Russia-Ukraine war live: drones intercepted en route to Moscow, Russia says; UK sets out new aid package for Ukraine

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The UK Ministry of Defence has issued its update on the situation in Ukraine. It states

Intense fighting continues in sectors of southern Ukraine. However, over recent weeks, Russia has continued to expend significant effort building defensive lines deep in rear areas, especially on the approaches to occupied Crimea.

This includes an extensive zone of defences of 9 km in length, 3.5 km north of the town Armyansk, on the narrow bridge of land connecting Crimea to the Kherson region.

These elaborate defences highlight the Russian command’s assessment that Ukrainian forces are capable of directly assaulting Crimea.

Russia continues to see maintaining control of the peninsula as a top political priority.

Russia’s Defence Ministry has said it has thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow region, saying that all three drones had been shot down.

The UK has backed $3 billion of World Bank loan guarantees to shore up Ukraine’s economic stability, the government announced today.

In what the government is calling the support “the first bilateral package of multi-year fiscal assistance to be set out by a G7 country”.

At a two-day Ukraine recovery conference in London today, Sunak will outline a package which will also include ?240m ($306m) of bilateral assistance and an expansion of British International Investment in Ukraine.

The UK’s support is backed by the Ukraine Business Compact which consists of more than 400 companies from 38 countries, with a combined annual revenue of over $1.6 trillion, who today pledge to back Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction.

Virgin, Sanofi, Philips, Hyundai Engineering and Citi are among the companies involved.

The compact will, according to the government, trade, investment, peer-to-peer expertise sharing and responsible business practice in Ukraine, ensuring it can rebuild as a resilient, agile and prosperous economy.

The UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said:

As we’ve seen in Bakhmut and Mariupol, what Russia cannot take it will seek to destroy. They want to do the same to Ukraine’s economy.

The scale of the challenge is real, the war brought a 29% fall in Ukraine’s GDP last year, but just look at the streets of Kyiv, despite the threat of attack, people are getting on with their lives – and getting on with business.

[…]

I’m proud that today we’re announcing a multiyear commitment to support Ukraine’s economy, and over the next three years, we will provide loan guarantees worth $3 billion.

President of the World Bank Group, Ajay Banga, said:

The UK Government’s generous guarantees to the World Bank Group will support the people of Ukraine at a critical moment.

The World Bank Group is designed to do hard things like helping people rebuild their lives after devastation. With this support, we will keep delivering on that mission and help Ukrainians imagine a life after the war.

After more than a year of war in Ukraine, the package is designed to encourage the private sector to use its resources to help speed Ukraine’s reconstruction.

To deal with the issue of insurance against war damage and destruction, the Prime Minister will also launch a framework a range of measures designed to “de-risk” Ukraine to increase investor confidence, including providing guarantees and insurance for reconstruction projects now while the conflict is ongoing through the Multilateral Investment Guarantees Agency.

He will also launch the London Conference Framework for War Risk Insurance at the summit and that some major companies had already signed up to the Ukraine Business Compact, a statement of support for Ukraine’s recovery.

In addition Sunak is announcing up to ?250 million of new capital for the UK’s Development Finance Institution – British International Investment (BII) – to support infrastructure projects, energy markets, financial services and agriculture.

Ahead of the conference, a senior Ukrainian official said Ukraine is seeking up to $40 billion to fund the first part of a “Green Marshall Plan” to rebuild its economy, including developing a coal-free steel industry.

The total reconstruction bill is likely to be huge, with Ukraine, the World Bank, the European Commission and the United Nations estimating in March that the cost was at $411 billion for the first year of the war. It could easily reach more than $1 trillion.

Ukrainian forces are gaining some ground towards Melitopol and Berdiansk in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, Andriy Kovalev, a spokesman for the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, has said according to Reuters.

“They had partial success, they are gaining ground,” Kovalev was quoted as saying in a post on the Ukraine Military Media Center’s Telegram channel, adding that the gains were near the settlements of Mala Tokmachka and Robotyne, among others.

Ukraine continues to hold back the advance of Russian troops in the east of the country, with “especially heavy fighting” taking place along near Lyman in the Donetsk region, he added.

“Intense fighting” is continuing in southern Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence says in its latest update on the conflict.

It reports that Russia has recently spent “significant effort building defensive lines deep in rear areas, especially on the approaches to occupied Crimea”, highlighting Moscow’s “assessment that Ukrainian forces are capable of directly assaulting Crimea”.

“Russia continues to see maintaining control of the peninsula as a top political priority,” it says.

Back to the drones reportedly intercepted in Russia. The country’s Tass news agency has reported, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, that another drone was shot down near Lukino village in Moscow region, according to Reuters.

Tass also reported two of the drones were intercepted on their way to the Taman Division of Russia’s Ground Forces. The division is based in Kalininets, some 60km (37 miles) from the Kremlin.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. It was not immediately known who launched the drones.

In May, drones struck wealthy districts of Moscow, in what Russia said was a Ukrainian attack and one politician called the most dangerous attack on the capital since World War Two.

Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.

More from the ISW analysis, which reports that the Belarusian General Staff has confirmed that Belarus has amended the language of its constitution to renounce its neutrality and non-nuclear status.

Deputy Head of the Faculty of the Belarusian General Staff Colonel Andrey Bogodel stated on June 20 that in order to respond to “external challenges and threats,” Belarus has made requisite changes to its constitution renouncing its neutrality and removing the wording on its non-nuclear status.

The move comes after Russian president Vladimir Putin last week said the first tactical nuclear weapons to be stationed in Belarus had arrived.

Responding to the announcement, US president Joe Biden said the threat that Russia could use tactical nuclear weapons was “real”.

The Institute for the Study of War highlights Russia’s efforts to expand its military recruitment pool in its latest assessment, noting that it has lowered its eligibility requirements once again.

It points to a report by Tass newswire which says that the Duma on Tuesday adopted the third and final reading of a law which will allow citizens with criminal records and those deemed “partially fit” for military service to sign contracts with the military during wartime.

The Russian Ministry of Defence has already recruited about 15,000 prisoners since February, according to the Russian human rights organisation Rus Sidyashchaya, the ISW writes.

The wires have sent through a series of images from the Without Limits clinic in Kyiv, which helps people learn to walk again using prosthetic limbs.

The clinic says it has seen a massive increase in demand since the Russian invasion began in February 2022 and estimates 80% of its patients are former soldiers.

Two drones have been intercepted on their approach to military warehouses in the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, the governor of the area, has said according to Reuters.

“Debris was found, no damage or casualties,” Vorobyov said, adding that the drones fell near the village of Kalininets.

Russia’s channels on the Telegram messaging app, including one with links to the security services, said at least one more drone was intercepted near the village of Lukino.

Ukrainian forces are “very actively destroying the enemy, physically clearing Ukraine,” president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said in his latest evening address.

“Protection against terror means the destruction of terrorists. And it is a guarantee that the evil state will never again have the opportunity to bring evil to Ukraine,” he continued.

Ukraine is now more than two weeks into its counteroffensive and has made small advances.

General Oleksander Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander of land forces, said on Telegram on Tuesday that his troops were making progress on the flanks of the shattered eastern city of Bakhmut, which fell to Russian mercenaries last month after months of fighting, Reuters reported.

Ukrainian troops, he said, were repelling increasingly intense Russian attacks near Kupiansk in the northeast.

Deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian forces in the south were “gradually, in small steps, but very confidently, making advances. We could even use the allegory that we are carving up every metre of land from the enemy.”

Leaders and representatives from more than 60 countries are expected in London from Wednesday for a two-day conference to secure funding to help Ukraine recover from the ravages of war.

The EU will provide Ukraine with $54.58bn in aid for 2024-27, the bloc’s president, Ursula von der Leyen said ahead of the summit, while the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is set to unveil a major package, including $3bn of additional guarantees to unlock World Bank lending, according to his office.

More from AFP:

The International Ukraine Recovery Conference 2023, hosted by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is the second to be held since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February last year.

The first, in Lugano, Switzerland, in July last year saw Kyiv’s allies commit to supporting Ukraine through what is expected to be an eye-wateringly expensive and decades-long recovery.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmygal told them rebuilding could cost at least $750 billion.

The World Bank has since put an estimate of $14 billion on Ukraine’s immediate needs for repairing the damage caused by the bitter fighting.

But a recent study by the World Bank, the UN, the European Union and the Ukrainian government said the wider recovery of the economy would cost $441 billion.

Whatever the final amount, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has likened it to the amount of money needed for the US-led Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Livingstone.

Ukrainian forces in the south and east are “actively destroying the enemy”, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said in his latest evening address, more than two weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Ahead of a major conference in London at which the UK and EU are set to pledge billions of dollars in aid for the rebuilding of Ukraine, Zelenskiy also assured his international partners that “Ukraine uses every weapon and every shell as efficiently as possible and always to protect lives”.

He said Ukraine’s recovery “will become not only construction projects, but also a global project of protection”.

“A rebuilt Ukraine, a transformed Ukraine, a strengthened Ukraine is a carrier of security and a guarantor of security, it is protection against any form of Russian terror and protection against any repetition of Russian aggression,” he said.

In other developments:

Ahead of the conference, a senior Ukraine official said the country would struggle to absorb the expected billions of western private and public sector aid for its recovery not due to corruption, but a simple lack of capacity to process and invest such huge sums. “Historically the largest amount of money we have been capable of working with was $6bn a year in 2014,” said Mustafa Nayyem, the head of the Ukraine State Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development.

Russia has threatened strikes on Kyiv’s “decision-making centres” if Ukraine uses western-supplied missiles against the occupied peninsula of Crimea. Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, said the potential use of US-supplied Himars and UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles against targets in Crimea would mark the west’s “full involvement in the conflict and would entail immediate strikes upon decision-making centres in Ukrainian territory”.

Ukraine’s military intelligence chief has accused Russia of “mining” the cooling pond used to keep the reactors cool at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine’s south. “Most terrifying is that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was additionally mined during that time … namely the cooling pond was mined,” Kyrylo Budanov, head of the GUR agency, said on television, without providing evidence.

The Pentagon says that it overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by $6.2bn over the past two years – about double early estimates – resulting in a surplus that will be used for future security packages. Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said a detailed review of the accounting found an error of $3.6bn in the current fiscal year and $2.6bn in the 2022 fiscal year, which ended on 30 September.

The UN secretary general, Ant?nio Guterres, has called for an acceleration of Black Sea grain shipments from Ukrainian ports under a deal allowing safe wartime exports, a UN spokesperson said as Russia threatens to quit the pact which is due for renewal on 17 July. Guterres was disappointed by a slowing pace of ship inspections, spokesperson Farhan Haq said, and the exclusion of Pivdennyi (Yuzhny) port – one of three Ukrainian ports covered by the Black Sea export deal.

Kyiv has repatriated three Ukrainian prisoners of war from Hungary where they were transferred from Russia without coordination with Kyiv, said Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko, who had previously accused Hunary of ignoring Kyiv’s requests for access to the PoWs. Ukrainian diplomats and other relevant Ukrainian authorities were working to try to bring back the remaining prisoners of war, Nikolenko said.

Prosecutors said they had served a notice of suspicion to Kyiv’s head of municipal security after three people died in a Russian air attack when they were unable to get into a bomb shelter. The deaths on 1 June caused public outrage and prompted the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to vow a harsh response.

The destruction of the vast Kakhovka hydroelectric dam has caused EUR1.2bn euros of damage, the Ukrainian environment minister Ruslan Strilets has told his EU counterparts. He also warned that mines unearthed by flooding could wash on to other European countries’ shores and that “there are things that we can never restore. These are the ecosystems that were washed away into the Black Sea.”

The Ukrainian kickboxing champion Maksym Bordus has been killed fighting Russian forces, according to a website that lists athletes killed in the war. Bordus was killed on 11 June in “fierce fighting against Russian invaders”, according to Sport Angels, a Ukrainian website set up with the assistance of the Sports Committee, which brings together NGOs and federations from non-Olympic sports.