“We call on Russia to block ports. It’s unthinkable, one can not imagine that millions of tons of wheat remain stranded in Ukraine while in the rest of the world people are suffering from hunger,” he told Reuters. “This is a real war crime, so I can not imagine it will last much longer,” he said on arrival at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Luxembourg. A German government source told Reuters that the country was “very confident” that NATO would successfully reach an agreement with Sweden and Finland on their bid to join, although it may not be in time for the Madrid summit. He is quoted as saying, “As nice as it is to announce specific steps; it would not be a disaster if it took a few more weeks. “What is crucial from our point of view is that there are no insurmountable problems.” Turkey has said it would not welcome Sweden and Finland into the NATO alliance, accusing the two countries of supporting and hosting Kurdish fighters and other groups it considers terrorists. They both deny this. Updated at 10.19 BST Dmitry Medvedev, vice-president of Russia’s Security Council and longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the Telegram that relations between the United States and Russia were at “zero Kelvin.” Speaking about the prospect of further negotiations on the nuclear situation, Medvedev published: As a person who had a direct relationship with START-3 and signed it in 2010, I consider the time for new negotiations to be the most inappropriate. We have nothing to do with the US now. They are at zero Kelvin. And you do not need to defrost them today. And we do not need to negotiate with them yet. Let them run or crawl and ask for it. And they appreciate it as a special grace. Updated at 10.20 BST Russia’s Defense Ministry has issued its daily briefing on operations. In this, they claim to have:
destroyed a drone control center at Artsyz Airport in Odessa destroyed a Buk-M1 launcher in Donetsk destroyed key elements of an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system in Luhansk shot down a MiG-29 aircraft in Dnipropetrovsk killed 450 members of the Ukrainian armed forces
Today they also dedicate a section to allegations that Ukrainian forces are suffering from starvation, “mass disobedience to the order” and that some commanders “withdrew from the management of their units and avoided combat missions” using any pretext of illness. None of the allegations have been independently verified. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) claimed in the Telegram this morning that in the last 24 hours, 32 houses and 8 “political infrastructure facilities” had been damaged by bombings by Ukrainian forces in 13 of the 238 settlements claimed by the DRC. control. Russia is the only UN state that recognizes the legitimacy of the GDR. The allegations have not been independently verified.
German Foreign Minister: “We will certainly not be able to get everything out” from Ukraine
Germany says it supports Poland and Romania in adjusting their railways to allow the export of millions of tonnes of grain stuck in Ukraine due to the Russian naval blockade, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said. “The railways need to be modernized, we need the right freight cars – the German government is working on this with many other actors,” he told reporters as he arrived for a meeting with his European Union counterparts in Luxembourg. According to Reuters, he added: “It is clear that, in the end, we will certainly not be able to get all the grain out, but if we manage to release some of it, in various ways, then it will help as we face this global challenge.”
EU Borrell: Russian grain embargo is ‘real war crime’
Blocking the export of millions of tons of Ukrainian grain from Russia is a war crime, said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. “We call on Russia to block ports. It’s unthinkable, one can not imagine that millions of tons of wheat remain stranded in Ukraine while in the rest of the world people are suffering from hunger,” he told Reuters. “This is a real war crime, so I can not imagine it will last much longer,” he said on arrival at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Luxembourg. Our audio reading podcast today focuses on how Germany became so dependent on Russian oil and gas. You can find it here: Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, told the Telegram: For the past 24 hours in Kharkov, the enemy has been striking on the outskirts of the city and in the Kholodnohirsky area. According to the first information, no one was injured. The Russians continue to terrorize the civilian population. I appeal to the people of Kharkiv: do not ignore the alarms, stay in the shelters. Do not be unnecessarily in the fields, on the edges of the roads, do not visit the forest zones. At the contact line in the Kharkiv region, the enemy focuses mainly on defense. Our defenders hold their positions firmly. We have repeatedly said that the enemy is not abandoning plans for Kharkiv, but our armed forces are ready for any scenario on the part of the occupiers. In the weeks following the Russian invasion, the Guardian spoke with five Ukrainian families who had fled the country. Almost four months after the invasion, families talk about the reality of their new life. In March, Liudmyla Abdo had left a war zone. Tired, dizzy and suffering from acute stress, she sat in the Buttes-Chaumont Park in Paris and recounted her experience of leaving Kyiv overnight. Three months later, Abdo looks like a young woman, welcoming me with a smile to the apartment she shares with her son, Marsel. “My heart is calm,” he says. In the corner, a Ukrainian flag hangs from a neighbor’s window, with the word solidarity. Abdo says she has received an outburst of support from the French she meets. “Whenever anyone hears that I am from Ukraine, they offer to help.” If the French people were helpful, the government was less helpful. Due to a mistake in her papers, Abdo has not yet received a single cent of the payments she is entitled to as a “temporary beneficiary” in France. In the absence of this, she has been supported by her two sons Read more of the bills here: “I will stay until Kharkov is rebuilt”: we visit again five Ukrainian families rebuilding their lives in the EU The United Kingdom Department of Defense has released its latest intelligence report. Declares: Russian ground and regular air operations remained focused on the central Donbass sector over the weekend. It also provides an assessment of Russia’s performance in the skies over Ukraine since the start of the last invasion on 24 February. In the conflict to date, the Russian air force has not performed well. Its failure to provide stable air power is probably one of the most important factors behind the very limited success of Russia’s campaign. It can not gain complete air superiority and has operated in the style of counter-danger, rarely penetrating deep behind the lines of Ukraine. Some of the deeper causes of his difficulties echo those of the Russian ground forces. For years, much of Russia’s air combat training has a very likely scenario and is designed to impress senior officials, rather than develop a dynamic initiative among aviation crews.
Summary so far
Before I hand you over to my colleague, Martin Bellam, here are all the important developments from 9 am in Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he expects Russia to intensify its attacks on Ukraine and possibly other European countries after the Commission nominated it as a candidate for EU membership. “intensification of its hostile activities,” she said in a video overnight speech. “And not only against Ukraine, but also against other European countries. we are getting ready. We are ready. We warn the partners “.
Ukrainian forces remain on the defensive in the eastern Donbass region, where fighting continues in Sievierodonestsk. Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk region, said Russia was mobilizing forces in an effort to take full control of the city after weeks of fighting, but argued that “all Russian claims to control the city are false.” “They control the main part of the city, but not the whole city,” he told Ukrainian television.
European Union foreign ministers will discuss ways to release millions of tonnes of grain stuck in Ukraine at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday. It is hoped that an agreement can be reached on the resumption of Ukraine’s maritime exports in exchange for facilitating Russian food and fertilizer exports, but it remains unclear whether the EU will be militarily involved in securing such an agreement. “Whether there will be a need to escort these merchant ships in the future is a question mark and I do not think we are there yet,” said an EU official.
Russia has become China’s top oil supplier amid war sanctions on Ukraine. China’s crude oil imports from Russia rose 55 percent from a year earlier to a record high in May, displacing Saudi Arabia as the top supplier as refineries redeemed discounted supplies amid sanctions on Moscow. its invasion of Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine could last for years and will require long-term military support, according to NATO and other Western leaders. “We have to prepare for the fact that it may take years,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview with the German newspaper Bild on Sunday. The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, added: “I am afraid that we have to strain ourselves for a long time …
