occupied Crimea.
If proven, this is a violation of the laws and customs of war under the 1949 Geneva conventions, and punishable by up 12 years in prison under Ukrainian law, the document seen by Reuters said.
The current whereabouts of the orphans, ranging from one to four years old, is uncertain, prosecutors said.
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Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said Moscow will emerge from the aftermath of a recent armed insurrection by the Wagner mercenary group “stronger” than before, AFP reports.
“Russia has always overcome all its problems... it comes out stronger and stronger. It will be the same this time, too. This process has already begun,” Lavrov told journalists during a briefing in Moscow, after the rebels marched on the capital last week to oust the country’s military leadership.
The revolt, led by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, posed the most serious threat to Vladimir Putin’s decades-long rule and spurred Kremlin efforts to disband the private military outfit.
Answering a question from foreign media, Lavrov said: “thank you for your concern about our national interests, but you shouldn’t be worried”.
Hello everyone, this is Yohannes Lowe. I’ll be running the blog until 7pm (UK time). Please do feel free to get in touch on Twitter if you have any story tips.
Summary of the day so far …
A Ukrainian senior defence official has repeated that the ciuntry’s troops are advancing in all directions of their counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces. “If we talk about the entire frontline, both east and south, we have seized the strategic initiative and are advancing in all directions,” the deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, told Ukrainian television.
Russia is gradually reducing its personnel numbers at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in southern Ukraine, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said on Friday. The GUR said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”. It said Ukrainian employees who had signed a contract with Rosatom had also been advised to depart. Employees should leave by 5 July, it said, and have been told to preferably head for the Crimea peninsula.
Overnight, the Russian army attacked military infrastructure facilities in the Zaporizhzhia region. Ukraine’s air force claimed four S-300 missiles and 13 “Shahed” drones were fired, and that air defence forces shot down 10 drones.
Ukraine’s general staff has claimed that it struck the headquarters and storage depots of Russian troops in the suburbs of Berdiansk. Local Russian-imposed officials said that air defence had repelled the attack. Video distributed on social media appeared to show smoke rising over the occupied city.
In Kramatorsk, a makeshift memorial has been set up displaying pictures of some of the people killed in a missile strike on a restaurant earlier this week. Twelve people died and at least 56 people were injured, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Friday that he believed the west was aiming to freeze the conflict in Ukraine to buy time to pump more arms into the country. He also accused the west of having a “schizophrenic” approach to the conflict, saying they first wanted to see Russia lose on the battlefield and for its leaders to go on trial – and only then to press for peace in Ukraine. Lavrov also described the west’s attitude to the Black Sea grain deal as “outrageous” and lamented the fact that grain was not being exported to the world’s poorest countries.
Wagner mercenaries will no longer fight in Ukraine after their leader refused to sign contracts with the Kremlin. Yevgeny Prigozhin refused to sign the contracts, according to the head of the Duma defence committee, Andrei Kartapolov. Overnight, the BBC has been reporting that recruitment continues at Wagner mercenary offices across Russia, despite the fallout from the weekend’s armed mutiny.
Sweden’s prime minister said on Friday his Hungarian counterpart had assured him that Budapest would not delay the Nordic country’s Nato accession, after reports that Hungary’s parliament would delay a ratification of the membership.
Hungary rejects the European Commission’s plans to grant more money to Ukraine and is not willing to contribute additional money to finance the EU’s increased debt service costs, prime minister Viktor Orbán told state radio on Friday.
Poland has detained a Russian ice hockey athlete, who plays for a first division Polish team, on spying charges, prosecutors said on Friday, describing him as the 14th person to be arrested from one espionage network.
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Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has accused Ukraine of committing war crimes by stationing troops and military equipment in civilian areas.
He denied on Friday that Russia’s armed forces intentionally attacked civilian targets in Ukraine, saying they only targeted military infrastructure or other military targets.
Speaking at a news conference, Reuters reports that Lavrov accused Ukraine of deploying troops and heavy weapons to civilian infrastructure such as in schools and apartment buildings. He said such tactics were war crimes.
Russia staged its latest invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Since that time, the UN has recorded more than 19,000 casualties, including 6,000 deaths, among the civilian population of Ukraine in areas controlled by the Kyiv government.
Earlier this week, 12 people, including four children, were killed when a Russian missile hit a restaurant in Kramatorsk. An eight-month-old baby was among the wounded.
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The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has been giving a wide-ranging press briefing this morning. He says he believes the west is aiming to freeze the conflict in Ukraine to buy time to pump more arms into the country.
This accusation mirrors a frequent talking point from Ukrainian officials – a fear that peace talks or a stalemate on the ground would give Russia time to re-equip for a renewed push into the county.
Reuters reports Lavrov accused western countries of taking a “schizophrenic” approach to the conflict, saying they first wanted to see Russia lose on the battlefield and for its leaders to go on trial – and only then to press for peace in Ukraine.
On the topic of the forced deportation of children, which the international criminal court has accused Russia of carrying out, Lavrov said Russia had evacuated children from orphanages in war zones. The Ukrainian government says it has identified more than 19,000 children whom it claims have been unlawfully deported or otherwise separated from their parents or guardians.
He also accused the west of hypocrisy for attacking Russia over its alleged human rights abuses in Ukraine while, in his view, ignoring what he described as “racist” statements by Ukrainian authorities about killing Russians.
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Suspilne reports that Ukraine’s general staff has claimed that earlier today it struck the headquarters and storage depots of Russian troops in the suburbs of Berdiansk. Unverified social media footage showed smoke rising in the sky above the occupied city earlier. Russian sources say that air defences repelled the attack.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Ukrainian troops 'advancing in all directions' – deputy defence minister
A Ukrainian senior defence official has repeated that its troops are advancing in all directions of their counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces.
Since the start of its counteroffensive, Ukraine says it has reasserted control over clusters of villages in the south-east although Russia still holds swathes of territory in the east, south and south-east.
“If we talk about the entire frontline, both east and south, we have seized the strategic initiative and are advancing in all directions,” the deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, told Ukrainian television, Reuters reports.
Updated
Poland has detained a Russian ice hockey athlete, who plays for a first division Polish team, on spying charges, prosecutors said on Friday. They described him as the 14th person to be arrested from one espionage network.
“Russian spies are falling in one by one!” wrote justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro on Twitter, Reuters reports. “A spy who acted under the guise of an athlete was caught. The Russian was a player of a first division club.”
The hockey player was taken into custody in the southern Polish region of Silesia, prosecutors said in a statement.
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The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Friday described the west’s attitude to the Black Sea grain deal as “outrageous” and lamented the fact that grain was not being exported to the world’s poorest countries.
Moscow has again been threatening not to extend the deal. It says there are obstacles to exporting its own agricultural products which need to be removed. These include financial sanctions on the banking and insurance sectors, and the reopening of an ammonia pipeline that would allow Russia to export ammonia via Ukraine’s port of Odesa, a city frequently targeted by Russian missile strikes.
Speaking in a news briefing, Lavrov also called for an expansion in the membership of the UN security council to give more representation to Asian, African and Latin American countries. “A majority of the world does not want to live according to western rules,” Reuters quotes him saying.
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Sweden’s prime minister said on Friday that his Hungarian counterpart had assured him that Budapest would not delay the Nordic country’s Nato accession, following reports that Hungary’s parliament would delay ratification of Sweden’s membership.
“I spoke to Viktor Orbán yesterday and he confirmed very clearly that what he said to me last time still applies,” Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson said on Friday.
“Hungary will not delay Sweden’s ratification process in any way,” he told the media. Reuters reports Kristersson did not specify whether Orban’s comments implied a vote could take place before the Nato summit in Vilnius.
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Russia reducing number of personnel at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – reports
Russia is gradually reducing the number of personnel at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in southern Ukraine, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said on Friday.
“According to the latest data, the occupation contingent is gradually leaving the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” the main directorate of intelligence at the defence ministry (GUR) said on the Telegram messaging app.
GUR said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”, Reuters reports.
It said Ukrainian employees who had signed a contract with Rosatom had also been advised to depart. Employees should leave by 5 July, it said, and had been told to preferably head for the Crimea peninsula, which Russia illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014.
GUR said the number of military patrols was also gradually decreasing on the plant’s vast territory and in the nearby city of Enerhodar, and that personnel remaining at the plant had been told to blame Ukraine “in case of any emergency situations”.
Russian authorities declined to comment on the claims when approached by Reuters.
Ukraine and Russia have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the plant and its vicinity. Russia has occupied the plant since March 2022, and Kyiv accused Russia this month of planning a “terrorist” attack at the nuclear plant involving the release of radiation, an accusation which Russia has dismissed.
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Unverified video footage being shared on social media appears to show explosions in Berdiansk.
Didn’t realise storm shadow missiles had the ability to draw Z letters. This footage from occupied Berdyansk this morning. pic.twitter.com/FdZv0zkux4
— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) June 30, 2023
On the Telegram messaging app, one of the Russian-imposed leaders in occupied Zaporizhzhia, Vladimir Rogov, shared the clip with this message:
According to preliminary data, the Ukrainian armed forces militants tried to strike this morning with Storm Shadow missiles. The series of explosions heard is the result of the work of the Russian air defence, which successfully repelled an enemy attack on civilians on the outskirts of the city.
The location and time the video clip was taken has not been verified by the Guardian.
In Kramatorsk, a makeshift memorial has been set up carrying pictures of some of the people killed in a missile strike on a restaurant earlier this week. Twelve people died and at least 56 people were injured, according to Ukrainian authorities. Russia claimed the strike was on a military target.
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Ukraine claims to have shot down 10 'Shahed' drones overnight
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, offers this roundup of overnight news from across Ukraine:
At night, the Russian army attacked military infrastructure facilities in the Zaporizhzhia region: four S-300 missiles and 13 “Shahed” drones were fired, air defence forces shot down 10 drones, the air force reported.
No people were injured in the night attack in Zaporizhzhia. In Mykolaiv a fire broke out due to the fall of fragments of downed drones, and there were no injuries.
In the Lozova district of the Kharkiv region, a 13-year-old boy found an unknown explosive device in his own yard; he was hospitalised with a traumatic amputation of the fingers of his left hand, the state emergency service reported.
The claims have not been independently verified.
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Orbán: Hungary rejects more EU funding for Ukraine
Hungary rejects the European Commission’s plans to grant more money to Ukraine and is not willing to contribute additional money to finance the EU’s increased debt service costs, prime minister Viktor Orbán told state radio on Friday.
“One thing is clear, we Hungarians … will not give more money to Ukraine until they say where the previous around €70bn worth of funds had gone,” Orban said.
“And we find it utterly ridiculous and absurd that we should contribute more money to finance debt service costs of a loan from which we have still not received the funds we are entitled to get.”
Orbán was speaking on the sidelines of the EU summit in Brussels. Budapest – along with Poland – has not received funds from the EU’s recovery fund amid a rule of law dispute.
Reuters reports that on Thursday, EU leaders declared they would make long-term commitments to bolster Ukraine’s security as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, urged them to start work on a new round of sanctions against Russia.
Orbán said there was almost no chance that EU member states would approve these financial plans and that a “long fight” would start.
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Wagner still reportedly recruiting inside Russia
Overnight, the BBC has been reporting that recruitment continues at Wagner mercenary offices across Russia, despite the fallout from the weekend’s armed mutiny. It writes:
Using a Russian phone number, we called more than a dozen recruitment centres saying, if asked, that we were inquiring on behalf of a brother.
All those who replied confirmed that it was business as usual.
From Kaliningrad in the west to Krasnodar in the south, no one believed the group was being disbanded.
Several people who picked up the phone stressed that new members were signing contracts with the mercenary group itself, not the Russian defence ministry.
“We are working. If something had changed, they’d have told us. But there’s nothing,” a female recruiter in Krasnodar, southern Russia, was clear.
In Volgograd, the man we spoke to said that if someone signed up today, “I could deploy him tomorrow,” and confirmed that Belarus was now a possible destination.
Sarah Rainsford, who compiled the report for the BBC, pointed out on Twitter the contrast between the treatment of the armed insurrectionist group Wagner and those who have peacefully opposed Russia’s president.
It’s amazing to compare the continuing existence of Wagner, which proved a real, physical threat, and - say - Navalny’s political team which was declared ‘extremist’ & banned & prosecuted, just for peaceful political opposition to Putin https://t.co/pmcfKW8TUT
— Sarah Rainsford (@sarahrainsford) June 30, 2023
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The sound of explosions has been reported in the Russian-occupied city of Berdiansk. Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency is carrying a statement from a local Russian-imposed authority saying that at 8am Moscow time (6am BST): “According to preliminary information, the air defence system of the Russian Federation armed forces went off.”
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Citing regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin, Suspilne reports that two people – a 72-year-old woman and a 70-year-old man – have been injured this morning by Russian shelling in the region. The claims have not been independently verified.
This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.
Nato is nearing consensus on how to address Ukraine’s membership push at its coming summit and aims to show it is moving “above and beyond” an earlier vow to Kyiv, the US envoy to Nato has said.
Agence France-Presse reports that Kyiv, backed by Nato allies in eastern Europe, has called for a commitment at the gathering in Lithuania in two weeks that it will join the military alliance when the war with Russia ends.
Diplomats at Nato say the US has been reluctant to move beyond a 2008 pledge made in Bucharest that promised Ukraine would become a member but did not set a timeline.
Nato’s 31 member countries are haggling over the exact wording on Ukraine’s potential membership for a final communique at the summit.
The US ambassador to Nato, Julianne Smith, said on Thursday that the final version could begin to answer how Ukraine would eventually become an alliance member.
I think most of us feel confident that we are going to be able to come to an agreement that will reflect where we are and that the Ukrainians will believe and feel is something above and beyond restating Bucharest.
Smith said the alliance was getting closer to finding a consensus on the language but that she did not want to preempt the final phrasing.
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Spain will take on the EU’s rotating presidency on Saturday with the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, visiting Kyiv to show steadfast European support for Ukraine as it battles Russian forces, his office has said.
The announcement was made as Sanchez attended an EU summit in Brussels, in which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, participating via video link, confirmed the visit, Agence France-Presse reports.
Spain will hold the EU presidency from July to the end of December, taking over from Sweden. The role puts ministers from the EU presidency country in the chair of most EU meetings, influencing the agenda and priorities of topics being decided.
Zelenskiy told the summit that Sanchez’s visit “says much about the importance … for our Europe and the membership candidacy of Ukraine for the EU”.
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EU leaders declared they would make long-term commitments to bolster Ukraine’s security as the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, urged them to start work on a new round of sanctions against Russia.
Reuters reports that at a summit in Brussels, the leaders restated their condemnation of Russia’s war against Ukraine and said the EU and its member countries “stand ready” to contribute to commitments that would help Ukraine defend itself in the long term.
In a text summarising the summit’s conclusions, the leaders said on Thursday they would swiftly consider the form those commitments would take.
Josep Borrell, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, suggested they could build on existing EU support, such as the European Peace Facility fund that has financed billions of euros in arms for Ukraine and a training mission for Ukrainian troops.
“The military support to Ukraine has to [be for the] long haul,” Borrell said.
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Greta Thunberg has denounced the ecological havoc caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the lack of international reaction to the disaster.
“Ecocide and environmental destruction is a form of warfare … as Ukrainians by this point know all too well – and so does Russia,” the Swedish climate activist said on Thursday during a visit to Kyiv as part of an international delegation investigating the environmental consequences of the conflict.
And that’s why they are deliberately targeting the environment and people’s livelihoods and homes and therefore also destroying lives.
Thunberg was speaking at a news conference along with Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yerma, Agence France-Presse also reports. She and the rest of the delegation met the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The destruction of the Kakhovka dam in the southern region of Kherson on 6 June caused disastrous flooding, killing dozens of people and forcing thousands of others to flee.
Zelensky has criticised what he says is an inadequate international response to the disaster.
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A senior Czech official has labelled Russia a “direct military threat” to the Czech Republic and its eastern Nato allies as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continued.
Martin Povejsil, head of the Czech foreign ministry’s security department, said it was “impossible to rule out a direct military threat [from Russia] in the foreseeable future”.
Agence France-Presse reports he was commenting on a new security strategy approved by the Czech government the previous day and designed to raise awareness of the security situation among the Czech public.
“We can see how agendas that were until recently perceived as free of security aspects are gradually taking security into account,” Povejsil said on Thursday, naming science and research – prone to cyber-attacks and espionage – as an example.
The security strategy says the Czech Republic should get ready “for the possibility that it could become part of an armed conflict”.
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Ukraine holds nuclear disaster response drills near Zaporizhzhia plant
Ukraine has conducted nuclear disaster response drills in the vicinity of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, regional officials say.
Yuriy Malashko, governor of the southern Ukrainian region that includes the plant, said the drills in Zaporizhzhia city and the district around it were intended to coordinate the response of all services to an “emergency situation” at the plant, Reuters reports.
Ukraine accused Russia this month of planning a “terrorist” attack at the plant involving the release of radiation. Moscow denied the accusation.
Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said on Thursday that he wrote to the UN security council and the secretary general, António Guterres, to say:
We do not intend to blow up this NPP [nuclear power plant] we have no intention of doing so.
Reuters television footage showed rescuers in protective gear and gas masks using dosimeters to check passenger cars and trucks for radiation levels and then cleaning wheels before vehicles underwent additional decontamination at specialised washing points.
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US considering sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, reports say
The US is strongly considering sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to boost its counteroffensive against Russian forces, according to multiple news reports that cite Biden administration officials.
Cluster munitions are bombs containing smaller bomblets that scatter as they drop from the air, causing wider damage.
US officials said the decision from the White House was expected soon, CNN reported, while NBC News said it could come as early as next month.
Politico reported that late last year the Biden administration said it had “concerns” about delivering the munitions to Ukraine, mainly for humanitarian reasons and also because the US didn’t assess Ukraine as needing them at that point.
In other news:
Wagner mercenaries will no longer fight in Ukraine after their leader refused to sign contracts with the Kremlin. Yevgeny Prigozhin refused to sign the contracts, according to the head of the Duma defence committee, Andrei Kartapolov. He said that a few days before the attempted rebellion, Russia’s defence ministry announced that all groups performing combat missions must sign a contract with the ministry, Russian state news agency Tass reported. Prigozhin did not sign the contracts and was informed that Wagner would not take part in what the Kremlin calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine, according to Kartapolov, who added: “That is, funding, material resources will not be allocated.”
The Kremlin has declined to answer questions about the whereabouts of Sergei Surovikin amid unconfirmed reports that the Russian army general had been detained and was being questioned by the security services. US intelligence has claimed that Surovikin, who previously led the invasion force in Ukraine, had prior knowledge of Prigozhin’s uprising, in which Wagner mercenaries captured the city of Rostov-on-Don and moved on Moscow before striking an amnesty deal. Surovikin has not been seen in public since last Saturday.
Former US President Donald Trump has said now is the time for the US to try to broker a negotiated peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine and that Vladimir Putin has been “somewhat weakened” by Wagner’s aborted mutiny. “I want people to stop dying over this ridiculous war,” Trump told Reuters in an interview. Trump said everything would be “subject to negotiation” if he were president.
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”.
Ukrainian forces had made advances in sectors in the south designated by two occupied towns, Berdiansk and Mariupol, the Ukrainian deputy defence minister said. “Every day, there is an advance,” Hanna Maliar said on national television. “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 the Ukrainian president during the US campaign. Pence told NBC News: “Coming here just as a private citizen … just steels my resolve to do my part, to continue to call for strong American support for our Ukrainian friends and allies.”
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.
The EU is considering imposing a levy on interest made from frozen Russian cash that could raise about €3bn ($3.3bn, £2.6bn) a year to help Ukraine’s recovery from the war. A “windfall contribution” was to be discussed by EU leaders at a current European Council summit in an attempt to harness the value of sovereign Russian funds immobilised by sanctions.
The death toll in a Russian rocket attack on a 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. Russia’s defence ministry claimed it killed two Ukrainian generals and up to 50 officers in a missile strike when referring to this attack.
Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency has arrested a local man 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.
The Russian-imposed acting governor of the occupied Kherson region has denied claims that Ukrainian troops had succeeded in establishing any kind of bridgehead over the Dnipro River at the location of the Antonivskyi Bridge. Vladimir Saldo also claimed Russian forces had repelled multiple landing attempts in the area.
The Israeli prime minister 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”. Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that 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.
Hungary’s vote on Sweden joining Nato has again been delayed, with the Hungarian parliament’s house committee rejecting a proposal to schedule the vote on the ratification of Sweden’s membership for next week.
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