A Russian attack on a humanitarian aid distribution point in south-eastern Ukraine killed seven people, emergency services said on Monday, while two people were killed by Russian shelling in the east. Yuriy Malashko, governor of Zaporizhzhia region, said a guided aviation bomb was used in Sunday’s attack on a school building being used to distribute aid in the small town of Orikhiv.
Turkey agreed on Monday to allow Sweden to join Nato, setting the stage for the allies to showcase their unity at a summit focused on supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s block on Sweden’s membership bid had cast a cloud over preparations for Tuesday’s meeting, but the countries ironed out their differences in eleventh-hour talks in Vilnius.
Nato members are not expected to set clear preconditions for Ukraine’s eventual membership to the military alliance in the face of caution from the US and Germany while the war with Russia continues. Ukraine wants clarity on when and how it can join the alliance after the war with Russia ends, believing that western military protection is the only way it can remain unthreatened by its neighbour. However, it looks instead likely to be offered closer integration with Nato and a stronger political declaration in favour of its membership in principle.
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has said he wants to work with allies to discuss a pathway for Ukraine to join Nato, but the exact mechanism was up for discussion, his spokesperson said on Monday, after talks with the US president, Joe Biden.
Russian president Vladimir Putin met with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner leader, just days after a short-lived rebellion by the mercenary chief and his private army, according to the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. A three-hour meeting took place on 29 June, which also involved commanders from the military company Prigozhin founded, Peskov said. Prigozhin has had a longstanding conflict with Russia’s top military brass which on 24 June culminated in an armed mutiny in which he led his fighters into Russia.
Ukrainian troops pressed on with their campaign to recapture Russian-held areas in the south-east on Sunday as president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that his country’s forces had “taken the initiative” after an earlier slowdown. Russian accounts said heavy fighting gripped areas outside the eastern city of Bakhmut, captured by Russian mercenary Wagner forces in May after months of battles. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said one of his units was deployed in the area.
Russia will continue to cooperate with Beijing and can count on China’s “friendly shoulder”, the speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament said on Monday after meeting Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing. “We can count on a firm and reliable friendly shoulder in China,” Valentina Matvienko said.
The Australian government will send a surveillance aircraft to Germany to help monitor the flow of military and humanitarian supplies into Ukraine. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announced the deployment after talks with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin on Monday, a day before attending a Nato summit in Lithuania where the war in Ukraine will dominate discussions.
Ukrainian forces have registered “a definite advance” on the southern flank of the eastern city of Bakhmut, according to Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar.
A joint investigation by the Russian investigative journalism outfits Meduza and Mediazona estimates that about 47,000 Russian soldiers and contract fighters have died since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. The figures were calculated based on data from the beginning of the war until 27 May 2023. Russia has not released official figures for those killed in action since September 2022, when it said 5,937 soldiers had died. The numbers were widely seen as implausibly low. Ukraine’s military has claimed to have killed over 230,000 enemy combatants.
Russia is “almost certainly struggling with a crisis of combat medical provision, after suffering an average of about 400 casualties a day for 17 months,” the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update.
A substantial announcement on Germany delivering military hardware to Ukraine is expected over the course of this week’s Nato summit, a senior government official said in Berlin on Monday.
English (US)