Russia-Ukraine war live: seven villages liberated in counteroffensive says Kyiv; Macron says campaign could last months

Welcome back to our live coverage of the ongoing war in Ukraine. I’m Jonathan Yerushalmy – first here’s a round-up of all the latest news.

A number of people were killed and injured after Russia launched a “massive missile attack” overnight on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, officials said early on Tuesday.

Russian airstrikes hit several civilian structures in the city, including a five-storey building, said the mayor of Kryvyi Rih, Oleksandr Vilkul. “Likely, there are people under the rubble,” he added.

Elsewhere, Ukraine’s defence ministry has said 90 square km of territory has been retaken in Donetsk in the last week, adding that “seven settlements were liberated”. Over the same period, Ukrainian troops have recaptured 16 square km in the area around Bakhmut, the deputy defence minister said.

More on these stories shortly, before that, here are the other key developments today:

Ukraine accused Russian forces of destroying another dam with the aim of slowing Kyiv’s counteroffensive. Valeriy Shershen, a Ukrainian military spokesperson, said the Russian military blew up a dam along the Mokri Yaly River, which has become the most successful axis so far for Ukraine’s advances in western Donetsk.

“The fighting is tough, but we are moving forward, this is very important,” said the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his daily evening address. “I thank our guys for every Ukrainian flag that is now returning to its rightful place in villages on the newly de-occupied territory.”

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said the long-awaited counteroffensive would be under way for weeks if not months. “We want it to be as successful as possible so that we can then start a negotiation phase in good conditions.”

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Monday it was too soon to say exactly where Ukraine’s counteroffensive was going, but Washington was confident of its success in trying to take back land seized by Russia. Speaking at a press conference in Washington, Blinken said the US was determined to maximise its support for Ukraine so that it could succeed on the battlefield.

Forty-one people were still missing in the floods caused by the collapse of the Kakhovka dam, while the death toll stood at 10 people, Ukraine’s interior minister said.

One man was killed and another was wounded in a Russian attack on the small town of Orikhiv, in the Zaporizhzhia region of south-eastern Ukraine, the regional governor, Yuri Malashko, said on Monday. Malashko said three bombs damaged private houses and communications in the small town, about 8km from frontlines. The man killed was 48 and the one who was wounded was 32, Reuters reported Malashko as saying.

The UN secretary general, Ant?nio Guterres, said on Monday he was concerned that Russia would on 17 July quit a deal allowing the safe wartime export of grain and fertilisers from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Moscow has been threatening to walk away from the deal, known as the Black Sea grain initiative, brokered by the UN and Turkey in July last year, if obstacles to its own grain and fertiliser shipments are not removed.

The Group of Seven (G7) rich nations are working on a scheme to combat the suspected theft of Ukraine’s grain by using chemical identification of its origin, Britain’s food and farming minister, Mark Spencer, said on Monday. Spencer told an International Grains Council (IGC) conference in London that Britain was leading on the scheme and that G7 countries were also working closely with Ukraine, the world’s fourth largest grains exporter.

Nato’s largest military jet exercise since its founding took place on Monday in the skies over Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. About 10,000 soldiers from 25 countries were involved, making use of 250 military jets – 70 from Germany – to prepare for an attack on one of Nato’s members. Although the exercise was planned long before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it is nevertheless being viewed as a signal towards the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin marked Russia’s national day on Monday by appealing to Russians’ patriotic pride at what he said was a “difficult time”. Speaking at a lavish award-giving ceremony in the Kremlin, Putin made no direct comment on the latest developments in Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces have launched a long-awaited counteroffensive.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday it had signed a contract with the Akhmat group of Chechen special forces, a day after the Wagner mercenary chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, refused to do so. The signing followed an order that all “volunteer units” should sign contracts by 1 July bringing them under the control of the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, as Moscow tries to assert its control over private armies fighting on its behalf in Ukraine.

The former Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev celebrated Russia Day by posting an edited image to Telegram that showed Kyiv’s central Maidan square with the Russian flag flying on it and the message “Independence Square. Coming soon – Russia Square”.

Work has started in an investigation by the international criminal court over the breach of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine and the vast flood it triggered, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said. Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reported that the flood water level in Kherson had dropped by 64cm.