Ukrainian officials said at least 43 people, including 12 children, were wounded in a Russian missile strike on Tuesday which an officer said targeted a military funeral in the north-eastern Kharkiv region. The strike hit a parking lot outside a residential building in the town of around 28,000 people.
The Ukraine government accused Russia on Tuesday of planning a “provocation” at the Moscow-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, while Russia claimed that Kyiv was planning to “attack” the facility. Fears over the safety risks for the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, have been constant throughout Russia’s invasion, but increased in early June after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, the source of cooling water for its reactors. Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that “objects resembling explosives” had been placed on the roof of several power units “perhaps to simulate an attack”. He added: “The world sees – can’t but see – that the only source of danger to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is Russia and no one else.”
Russia sees no basis for renewing the Black Sea grain deal, the Russian foreign ministry said on Tuesday, less than two weeks before the expiration of the agreement, which has allowed grain to be shipped out of Black Sea ports despite the war in Ukraine. The ministry said in a statement Russia was doing everything so that all ships covered by the deal could leave the Black Sea before it expires on 17 July, Reuters reported.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Tuesday that Ukraine launched a drone attack on the Russian capital and its region, temporarily disrupting flight operations at the Vnukovo airport. “At this moment, the attacks have been repelled by air defence forces,” Sobyanin said on Telegram. “All detected drones have been eliminated”. There were no casualties or injured reported.
Vladimir Putin has said that Russia remains “united as never before” in the wake of the failed mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group and claimed the country continued to flourish in the face of heavy western sanctions over his invasion of Ukraine. In an address from the Kremlin to a virtual gathering of leaders from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a group founded by Russia and China to counter western influence, the Russian president attempted to rebuff any suggestion that he had been weakened by last week’s chaotic but short-lived rebellion led by Yevgeny Prigozhin.
A funeral service has taken place in Kyiv for the celebrated writer Victoria Amelina. A Ukrainian novelist, poet and public intellectual, she died from injuries sustained when a Russian missile attack struck a pizza restaurant in the eastern town of Kramatorsk, killing 12 people in total, including children.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that 185,000 new recruits had joined the Russian army as professional contract soldiers since the start of the year. In a video posted on Telegram, Medvedev, who was earlier this year appointed to a role overseeing Russia’s domestic military production, said that almost 10,000 new recruits had joined up in the last week, after a mutiny by the Wagner group mercenary organisation was quelled and its fighters were given the option of signing on as regular soldiers.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has said it was lending €25m (£21.4m) to the Ukrainian city of Dnipro to help it cope with an influx of people fleeing fighting. It said the loan would help ensure the continuous provision of vital municipal services in the south-eastern city after the arrival of people forced to flee other locations because of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Reuters reported.
US president, Joe Biden, on Tuesday welcomed Nato’s decision to extend secretary general Jens Stoltenberg’s term by a further year. “With his steady leadership, experience, and judgment, secretary general Stoltenberg has brought our alliance through the most significant challenges in European security since the second world war,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House.
The Kremlin has said there were “certain contacts” with the United States over the case of detained Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, but that it did not want to make them public. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov made the comments in a regular briefing.
Oleksiy Danilov has described recent days of battle as “fruitful” for Ukraine in terms of destroying the resources of the Russian forces. In a post to social media, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council described Ukraine as acting “calmly” and “wisely’ in its counteroffensive.
Switzerland plans to take part in a Europe-wide air defence project initiated in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The country is the second neutral nation after Austria to signal its intention to join the European Sky Shield Initiative launched by Germany last year, Reuters reported.
Italy has frozen Russian oligarchs’ assets valued at about €2bn ($2.5bn) after the invasion of Ukraine last year, the country’s central bank said on Tuesday. Italy seized assets – including bank accounts, luxury villas, yachts and cars – as part of the European Union’s sanctions against the Kremlin and its backers, Reuters reported.
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