Every week we wrap up the must-reads from our coverage of the Ukraine war, from news and features to analysis, visual guides and opinion.
Heavy casualties as Ukraine’s counteroffensive inches forward
Almost three weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive Kyiv, has confirmed the capture of only eight villages and the seizure of 113 sq km (44 sq miles) of territory, with the clearest progress about 120km (75 miles) north of the devastated and occupied coastal city of Mariupol. Those small gains have come at a heavy cost, as Daniel Boffey reported from the region.
“The situation is not good,” one injured commander told him. “We don’t have enough weapons and armoured vehicles.” Another injured soldier, asked whether he had lost many friends, said: “I would rather not say. But a lot.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy admitted the counteroffensive was proceeding “slower than desired” but insisted he would not needlessly risk soldiers’ lives to meet international expectations. His remarks came as his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, said there had been a lull in fighting “due to the fact that the enemy is suffering serious losses, both in personnel and equipment”.
But analysts noted that pauses in counteroffensives were not uncommon as commanders took stock and that Ukrainian forces were still yet to commit all their reserves to battle. Ukraine’s military command created 12 brigades for the counteroffensive, but it is believed that only three have so far been moved to the front.
Though attackers are generally expected to suffer more, both sides are taking heavy losses, according to British intelligence. The level of losses among Russian troops was said by British officials to be at its highest level since the peak of March’s battle for Bakhmut, with Ukraine claiming to have killed or injured 4,600 soldiers, as Daniel Boffey reported separately.
‘21st-century warfare’: on the frontline with Ukraine’s drone operators
Much has been made of Ukraine’s innovativeness on the battlefield and nowhere has this been more apparent that in its use of drones, as Dan Sabbagh reported from near the frontlines in Zaporizhzhia.
There, one squad shows him a modified fast-flying $400 Ukrainian-made Aquila, piloted with a controller and goggles. Some of the extra parts, such as the bomb release, are made using a 3D printer. The soldiers say it can fly about 3km (1.9 miles) into Russian-held territory and believe it could be a cost-effective alternative to often inaccurate artillery fire.
And the technology also means that even injured soldiers can still take part in the war effort, as one commander showed, using his mobile phone at a hospital in Dnipro. “I’m still working, still correcting artillery fire,” he says. “This is not just so I can watch.”
Lack of funds, however, means soldiers are often reduced to buying equipment themselves. “We pay up to 70% of our salaries to buy drones,” one soldier says. Drone operators are also aware they are “target number one, high priority for the Russians”.
Nevertheless, morale is high. “I have no doubt we will defeat them,” said another soldier, “but I don’t know if I can survive until that time.”
Kakhovka dam photo adds to suspicions
A photograph that emerged of a car apparently laden with explosives parked at the top of Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam shortly before it gave way is said to offer further evidence Russia was behind the incident.
The image, taken by a Ukrainian drone and given to the Associated Press, was taken on 28 May and appears to show a white car with its roof cut open, revealing large barrels inside, one of which appears to have a landmine attached to its lid. A cable runs from the barrel towards the side of the river held by Russian forces, Daniel Boffey has reported from Kyiv.
A Ukrainian special forces communications official told AP he believed the car was there to stop any Ukrainian advance on the dam and to amplify a planned explosion originating in the machine room.
Both Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of causing the 6 June dam collapse, which has flooded land downstream and left at least 52 people dead.
Ukrainian farmers take de-mining into their own hands
The Russians may be long gone from some freed communities, but the legacy of their occupation remains.
They have left farm land sown with mines, meaning crops cannot be planted and animals cannot be put out to pasture. The scale of the problem – experts say the area potentially mined is up to 25m hectares, the size of the UK – mean mine clearance teams are stretched thin.
And so in Kharkiv farmers are taking matters into their own hands, as Julian Borger and Artem Mazhulin reported, in one instance building their own mine-clearing robot by welding bits of an abandoned Russian tank and armoured car on to an old tractor. They then wired it up to a battery-powered remote controller to create something that “looks like it belongs in a Mad Max film”.
“Circumstances make us innovators,” its farmer creator, Oleksandr Kryvtsun, said.
Meanwhile, the exiled mayor of Mariupol, which was flattened by a Russian onslaught last year, is set to reveal ambitious plans for its reconstruction at a two-day conference in Lviv later this month, Daniel Boffey writes in an exclusive report.
Vadym Boichenko has set up an initiative called Mariupol Reborn which will require billions of dollars to action. But given the Russian occupation, is the whole project wishful thinking?
“The Ukrainian armed forces are already close to the city of Volnovakha,” Boichenko says. “Mariupol is 60km away. This is an important transport hub. In world war two, the Soviets also liberated Mariupol through Volnovakha. We believe in the armed forces of Ukraine. And we are confident that we will return to Mariupol this year.”
Billions pledged for Ukraine’s reconstruction
At a conference in London designed to showcase the west’s longterm commitment to Ukraine, the EU pledged a further €50bn (£43bn) in loans and grants to support its reconstruction, with the UK and the US promising $3bn and $1.3bn respectively in financial support.
The money is far from enough – the cost of reconstruction and recovery has been put at $411bn (£323bn) after a year of war – but as Lisa O’Carroll reports, it will go a long way to meet Ukraine’s request for up to $40bn for the first part of a programme being dubbed a “Green Marshall plan”.
Ukraine, and others, have argued that Russia should pay for the country’s reconstruction, but as Ukraine’s’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, put it in an op-ed for the Guardian, there is “not a snowball’s chance in hell that Putin’s Russia will pay”. Therefore, he says, the west should use the more than $300bn in foreign exchange reserves held by Russia that were frozen in the west after the invasion, putting into effect “the principle of just retribution”.
Despite the fanfare around the pledges, there were some alarm bells, as reported by Patrick Wintour.
Mustafa Nayyem, the head of the Ukraine State Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development, warned that Ukraine would struggle to absorb the expected billions of dollars in aid for its recovery, not due to corruption but rather a simple lack of capacity to process and invest such huge sums.
“Historically the largest amount of money we have been capable of working with was $6bn a year in 2014,” he said.
Meanwhile, an authoritative report by the German Marshall Fund warned that western powers could protect Ukraine’s postwar recovery only if they agree on a unified strategy to make aid conditional on clear progress on combating judicial corruption, Patrick reported in a separate piece.
War makes life that much harder for homeless
As missiles and drones descend on Kyiv, homeless couple Vadym and Alona have nowhere to shelter but under the branches of a horse chestnut tree in the park. During a particularly heavy barrage recently, they cradled each other for comfort as streaks of glowing tracer fire chased missiles through the sky above them. “That was the most afraid we’ve been,” says Vadym.
With 17 nights of attacks in May alone, the couple say homeless people have nowhere to go. “We’re not usually allowed into the public shelters because there are people in there with kids, even the metro stations,” says Alona.
It is just one of a myriad ways life has become increasingly difficult for Ukraine’s homeless people since Russia’s invasion last year, wrote Liz Cookman in Kyiv. The widespread destruction of homes and the occupation of Ukrainian lands has led to a sharp rise in rough sleepers. The increased demand is stretching the limited resources available to what are already some of society’s most vulnerable people.
“There are so many more people on the streets now that volunteers offering food and other help can’t keep up with demand,” says Alona. “We are worried things will get worse, and are prepared that it probably will.”
