Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged Russian soldiers to flee for their lives after his forces launched an offensive to retake southern Ukraine. A senior presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, cautioned Ukrainians not to expect rapid gains and described the offensive as a “slow operation to grind the enemy”.
The former head of Britain’s secret intelligence service, MI6, has welcomed Ukraine’s counterattacks in Kherson, saying it is a key moment in the war. Sir Alex Younger told the BBC that the fightback from Kyiv showed the two opposing forces had “reached some kind of balance, which is an unexpected and frankly welcome situation”.
The Kremlin has insisted that its so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine is going to plan despite the news that Kyiv’s troops have launched a long-awaited counteroffensive in the south of the country. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “The special military operation continues, it continues methodically, and in coordination with the current plans. All objectives will be fulfilled.”
A Moscow-installed leader of occupied Kherson has reportedly fled to Russia after Kyiv announced it had begun its long-awaited counterattack aimed at taking back the southern region from Russian forces. When asked by the Guardian about his location, Kirill Stremousov said he was currently “travelling around Russian cities, meeting different people for work”.
At least four people were killed and four wounded in Russian shelling of Kharkiv, the regional governor said. Writing on the Telegram messaging app, Oleh Synehubov said: “As a result of the shelling of the central part of Kharkiv, at least four people died and four more were injured.”
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has met the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, and his delegation ahead of the group’s visit to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. A key adviser to Ukraine’s president accused Russian forces of deliberately shelling corridors for the IAEA inspectors to force them through Crimea and parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions temporarily occupied by Moscow’s forces.
The European Commission has said it will donate 5.5m potassium iodide tablets to Ukraine amid fears that fighting in the area of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant could lead to nuclear catastrophe. The commission said it had received a request from the Ukrainian government for potassium iodide tablets “as a preventative safety measure” to increase the level of protection around the nuclear plant.
The first shipment of grain from Ukraine to the drought-stricken Horn of Africa since the war began has docked in Djibouti. The UN-chartered vessel Brave Commander is carrying 23,000 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat and will soon be followed by another carrying 7,000 tonnes. The total shipment, which will be unloaded in Djibouti and transported to Ethiopia, is enough to feed 1.5m people for a month.
Ukraine has deployed a fleet of dummy rockets to trick Russian forces into wasting expensive long-range missiles on pointless targets, according to reports. At least 10 Russian cruise missiles have reportedly been fired by Moscow’s naval fleet in the Black Sea at the dummy targets, which are made of wood but look like US-supplied advanced rocket launcher systems when spotted by Russian drones, the Washington Post reports.
Germany and France have issued a joint warning against a ban on tourist visas for Russians, saying such a step would be counter-productive. The split on tourist visas will be at the heart of a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Prague on Tuesday and Wednesday as they discuss what further steps they can take to sanction Russia for its six-month old invasion of Ukraine.
The UN’s cultural agency has said it supports a bid by Ukraine to put its port city of Odesa on the Unesco world heritage list of protected sites. The UN agency also said it wants to add Odesa, Kyiv and Lviv to the list of world heritage sites “in danger”.
That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine war blog today. Thanks for following along. I’ll be back tomorrow.
Updated
Here’s more on the meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, in Kyiv today.
Grossi arrived in the Ukrainian capital late on Monday at the head of a 14-strong team before a visit to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Zelenskiy said the mission was “probably one of the top-priority questions regarding the safety of Ukraine and the world today”, and called for the “immediate de-militarisation of the plant” and its transfer to “full Ukrainian control”.
The Ukrainian president said he hoped the delegation would “find an opportunity, thanks to our special services, thanks to the security corridors, to get to the station and do the best to avoid all those threats on a global scale”.
He also urged the mission to do more than inspect the plant, saying that strategic decisions were required “regarding the urgent demilitarisation of the station, the withdrawal of all, any, military personnel of the Russian Federation with explosives, with any kind of weapon”.
Updated
