Evening summary
The time in Kyiv is just coming up to 9pm. Here is a roundup of the day’s headlines:
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Monday it was too soon to say exactly where Ukraine’s counteroffensive was going, but said Washington was confident that Kyiv would continue to have success in trying to take back its land seized by Russia. Speaking at a press conference in Washington, Blinken said the US was determined to maximise its support for Ukraine so that it could succeed on the battlefield.
One man was killed and another was wounded in a Russian attack on the small town of Orikhiv, in the Zaporizhzhia region of south-east Ukraine, the regional governor, Yuri Malashko, said on Monday. Malashko said three bombs damaged private houses and communications in the small town, about 5 miles (8km) from frontlines. He said the man who was killed was 48 and the one who was wounded was 32, Reuters reported.
Footage released by Ukraine shows marines in a village it claims to have recaptured in its counteroffensive against Russian forces. Soldiers held up the Ukrainian flag in Storozheve, in a video posted online. The defence minister thanked the 35th Separate Brigade of Marines for regaining control of the village.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Monday he was concerned that Russia would on 17 July quit a deal allowing the safe wartime export of grain and fertilisers from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Moscow has been threatening to walk away from the deal, known as the Black Sea grain initiative, brokered by the UN and Turkey in July last year, if obstacles to its own grain and fertiliser shipments are not removed.
The Group of Seven (G7) rich nations are working on a scheme to combat the suspected theft of Ukraine’s grain by using chemical identification of grain origin, Britain’s food and farming minister, Mark Spencer, said on Monday. Spencer told an International Grains Council (IGC) conference in London that Britain was leading on the scheme and that G7 countries were also working closely with Ukraine, the world’s fourth largest grains exporter.
Ukraine has accused Russian forces of destroying another dam with the aim of slowing a counteroffensive launched by Kyiv. As rescue and relief efforts entered their seventh day for victims of the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric station in Kherson region, the Russian military was accused of blowing up a much smaller dam along the Mokri Yaly River, which has become the most successful axis so far for Ukraine’s advances in western Donetsk.
The largest Nato military jet exercise since the foundation of the alliance was taking place today in the skies over Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. About 10,000 soldiers from 25 countries were involved, making use of 250 military jets – 70 from Germany – to prepare for an attack on one of Nato’s members. Although the exercise was planned long before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it is nevertheless being viewed as a signal towards the Kremlin.
Vladimir Putin marked Russia’s national day on Monday by appealing to Russians’ patriotic pride at what he said was a “difficult time” for the country. However, speaking at a lavish award-giving ceremony in the Kremlin, Putin made no direct comment on the latest developments in Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces have launched a long-awaited counteroffensive and have retaken several villages in the eastern Donetsk region over the past few days.
Ukraine’s top military command said on Monday that its forces were engaged in heavy battles in frontline hotspots. Twenty-five battles had taken place over the past day near the eastern town of Bakhmut and farther south near Avdiivka and Maryinka, all in the Donetsk region, and also near Bilohorivka in the Luhansk region, Ukraine’s armed forces general staff said.
US thinktank the Institute for the Study of War said Ukrainian forces had made “visually verified advances” in the Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions and that Russian sources “confirmed but sought to downplay” those advances.
The water level at the ponds used to cool the reactors at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant remain stable and sufficient despite the falling water level of the Kakhovka reservoir nearby, Ukraine’s environment minister said on Monday.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, reported that Avdiivka was struck twice by rockets on Monday morning.
A 50-year-old woman was injured as a result of shelling by the Russian military in the village of Novoselivka, in Zaporizhzhia region.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday it had signed a contract with the Akhmat group of Chechen special forces, a day after the mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin refused to do so. The signing followed an order that all “volunteer units” should sign contracts by 1 July bringing them under the control of the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, as Moscow tries to assert its control over private armies fighting on its behalf in Ukraine. Prigozhin, who has waged a running feud with the defence ministry and accused it of failing to provide adequate ammunition supplies to his Wagner mercenaries in Ukraine, said on Sunday he would refuse to sign any such contract.
The former Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev celebrated Russia Day by posting a an edited image to Telegram that showed Kyiv’s central Maidan square with the Russian flag flying on it and the message “Independence Square. Coming soon – Russia Square”.
Work has started in an investigation by the international criminal court over the breach of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine and the vast flood it triggered, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said. Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reported that the flood water level in Kherson had dropped by 64cm.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed from the Ukraine live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
Updated
Lawyers for Ukraine at the top UN court have rejected Russia’s account of the downing of a Malaysian airliner as a “rambling conspiracy theory”, in a case alleging Moscow backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Kyiv says Moscow violated a UN anti-terrorism treaty by equipping and funding pro-Russia forces, including militias who shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, killing all 298 passengers and crew, in July 2014, Reuters reports.
Last November, a Dutch court convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist in absentia for their role in the downing of the airliner and sentenced them to life in prison. It found that Russia had “overall control” over the separatist forces.
Russia at the time rejected the decision by the Dutch court. Last week, in hearings before the international court of justice, Russia said Ukraine’s MH17 case was based on “nonsense” and offered a host of alternative explanations for what happened.
On Monday, Ukraine’s lawyers hit back. One of them, Marney Cheek, told the court it had been “subjected to a rambling conspiracy theory” about the shooting down of MH17 that would be “better relegated to the darkest corners of the internet”.
Kyiv has accused Russia of being a terrorist state and said it had also tried to erase the culture of ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Kyiv has asked the court to find Moscow guilty of breaching its treaty obligations and to order it to pay reparations.
Updated
