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At least six people killed in Slovyansk attack, say officials
At least six people have died in the attack on Slovyansk, local officials have said.
Donetsk regional administration spokesperson Tetiana Ihnatchenko told Ukraine’s public news network that 15 people had also been wounded in the attack.
The city’s mayor, Vadym Lyakh, said on messaging app Telegram that the attack was the worst shelling to hit the city recently and caused nearly 15 fires.
Kramatorsk, another city in the Donetsk region that is not occupied by Russian forces, is understood to have also experienced shelling.
More details about the assault on Ukraine’s eastern city of Slovyansk earlier today …
A child was among the six people who died during shelling from multiple rocket launchers, the area’s mayor has said.
“Provisional toll from today’s shelling: six dead, 15 injured. Among the dead, there is a child,” Vadim Lyakh said on Facebook.
A spokesperson for the Donetsk region earlier reported the same toll to Ukrainian media, AFP reports.
Lyakh had described the attack on Slovyansk as “the heaviest for a long time”, saying there were 15 fires and “many dead and wounded”.
Meanwhile, rocket strikes hit the city of Kramatorsk, also in Donetsk, for the second day in a row, mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko said.
The strikes, which hit a residential area and an unoccupied hotel, caused no casualties, he said.
Turkish customs authorities have detained a Russian cargo ship carrying grain allegedly stolen from Ukraine, the Ukrainian ambassador to the country has said.
“We have full co-operation. The ship is currently standing at the entrance to the port, it has been detained by the customs authorities of Turkey,” ambassador Vasyl Bodnar said on Ukrainian national television.
Bodnar said that the ship’s fate would be decided by a meeting of investigators on Monday.
It comes after Ukraine called for the ship, which had been lying off the Turkish coast en route from the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk to Karasu, to be seized.
Russia has denied allegations that it has stolen grain from the area of Ukraine under its control.
At least six people killed in Slovyansk attack, say officials
At least six people have died in the attack on Slovyansk, local officials have said.
Donetsk regional administration spokesperson Tetiana Ihnatchenko told Ukraine’s public news network that 15 people had also been wounded in the attack.
The city’s mayor, Vadym Lyakh, said on messaging app Telegram that the attack was the worst shelling to hit the city recently and caused nearly 15 fires.
Kramatorsk, another city in the Donetsk region that is not occupied by Russian forces, is understood to have also experienced shelling.
‘Many killed’ in attack on eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk
The eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk was hit by powerful shelling from multiple rocket launchers on Sunday, the city’s mayor Vadim Lyakh said.
“There are 15 fires. Many killed and wounded,” Lyakh wrote on Telegram, Reuters reports.
He added that it was the most powerful recent shelling of the city.
We’ll be bring you more on this event as it unfolds.
Summary
- Russia claims it has taken full control of Lysychansk, the eastern Ukraine city that had become Ukraine’s last major stronghold in the Luhansk region. The defence ministry reportedly made the announcement on Sunday, after initially stating the area had been encircled.
- Ukraine’s defence ministry has denied the claims, saying that the city was not under “full control” of Russia. But spokesperson Yuriy Sak added that if the entire Donbas region were to fall, it would not be “game over” for Ukraine.
- It comes after an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the loss of Ukraine’s last large bastion in Luhansk was “indeed a threat”. Oleksiy Arestovych added: “I do not rule out any one of a number of outcomes here. Things will become much more clear within a day or two.”
- Former British army chief Lord Dannatt said “meaningful negotiations” could arise out of Russia potentially taking full control of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. His comments came before the Russian defence ministry reportedly claimed to have taken full control of Lysychansk, the last major Ukrainian stronghold in the region.
- At least three people were killed and dozens of residential buildings damaged in the Russian city of Belgorod on Sunday, the region’s governor said, after earlier reports of several blasts in the city near the Ukrainian border. Vyacheslav Gladkov said at least 11 apartment buildings and 39 private residential houses were damaged, including five houses destroyed. Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports and there was no immediate reaction from Ukraine. Gladkov said earlier on the Telegram messaging app: “Reasons for the incident are being investigated. Presumably, the air defence system worked.”
Photos have emerged showing the aftermath of the blasts in the Russian city of Belgorod, close to the Ukraine border.
The region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said earlier that at least three people had been killed in the alleged Ukrainian missile attack, while dozens of residential buildings were damaged.
At least 11 apartment buildings and 39 private houses were affected, including five that were destroyed, Gladkov said on messaging app Telegram.
Ukraine is yet to comment on the claims.
A Ukrainian defence ministry spokesperson has denied Moscow’s claims that the southern city of Lysychansk is under “full control” of Russian forces.
Speaking to the BBC, Yuriy Sak admitted, however, that the situation in the area had been “very intense for quite a while now”, with Russian forces attacking “non-stop”.
Speaking to Sky News earlier, former British army chief Lord Dannatt said “meaningful negotiations” could arise out of Russia potentially taking full control of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.
His comments came before the Russian defence ministry reportedly claimed to have taken full control of Lysychansk, the last major Ukrainian stronghold in the region.
Following early defeats in its invasion, Russian troops have been focused on driving Ukrainian forces out of the regions in recent weeks.
“They’re relying on their huge superiority in artillery,” said Lord Dannatt. “Then once they’ve almost reduced everything to rubble, then sending their troops in to take possession of it.
“We’re going to see that slow grind continue. They’ve very nearly achieved taking Luhansk province and then they will turn their sights to trying to get the control of Donetsk.
“I think what we’ve seen over the last few weeks shows that over the next few days and weeks they will probably achieve that.”
He added that if Russia takes both provinces, it will have achieved some of what it wanted to achieve in its war on Ukraine but its troops will be exhausted
“The Ukrainians will also be exhausted. The Russians won’t have won, the Ukrainians won’t have lost,” he added.
“At that point I believe the war will effectively go into a deep freeze and that’s where meaningful negotiations are going to have to start.”
Russia claims it has taken full control of Lysychansk
Russian and separatist forces in eastern Ukraine have reportedly taken full control of the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk.
Russian state news agency Tass reported the news, quoting the defence ministry, on Sunday.
It comes after Russia earlier said it had encircled Ukraine’s last major stronghold in the Luhansk region.
The defence ministry said its troops had captured the villages surrounding Lysychansk, encircling the area, and were fighting Ukrainian troops inside the town, Reuters reported.
“Russian troops and units of the Luhansk People’s Republic are fighting inside Lysychansk, completely defeating the encircled enemy,” the ministry said in a statement.
Calls to the Ukrainian general staff and defence ministry went unanswered. The ministry did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
The Russian defence ministry added that it had struck military infrastructure in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, as well as a base used by foreign fighters on the outskirts of Mykolaiv in the country’s south.
Russia has focused on driving Ukrainian forces out of Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv since Russia’s first military intervention in Ukraine in 2014.
In Borodyanka, a town close to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, that was bombarded and then occupied by Russian forces, psychologists face a battle to help locals cope with PTSD.
Those who lived through the Russian occupation are some of the worst affected, on what leading Ukrainian psychologists see as a spectrum of trauma experienced by the whole country, including those who have left.
Borodyanka’s centre of psychology was set up in 1994 to deal with the aftermath of Chernobyl. Later, it treated Ukrainian veterans from the war in eastern Ukraine.
After Russian troops rolled in from the Belarusian border, 200 miles north, the centre was destroyed by a Russian bomb in the first few days of the war. A volunteer was inside at the time.
The psychologists say every resident who stayed in the town is suffering from stress, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“You can visually tell the difference between a person on the street who wasn’t here and a person who stayed [during the occupation],” said Ludmilla Boiko, a psychologist from the centre.
You can read the full report from my colleague Isobel Koshiw, on the ground in Borodyanka, here:
Ukrainian forces hit a military base with more than 30 strikes in the Russian-occupied southern Ukraine city of Melitopol, its exiled mayor said on Sunday morning.
In a Telegram video, Ivan Fedorov said the base had been taken out of action.
Russian-installed authorities in the city, which was among the first to fall to Russians during the invasion, said several houses near the airfield were damaged.
“There were no casualties,” Evgeny Balitsky, head of the Russia-installed council in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, wrote on Telegram.
Russian forces are strengthening their position in a fight to capture the last stronghold of resistance in Ukraine’s Luhansk province, according to the region’s governor.
Ukrainian fighters have been trying to defend the city of Lysychansk for weeks in a bid to prevent it falling to Russia, as neighbouring Sievierodonetsk did last week, AP reports.
“The occupiers threw all their forces on Lysychansk. They attacked the city with incomprehensibly cruel tactics,” Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said on the Telegram messaging app.
“They suffer significant losses, but stubbornly advance. They are gaining a foothold in the city.”
A river separates Lysychansk from Sievierodonetsk. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said during an online interview late Saturday that Russian forces had managed for the first time to cross the river from the north, creating a “threatening” situation.
Arestovych said they had not reached the centre of the city but that the course of the fighting indicated the battle for Lysychansk would be decided by Monday.
If Lysychansk falls, the entire Luhansk region could come under Russian control. You can read more about the Russian assault on the city here:
A US-backed campaign is giving Russians access to anti-censor software to dodge Moscow’s crackdown on dissent against its invasion of Ukraine, involved groups told Agence France-Presse.
Russia has intensified its restrictions on independent media since its invasion in February, with journalists under threat of prosecution for criticising the invasion or for even referring to it as a war.
The US government-backed Open Technology Fund (OTF) is paying out money to a handful of American firms providing virtual private networks (VPNs) free of charge to millions of Russians, who can then use them to visit websites blocked by censors.
The use of VPN software to create what is effectively a private tunnel on the internet for data, typically encrypted, to flow safeguarded from snooping has boomed in Russia since the invasion
A spokesman for Lantern, one of the companies involved, said: “Our tool is primarily used by people trying to access independent media, so that funding by the OTF has been absolutely critical.”
Tech firms Psiphon and nthLink have also been providing anti-censorship applications to people in Russia, with OTF estimating that 4 million users in Russia have received VPNs from the firms.
You can read more about the use of VPNs to circumvent bans to some websites here:
Zelenskiy adviser concedes Lysychansk could fall
An adviser to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has conceded Lysychansk could fall, as fighting intensified in the country’s last big bastion in the strategic eastern province of Luhansk.
Oleksiy Arestovych said Russian forces had crossed the Siverskiy Donets River and were approaching the key city from the north, Reuters reported.
“This is indeed a threat. We shall see,” he said. “I do not rule out any one of a number of outcomes here. Things will become much more clear within a day or two.”
Ukrainian troops on the eastern front lines describe intense artillery barrages on residential areas, while Kyiv says Moscow has intensified missile attacks on cities far from the main eastern battlefields.
Summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine. It is approaching 10am in Kyiv. Here’s a summary of the latest developments.
- At least three people were killed and dozens of residential buildings damaged in the Russian city of Belgorod on Sunday, the region’s governor said, after earlier reports of several blasts in the city near the Ukrainian border. Vyacheslav Gladkov said at least 11 apartment buildings and 39 private residential houses were damaged, including five houses destroyed. Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports and there was no immediate reaction from Ukraine. Gladkov said earlier on the Telegram messaging app: “Reasons for the incident are being investigated. Presumably, the air defence system worked.”
- The Ukrainian army has rejected claims that Russian-backed separatists and Russian forces have surrounded the key eastern city of Lysychansk. A Ukrainian national guard spokesman, Ruslan Muzytchuk, said fighting was raging around the city but it remained under Ukrainian control. Russian media showed videos of Luhansk province militia parading in Lysychansk streets waving flags and cheering,
- British intelligence says Russian forces are continuing to achieve “minor advances” in Lysychansk amid the continuing air and artillery strikes. Ukrainian forces probably continue to block Russian forces in the city’s south-eastern outskirts, according to the latest UK Ministry of Defence report.
- Russia’s defence ministry has said its forces destroyed five Ukrainian army command posts in Donbas and in the Mykolaiv region, according to Russian state media. Three weapons storage sites were also destroyed in the Zaporizhzhia region in south-east Ukraine, the ministry was quoted as saying. The claims have not been independently verified.
- The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has claimed Ukraine attempted to strike military facilities on Belarusian territory. Reuters, citing the state-run Belta news agency, reported that Lukashenko said – without providing evidence – that Ukrainian armed forces tried to strike facilities in Belarus three days ago but the missiles were intercepted. He claimed Ukraine was attempting to provoke Belarus but his country did not plan to intervene in the conflict.
- Rescue workers have recovered as many as 29 body fragments amid the rubble of deadly Russian missile strikes on a shopping centre in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, Ukraine’s state emergency service said. At least 19 people were killed on Monday after two Russian X-22 cruise missiles hit a crowded shopping centre in Kremenchuk, officials said.
- The British government has condemned the exploitation of prisoners of war as two more British men held by Russian proxies in east Ukraine and charged with “mercenary activities” could face the death penalty. Andrew Hill of Plymouth and Dylan Healy of Huntingdon were reported to have been charged with “forcible seizure of power” and undergoing “terrorist” training, according to a state news agency in Russian-controlled Donetsk.
- A Briton and a Moroccan man sentenced to death by pro-Russia officials in Russian-controlled east Ukraine have appealed against their sentences, Russian state media reported. The supreme court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic has received appeals from lawyers for Brahim Saadoun and Shaun Pinner, according to the Russian state-owned news agency Tass. Another Briton sentenced to death by the Russian proxy court, Aiden Aslin, had not yet submitted an appeal, Tass reports.
- A series of recent assassination attempts targeting pro-Russian officials suggests a growing resistance movement against Russian-backed authorities occupying parts of southern Ukraine, according to US officials. The resistance could grow into a wider counterinsurgency that would pose a significant challenge to Russia’s ability to control captured Ukrainian territories, CNN cited officials as saying.
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