A Ukrainian serviceman is backdropped by a destroyed building in Irpin, Ukraine. (AP)Russia Ukraine War Crisis Live: Ukraine said on Tuesday it had carried out a long-range rocket strike against Russian forces and military equipment in southern Ukraine, territory it says it is planning to retake in a counter-offensive using hundreds of thousands of troops. According to Ukraine, the strike hit an ammunition dump in the town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region and killed 52 Russians. It came after Washington supplied Ukraine with HIMARS mobile artillery systems which Kyiv says its forces are using with ever greater efficacy.
The Russian parliament’s organising council was due to meet on Monday to decide on calling an extraordinary meeting of parliament on July 15, but it was not immediately clear what was to be discussed. The lower house of parliament said the council was to meet on Monday due to “issues that require urgent solutions” and the need to consider “government initiatives”, said Reuters report.
In other news, Ukraine expects a fresh assault by Russian ground forces, following widespread shelling which killed more than 30 people, as Kyiv’s Western allies brace for a worsening of the global energy crisis if Russia cuts its supply of oil and gas
* Ukraine said it had carried out a long-range rocket strike against Russian forces and military equipment in southern Ukraine, territory it says it is planning to retake in a counter-offensive using hundreds of thousands of troops.
* The death toll under a collapsed apartment block in the Donetsk region town of Chasiv Yar has climbed to 43, with rescue work still not over four days after the building was hit by Russian rocket fire, emergency services said.
* At least 12 people were injured in shelling of the southern city of Mykolaiv overnight, the regional governor said. In the northeast, the mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city, told Ukrainian TV that it was under constant Russian shelling.
* At least seven people were killed and 70 injured in an attack by Ukrainian armed forces on Monday in the Russian-held town of Nova Kakhovka in the southern Kherson region, the Russian-installed administration there said. Ukrainian officials said their forces had destroyed an ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka.
* Russian and Russian-backed separatist forces are encircling the town of Sieversk in Donetsk region, Russian state news agency TASS cited Rodion Miroshnik, ambassador to Moscow of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, as saying.
* Ukraine's general staff said Russia had unleashed a wave of bombardments as they seek to seize Donetsk, the other province in the eastern industrial Donbas region, after taking Luhansk to the north. It said the widespread shelling amounted to preparations for an intensification of hostilities.
* The European Union has so far frozen 13.8 billion euros ($13.83 billion) worth of assets held by Russian oligarchs, other individuals and entities sanctioned for Moscow's war against Ukraine, the bloc's top justice official said. (Reuters)
Ukraine's state-owned gas company Naftogaz has asked its international creditors to defer payments on its debt for two years, fanning expectations that the government may soon do the same.
Naftogaz which has a $335 million bond maturing as well as two interest payments due on July 19, said Russia's invasion had left it short of cash as many of its customers were now unable to pay their bills.
In its request for the payment freeze, Naftogaz said the five-month old war had resulted in a "significant economic and business decline in Ukraine" and that the missed bill payments had "negatively affected its liquidity position". (Reuters)
Ukraine is getting an additional USD 1.7 billion in assistance from the US government and the World Bank to pay the salaries of its beleaguered health care workers and provide other essential services.
The money coming Tuesday from the US Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department and the World Bank is meant to alleviate the acute budget deficit caused by Russian President Vladimir Putin's “brutal war of aggression”, USAID said in a statement.
While many medical staffers have left Ukraine, some hospitals have shut down and other hospitals have been bombed. The health workers who remain in Ukraine do their jobs under dire circumstances.
Viktor Liashko, Ukraine's minister of health, said paying health workers' salaries is becoming more difficult each month “due to the overwhelming burden of war". (AP)
Ukrainian authorities said on Tuesday that their forces targeted a Russian ammunition depot in southern Ukraine overnight, resulting in a massive explosion captured on social media.
The Ukrainian military's southern command said a rocket strike targeted the depot in Russian-held Nova Kakhovka, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) east of the Black Sea port city of Kherson, which is also occupied by Russian forces.
The precision of the strike suggested Ukrainian forces used US-supplied multiple-launch High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, to hit the area.
Ukraine indicated in recent days that it might launch a counteroffensive to reclaim territory in the country's south as Russia devotes resources to capturing all of the eastern Donbas region. (AP)
The United States believes Iran is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred drones, including some that are weapons capable, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday.
Sullivan also said the United States has information that shows Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use these drones.
Asked about Sullivan's statement, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied it, according to Iranian state media.
"The history of cooperation between Iran and Russia in the field of some modern technologies dates back to before the war in Ukraine," Nasser Kanaani was cited as saying by semi-official Mehr news agency. (Reuters)
Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said on Tuesday that military delegations from Turkey, Russia and Ukraine will meet with a United Nations delegation to discuss the safe export of Ukrainian grain.
The meeting will take place on July 13 in Istanbul, Akar said. (Reuters)
The European Union has so far frozen 13.8 billion euros ($13.83 billion) worth of assets held by Russian oligarchs, other individuals and entities sanctioned for Moscow's war against Ukraine, the bloc's top justice official said on Tuesday.
The official said the vast majority of that comes from five of the EU's 27 member states only, calling on others to step up. The bloc currently has 98 entities and nearly 1,160 individuals blacklisted for Russia's role in Ukraine.
"For the moment, we have frozen funds coming from oligarchs and other entities worth 13.8 billion euros, it's quite huge," EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said on Tuesday.
"But a very large part, more than 12 billion comes from five member states so we need to continue to convince others to do the same," he told reporters on arriving to a meeting of the national justice ministers in the Czech capital Prague. (Reuters)
The Kremlin says that Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Iran next week.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin will travel to Tehran next Tuesday to attend a trilateral meeting with the leaders of Iran and Turkey, the so-called Astana format of meetings for Syria-related talks.
Peskov told reporters Tuesday that during the visit, Putin will also have a separate meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (AP)
Decisions on the appeals of British and Moroccan fighters sentenced to death by the Russian-backed Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine will be taken within a month, Interfax quoted a separatist official as saying.
Two Britons and one Moroccan citizen captured fighting with the Ukrainian army were sentenced to death as mercenaries by a Russian-backed separatist court last month. All three have appealed their sentences.
Ukraine and Western countries have said that the men are prisoners of war, entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.
At least seven people were killed in an attack by Ukrainian armed forces on Monday in the Russian-held town of Nova Kakhovka in Ukraine's southern Kherson region, Russian state news agency TASS said.
"There are already seven dead for sure and about 60 wounded," TASS quoted Vladimir Leontyev, head of Russia-installed Kakhovka District military-civilian administration in the Kherson region. "There are still many people under the rubble. The injured are being taken to the hospital, but many people are blocked in their apartments and houses," Leontyev added.
According to TASS, in addition to damaged buildings, the attack also led to an explosion at fertiliser warehouses in the region. (Reuters)
The United Nations announced Monday it will start monitoring the war in Ukraine and conflicts in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Africa’s central Sahel region for violations against children, including killings, injuries, recruitment, rape and other forms of sexual violence.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in his annual report to the Security Council on children and armed conflict that those four new conflicts have been added to 21 conflicts that the U.N. already is monitoring for violations of the rights of children. He said the latter conflicts saw “a high number of grave violations” in 2021. (AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has expanded a fast-track procedure for Russian citizenship to all Ukrainians.
Previously, only residents of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions were eligible to apply for Russian citizenship through the procedure. The four regions are under the control of Moscow or Russian-backed separatist forces.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the expansion of the procedure was evidence of "predatory appetites."
"Russia is using the simplified procedure for issuing passports to tighten the noose around the necks of residents of the temporarily occupied territories of our state, forcing them to participate in the criminal activities of the occupying administrations and the Russian army of aggression," Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Since 2019, more than 720,000 people living in separatist-held areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions have received Russian passports. (DW)
The White House said it believes Iran will provide Russia with hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including weapons-capable drones.
"Our information indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs, including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline," US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters.
The official argued that the procurement shows that Russia's offensive in Ukraine is "coming at a cost to the sustainment of its own weapons."
Sullivan said it was unclear whether Russia had already received the drones.
The Russian parliament's organising council was due to meet on Monday to decide on calling an extraordinary meeting of parliament on July 15, but it was not immediately clear what was to be discussed.
The lower house of parliament said the council was to meet on Monday due to "issues that require urgent solutions" and the need to consider "government initiatives". It gave no further details.
At the scheduled start of the council meeting, there was no public live translation on the meeting and no agenda was published, Reuters reporters said.