Ukraine’s army said it launched airstrikes on Zmiinyi Island, also known as Snake Island, causing “significant losses” to Russian forces. The military’s southern operational command said it had undertaken “aimed strikes with the use of various forces” and the military operation was continuing.
The military situation for Ukraine’s defenders in the eastern Donbas is “extremely difficult”, officials have said. There are 568 civilians thought to be holed up in Sievierodonetsk’s Azot chemical plant, as Russian attacks intensify in an effort to capture Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk. Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, said Lysychansk was getting shelled “en masse”.
Russian forces have captured several settlements near Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk. The head of the Sievierodonetsk district military administration, Roman Vlasenko, said the frontline village of Toshkivka had not been under Ukrainian control since Monday. Russian forces also reportedly captured Pidlisne and Mala Dolyna, located south-west of Sievierodonetsk, and saw success near the Hirske settlement in Luhansk.
A Russian missile strike has left at least one person dead in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv, according to its mayor, Oleksandr Senkevych. The attack caused several fires and damaged a number of buildings including a school, Senkevych said on national television.
Casualties to the forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR), one of Russias proxies in eastern Ukraine, may have amounted to about 55% of the original strength, British intelligence has claimed.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said its staff has seen evidence of a “shocking level” of “indiscriminate violence” being inflicted on civilians in Ukraine. The medical charity, which set up a hospital train in Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, said it had seen an “outrageous” lack of effort to spare and protect civilians caught up in hostilities.
One of the leaders of the authorities imposed in occupied Ukraine has described the border between Russia and Ukraine as “worse than the Berlin Wall for the Germans”. “Our reunification with Russia is inevitable, there should be no borders between us” Vladimir Rogov is quoted as saying.
Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is set to mark the day when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941. The date is significant in Russia and remembered as the ‘Day of Remembrance and Sorrow’. Putin will reportedly lay flowers to honour the dead.
Moscow’s response to Lithuania’s ban on the transit of goods sanctioned by the EU to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad will not be exclusively diplomatic but practical in nature, foreign ministry press secretary Maria Zakharova has said.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has warned the west to stop talking about triggering Nato’s “article 5” mutual defence clause in the standoff between Lithuania and Russia.
Finland’s armed forces chief, Gen Timo Kivinen, said his country was prepared for a Russian attack and would put up stiff resistance in the event that one should occur.
Europe needs to prepare immediately for Russia to turn off all gas exports to the region this winter, according to the head of the International Energy Agency, who has called on governments to work on reducing demand and keeping nuclear power plants open.
A Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier who was accompanying him were “coldly executed” when they were killed in the first weeks of Russia’s invasion, according to a recently published investigation from Reporters Without Borders. The pair were reportedly searching Russian-occupied woodlands for the photographer’s missing image-taking drone, the agency said citing its findings from an investigation into their deaths.
Granting Ukraine candidate status to join the EU would be a historic decision signalling to Russia it can no longer claim a sphere of influence over its eastern neighbour, Kyiv’s ambassador to Brussels has said. Vsevolod Chentsov, the head of Ukraine’s mission to the EU, said Russia’s war had united Kyiv with the bloc, while ending what he called a “mistake” about whether his country could belong to the union.
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Members of the Russian delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have been denied British visas to attend the next session, according to Vladimir Dzhabarov, the first deputy head of Russian upper house’s international affairs committee. A spokesperson for the Home Office said: “There are currently no restrictions or limitations for Russian nationals to work in the UK on long-term work visas.” The spokesperson said the UK was prioritising applications from Ukrainians, and that applications for study, work and family visas were taking longer to process.
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, visited Ukraine on Tuesday to discuss Russia’s war crimes, a justice department official said. Garland met with Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, and announced a war crimes accountability team to identify and prosecute perpetrators. “There is no hiding place for war criminals,” Garland said.
The Kremlin said Monday that two captured US volunteers are not covered by the Geneva conventions and could face the death penalty. Russian media claimed that two of three US volunteers missing in Ukraine had been captured and were being held by pro-Russian separatist forces. The Kremlin has denied it knows their locations.
German self-propelled howitzers have arrived in Ukraine in the first delivery of heavy weapons promised by Berlin. “We have replenishment!” Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, announced. “The German Panzerhaubitze 2000 with trained Ukrainian crews joined the Ukrainian artillery family.”
Turkey should be cautious about delivering more weapons to Ukraine, the head of Turkey’s weapons production agency said. The remarks by Ismail Demir to the Wall Street Journal show how Ankara is increasingly playing both sides of the war. Turkish-made drones have played a critical role in Kyiv’s defence.
Turkey’s military delegation will travel to Russia this week to discuss a possible safe sea corridor in the Black Sea to export Ukrainian grain, according to Turkish presidency sources. A meeting between Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and the United Nations would be held in Istanbul in the coming weeks, possibly with the participation of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, the sources said.
