Ukraine rules out any ceasefire deal that involves ceding territory to Russia
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has ruled out ceding territory to Russia as part of any ceasefire deal and said no peace talks were under way between Moscow and Kyiv.
In a briefing, Kuleba said:
The objective of Ukraine in this war … is to liberate our territories, restore our territorial integrity, and full sovereignty in the east and south of Ukraine. This is the end point of our negotiating position.
He added:
Currently there are no (peace) talks between Russia and Ukraine because of Russia’s position and its continued aggression against our country.
In an interview published before talks in Istanbul involving representatives from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN, the Ukrainian FM said a deal to resume grain exports blocked by Russia appeared very close.
Key events:
Ukraine has denied claims by Russian forces that it had shot down four Ukrainian military jets in Ukraine.
Russia’s defence ministry said earlier that its forces had destroyed an Su-25 and Su-24 – both Soviet-era jets used by the Ukrainian air force – over the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine along with another Su-25 and a Mig-29, another Soviet-designed fighter aircraft, in the Mykolaiv region of southern Ukraine.
Reuters has cited Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, as dismissing Russia’s assertions as propaganda.
Pjotr Sauer
A third American national is being held captive by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, according to his friends and family and a private volunteer group specialising in rescuing US citizens.
Suedi Murekezi, 35, was arrested last month in Kherson, a Russian-occupied port city in southern Ukraine where he had been living for more than two years, his brother Sele Murekezi said.
“We are all extremely worried for his wellbeing. He is obviously in danger,” he said.
After having not heard from him for a month, Sele received a call from his brother in the early hours of 7 July, in which he said he was imprisoned in Donetsk, the biggest city in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic backed by Russia.
Murekezi also said he was in the same jail as Alexander Drueke and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, two American fighters captured by Russia last month.
Unlike Drueke and Huynh, Murekezi’s friends and family say he did not participate in any fighting in Ukraine and moved to the country about four years ago, settling in Kherson in 2020.
On the phone, Murekezi told his brother he had been falsely accused of participation in pro-Ukrainian protests, a charge that his brother and two close friends in Kherson denied.
“They are using him as a pawn for their own propaganda purposes,” said Sele Murekezi.
Ukraine rules out any ceasefire deal that involves ceding territory to Russia
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has ruled out ceding territory to Russia as part of any ceasefire deal and said no peace talks were under way between Moscow and Kyiv.
In a briefing, Kuleba said:
The objective of Ukraine in this war … is to liberate our territories, restore our territorial integrity, and full sovereignty in the east and south of Ukraine. This is the end point of our negotiating position.
He added:
Currently there are no (peace) talks between Russia and Ukraine because of Russia’s position and its continued aggression against our country.
In an interview published before talks in Istanbul involving representatives from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN, the Ukrainian FM said a deal to resume grain exports blocked by Russia appeared very close.
Most of the refugees from Ukraine, mainly women and children, hope to leave their host countries and return home eventually, a UN study shows.
Around two-thirds of refugees from Ukraine expect to stay in their host countries until the security situation improves after Russia’s invasion, according to a survey by the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR.
The study, conducted between mid-May and mid-June, surveyed around 4,900 people from Ukraine now living in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
More than 5.6 million refugees are now recorded across Europe, with 8.8 million people crossing out of Ukraine and nearly 3.3 million crossing back in since the Russian invasion.
Of those seeking to return, 40% planned to do so in the next month, the UNHCR said. It added:
They are anxious to reunite with friends and family and worry about those who stayed behind. Most want to wait until hostilities have subsided.
The Kremlin said it was expecting progress over a possible EU deal to allow Russia to transit some sanctioned goods to Kaliningrad, but that the problem had not been resolved.
Speaking to reporters today, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said:
There is no finalisation of this situation yet. We expect some progress, but we cannot say that the problem has been removed.
On Monday, Lithuania expanded restrictions on trade through its territory to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, with goods sanctioned including concrete, wood, alcohol and alcohol-based industrial chemicals.
The governor of Kaliningrad, Anton Alikhanov, has proposed a total ban on the movement of goods between the three Baltic states and Russia, in response to what authorities in the exclave have called a “blockade”.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, has warned Lithuania and the EU it could adopt “harsh measures” against them if the transit of goods to and from Kaliningrad did not resume.
Bakhmut bombarded in wake of Ukraine attack on Russian air defences
Peter Beaumont
Russian artillery and rockets pounded the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut overnight and into Wednesday morning in what some sources speculated was a reprisal for a Ukrainian attack using a US-supplied Himars missile system on a Russian air defence site in Luhansk.
Others suggested the shelling could signal a renewed Russian offensive aimed at cities in Donetsk province.
In one video posted on social video around midnight from outside Bakhmut, constant rocket strikes can be seen illuminating the night sky and a woman’s voice is heard saying: “My mother is there! Fuck, fuck, fucking hell.”
A man named Nikolai says: “Everything is on fire. They hit the power lines.”
As the woman speaks again, apparently wanting to borrow a phone to call her mother, the man interjects. “Your mum is fucked. It’s Stupky [that’s getting hit],” he says, referring to a northern area of Bakhmut.
Describing the situation on his Telegram channel, the Donetsk governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said Russian forces were “constantly shelling the entire free territory of Donetsk region [with] Bakhmut district suffering the most”.
According to Kyrylenko, one person died and five more were injured in the town, which has largely been evacuated.
Read the full story by Peter Beaumont here.
Two settlements in Ukraine’s Luhansk region remain under Ukrainian control, according to the Ukrainian governor of the region, Serhai Haidai.
He has posted to Telegram to say: “The armed forces of Ukraine maintain defence on the outskirts of Luhansk region – two settlements of the region are under the control of the government.”
He accuses Russia of transporting grain away from Ukraine in trucks, and also says that Russian mobile telephone networks are working in the region.
He also claims that “the Russian army destroyed warehouses with food products, shops and markets in large cities”, saying that the settlements continue to be “on the verge of a humanitarian disaster”.
He says that the gas supply system in Lysychansk and in Rubizhne has been destroyed.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Summary of the day so far …
- The death toll from a weekend Russian missile attack on a residential apartment block in Chasiv Yar, eastern Ukraine, rose to at least 45 on Tuesday. Saturday’s strike destroyed the five-storey building and damaged several others in the Donetsk region city. Nine people had been pulled out alive as the rescue operation continued.
- At least seven people were reportedly killed by a Ukrainian missile strike on a large ammunition store in the town of Nova Kakhovka, in Russia-occupied Kherson, in a strike attributed to recently acquired US weapons. The explosion hit a warehouse close to a key railway line and a dam on the Dnieper river. Footage on social media showed a large explosion lighting up the night, burning ammunition and billowing smoke.
- Russia has reportedly heavily shelled the eastern town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region overnight in response to the Nova Kakhovka strike. Kyiv Independent reporter Illia Ponomarenko tweeted alongside footage purportedly of the assault: “Meanwhile, Russia responds by sweeping Bakhmut off the earth with artillery in the night.”
- The Russian ministry of defence has said that it caused large losses to Ukrainian forces in the last 24 hours, claiming to have killed at least 425 service personnel and shot down three planes and nine unmanned drones.
- At least five people have been injured and one killed by Russian shelling in the region of Kharkiv, according to the daily update from regional governor Oleh Synyehubov. He has posted to Telegram this morning to say: “The terror of the civilian population of Kharkiv Region by the Russian occupiers continues.”
- Military delegations from Ukraine, Russia and Turkey will meet UN officials in Istanbul to discuss a possible deal to resume safe exports of Ukraine grain from the major Black Sea port of Odesa as a global food crisis worsens.
- Grain shipments via the River Danube have increased with the reopening of the Bystre canal. The number of foreign ships reaching Ukraine ports to help with grain exports has doubled to 16 within the last 24 hours, according to Ukraine’s deputy infrastructure minister Yuriy Vaskov. Ukraine has restored long-decommissioned ports to facilitate the exportation of grain due to Russia’s Black Sea blockade, and expects to increase monthly exports to 500,000 tonnes.
- Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, says Russia “doesn’t have the courage” to admit defeat. In a nationally televised address, Zelenskiy also mocked the Russian military’s apparent reliance on ageing weapons and Soviet-era tactics, and insisted the unity of his country’s citizenry, combined with the strength of Ukraine’s armed forces, meant the outcome of the war was “certain”.
- Russian forces will probably focus on taking several small Donbas towns during the coming week, including Siversk and Dolyna on the approaches to Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. “The urban areas of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk likely remain the principal objectives for this phase of the operation,” the British intelligence report said.
That is it, from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later. Léonie Chao-Fong will be with you next to continue our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russian’s ministry of defence has again said that it caused large losses to Ukrainian forces in the last 24 hours, claiming to have killed at least 425 service personnel and shot down three planes and nine unmanned drones.
In particular, Russian forces claim to have killed 350 Ukrainian service personnel in high-precision attacks on a shipyard in Mikolaiv. They also claim to have killed or captured “a sabotage and reconnaissance group” in the area of Dementievka in the Kharkiv region.
The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has issued its regular daily operation briefing. In it, the DPR claims that along with the armed forces of Russia and of the similarly self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, they have “liberated” 242 settlements in eastern Ukraine. This number has been static for a few days now.
It claims that the Ukrainian army shelled 12 settlements under DPR occupation, causing three deaths and injuries to 12 civilians. It also claims that 38 “housing constructions” and eight civil infrastructure facilities were damaged. The claims have not been independently verified.
