At least two people were killed and 19 injured in a Russian drone attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy. A five-year-old boy was among the injured. An official building and two residential buildings were damaged in an attack carried out with four drones, the regional administration said on Telegram.
Ukraine said on Monday its troops had regained more ground along eastern and southern fronts in what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described as progress in a “difficult” week for Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russian forces.
The US ambassador to Russia met with jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Moscow. Lynne Tracy met with Gershkovich on Monday after being granted access, her second visit since his detention in March. She has accused Russia of conducting “hostage diplomacy.” On Thursday, Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, told reporters that the country has tried to get consular access to Gershkovich “virtually every day.”
Zelensky asked the Georgian ambassador to Kyiv to return home to try to “save” jailed ex-leader Mikheil Saakashvili after footage showed him looking emaciated. Saakashvili, a Ukrainian citizen, was jailed in 2021 after returning from exile on abuse of power charges that rights groups denounce as politically motivated. Zelensky wants Saakashvili to be transferred to a clinic in Ukraine or the West.
Zelenskiy and German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, called on Monday for the extension of the Black Sea Grain deal, which allows the safe export of grain and fertilisers from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports, an official said. After a call between the two leaders, Zelenskiy said he and Scholz focused on defence cooperation and on the forthcoming Nato summit in Lithuania, where Ukraine wants to secure an indication of future membership in the Alliance.
Russia has brought 700,000 children from the conflict zones in Ukraine into Russian territory, Grigory Karasin, head of the international committee in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, said late on Sunday, writing on his Telegram channel that the children had “found refuge” in Russia.
Ukraine says many children have been illegally deported and the United States says thousands of children have been forcibly removed from their homes.An international office to investigate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine opened on Monday in The Hague, in the first step towards a possible tribunal for Moscow’s leadership. It will investigate and gather evidence in a move seen as an interim step before the creation of a special tribunal that could bring Kremlin officials to justice for starting the Ukraine war.
There is no need for a further mobilisation in Russia to replace Wagner fighters who have left the battlefield in Ukraine after a short-lived mutiny, Russian state media said on Monday, quoting Andrey Kartapolov, head of the state duma’s defence committee.
The Russian-imposed leader in occupied Kherson, Andrey Alekseyenko, has stated that the damage to the Chongar Bridge linking Kherson and Crimea has been repaired. It was struck by Ukrainian forces in June.
Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass reports that Russian security forces have claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate the Russian-imposed head of Crimea. It claims Sergei Aksyonov was to be targeted with a car bomb. The Russian Federation illegally seized Crimea in 2014.
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