Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has asked military chiefs to draw up plans to gather a “million-strong” fighting force equipped with western weapons to recapture its southern territory from Russia, the country’s defence minister said. Zelenskiy has ordered his military to recover occupied areas around the Black Sea coast that are vital to the country’s economy, Oleksii Reznikov said.
Ukraine has warned residents in southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to evacuate as it prepares to launch a counteroffensive to retake the area. The Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions were occupied by Russian troops in late February after they crossed the bridge from Russia-annexed Crimea. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said: “It’s clear there will be fighting, there will be artillery shelling... and we therefore urge [people] to evacuate urgently.”
At least 24 people have died and dozens more were injured after a Russian missile attack hit a five-storey apartment building in the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine. Emergency crews worked to pull people trapped in the rubble. Rescuers are still combing the rubble and nine people have been rescued. The strike destroyed three buildings in a residential quarter of town, inhabited mostly by people who work in nearby factories. Zelenskiy accused Moscow of purposely targeting civilians in the Chasiv Yar attack and promised “punishment is inevitable for every Russian murderer”.
Serhai Haidai, Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk, has said “a small part of the Luhansk region is still holding on, fierce battles are going on.” He accused Russian forces of using new recruits from the occupied areas of Ukraine as “canon fodder”, who “are guaranteed not to survive even the first battle.”
Russia has claimed in the last 24 hours to have killed over 500 Ukrainian troops and to have destroyed large amounts of foreign-supplied weaponry and ammunition, including “ammunition depots for HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems, M777 howitzers, and 2S7 Pion self-propelled guns supplied by the United States to Ukraine.”
The UK’s Ministry of Defence suggests that neither side has made any territorial gains in Ukraine over the weekend. Its latest briefing states “Russian artillery bombardments continued in the northern Donbas sector, but probably without any major territorial advances. Ukrainian forces continued to apply localised pressure to the Russian defensive line in north-east Kherson oblast, also probably without achieving territorial gain.”
Ukraine’s heavy artillery is outnumbered roughly eight to one by Russian guns, putting Ukraine at a significant disadvantage, a spokesman for Ukraine’s International Legion has said. Damien Magrou, spokesman for the unit comprising foreign nationals, told a briefing in Kyiv that more arms from Ukraine’s Western partners were needed to close the gap.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has signed a decree making it easier for citizens of Ukraine to acquire Russian citizenship. A document published on the Russian government’s website shows Putin has signed a decree extending a simplified Russian naturalisation process to “all citizens of Ukraine”. Previously, a simplified procedure for acquiring Russian citizenship applied only to residents of the self-proclaimed breakaway territories of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) in eastern Ukraine, as well as the Russian-occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Lithuania has expanded restrictions on trade through its territory to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, as phase-ins on earlier announced European Union sanctions begin. Goods sanctioned from Monday morning include concrete, wood, alcohol and alcohol-based industrial chemicals. The governor of Kaliningrad, Anton Alikhanov, has proposed a total ban on the movement of goods between the three Baltic states and Russia, in response to what authorities in the exclave have called a “blockade”.
Russian gas giant Gazprom will begin ten days of routine maintenance on its Nord Stream 1 pipeline today as Europe waits to see if the gas comes back on. The annual work on the two pipelines was scheduled long in advance, however many fear Gazprom might take the opportunity to simply shut off the valves.
Two Ukrainian civilians were killed and at least two others injured in Russian missile attacks on the town of Siversk, near Sievierodonetsk, officials said. Donetsk governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said three people were hurt by shelling in Soledar, and seven houses and other property burned down in Bakhmut with no details of any casualties. Ukraine officials warned last week the city in the Luhansk region was facing a “humanitarian disaster”.
The number of Ukrainian children enrolled in Poland’s schools is expected to double to at least 400,000 for the coming school year, the country’s education department has said. A report in European Pravda, an online media outlet published by Ukrainian journalists, quoted Przemysław Czarnek, Poland’s education minister, as saying those enrolled would take part in lessons both online from Ukraine and in-person.
Germany has reportedly blocked €9bn of EU aid to Ukraine for more than a month. The Kyiv Independent, citing the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, said Germany’s finance minister, Christian Lindner, was against the planned aid because of concerns over European debt.
The Russian Tennis Federation has claimed Elena Rybakina as “our product” on her run to the women’s title at Wimbledon. They praised her training program in the country after she became Wimbledon champion on Saturday while representing Kazakhstan.
Russia has restricted access to the website of Germany’s Die Welt newspaper, Reuters reports. This came at the request of prosecutors, according to Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communications regulator. It was not immediately clear why prosecutors asked for the restriction.
A Scottish council has announced plans to bring up to 200 empty homes back into use to house refugees fleeing Ukraine. North Lanarkshire Council said it would use £5m of Scottish government funding to reinstate the homes in high rise towers in Coatbridge and Wishaw “to a high standard”, according to a report from PA Media.
