Russia-Ukraine war live: US general predicts ‘very long’ counteroffensive; CIA chief in secret visit to Kyiv

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Ukrainian forces are “almost certainly” being redeployed in the east bank of the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region, the UK’s defence ministry said.

In their daily update on Thursday, the ministry said fighting had intensified in the east bank from 27 June and that Russia had “highly likely reallocated” elements of the Dnipro Group of Forces to “reinforce the Zaporizhzhia sector”.

Combat around the bridge’s head is almost certainly complicated by “flooding, destruction and residual mud” from the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam earlier this month, the ministry added.

Reuters reports that Japan’s defence ministry said late on Friday it had spotted two Russian Navy ships in the waters near Taiwan and Japan’s Okinawa islands in the previous four days, following a similar announcement this week from Taiwan.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Tuesday it had spotted two Russian frigates off its eastern coast and had sent aircraft and ships to keep watch.

Japan’s government said last month that repeated Russian military activity near Japanese territory, including joint drills with Chinese forces, posed “serious concern” for Japan’s national security.

Japan and Taiwan have joined the United States and its allies in imposing wide-ranging sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine last year.

The Japanese ministry said two Steregushchy-class frigates were first spotted 70 km (40 miles) southwest of Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni, in Okinawa prefecture neat Taiwan, on Tuesday morning.

The vessels sailed back and forth through the waters between Yonaguni and Taiwan, moved eastward and were last spotted on Friday in the waters between Miyako and

Okinawa islands, it said, adding Japan dispatched two vessels to monitor the Russian ships.

Russia’s Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday that a detachment of ships of the Russian Pacific Fleet had entered the southern parts of the Philippine Sea to perform tasks as part of a long-range sea passage.

The director of the CIA, William Burns, called the Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin after last weekend’s aborted mutiny in Russia to assure the Kremlin that the US had no role in it, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have reported.

Burns’ phone call with Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, took place during the week and was the highest-level contact between the two governments since the attempted mutiny, Reuters reported the WSJ as saying.

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led the armed revolt last weekend, denouncing Russia’s military leadership and threatening to “destroy” his rivals, then abruptly called it off as his fighters approached Moscow.

Joe Biden said on Monday that the uprising was part of a struggle within the Russian system and that the US and its allies were not involved in it.

Separately, Burns made a secret trip to Ukraine recently and met his intelligence counterparts and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a US official has confirmed to Agence France-Presse. It reported the official as saying the mutiny “was not a topic of discussion”.

More information has arrived on the casualties of a Russian missile attack on Friday on a village school near the frontline in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

Reuters reports that Ukrainian police said two women had been killed and six people injured. A 56-year-old primary school teacher and a chief accountant, 44, died in the strike on the village of Serhiivka, the police said.

Twelve employees were the building’s only occupants, the prosecutor’s office said. Ukrainian schools were not in session for students on Friday.

Ukraine’s national police said in a statement:

Russian troops, in a direct hit, destroyed a school where civilians were located.

The Donetsk region prosecutor’s office said four men aged 54 to 69 and two women aged 24 and 34 were injured and taken to hospital, and that it had launched an investigation into the attack.

The CIA director, William Burns, travelled to Ukraine recently and met intelligence counterparts and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a US official confirmed to Agence France-Presse on Friday.

The trip was not reported at the time and comes amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

During his trip Burns reaffirmed “the US commitment to sharing intelligence to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression”, the news agency quoted the US official as saying.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the visit, Ukrainian officials shared plans to claw back Russian-occupied territory and begin ceasefire negotiations by the end of the year.

Burns “travelled to Ukraine as he has done regularly since the beginning of Russia’s recent aggression more than a year ago”, the US official said. The Post reported that the visit occurred in June.

The trip took place before the 24-hour rebellion led by the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to the official.

The mutiny, widely seen as the biggest threat to Kremlin authority in decades, “was not a topic of discussion”, the official added.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be very difficult and achieving gains will take a long time and be “very, very bloody”, the top US military officer has warned

Army general Mark Milley told the National Press Club in Washington that the counteroffensive was “advancing steadily, deliberately working its way through very difficult minefields … 500 meters a day, 1,000 meters a day, 2,000 meters a day, that kind of thing”.

Reuters also reports that Ukraine has been cautious in publicly counting gains in the counteroffensive it launched last month to reclaim Russian-occupied territory. The president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, acknowledged last week that it was going “slower than desired”.

Milley said he was not surprised progress was slower than some people and computers might have predicted.

War on paper and real war are different. In real war, real people die. Real people are on those front lines and real people are in those vehicles. Real bodies are being shredded by high explosives.

Milley added:

What I had said was this is going to take six, eight, 10 weeks, it’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody. And no one should have any illusions about any of that.

Welcome back to our continuing live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a quick look at the latest.

The top US military officer, army general Mark Milley, has warned that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be very difficult and that achieving gains will take a long time and be “very, very bloody”.

“No one should have any illusions about any of that,” he said in Washington.

The CIA director, William Burns, meanwhile, travelled to Ukraine recently and met with intelligence counterparts and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a trip that was not reported at the time, a US official has confirmed to Agence France-Presse.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the visit, Ukrainian officials shared plans to take back Russian-occupied territory and begin ceasefire negotiations by the end of the year.

More on those stories shortly. In other news as it approaches 9am in Kyiv:

The top US military officer, army general Mark Milley, said he was not surprised that progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive was slower than some people might have predicted. “This is going to take six, eight, 10 weeks, it’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody,” he said. “And no one should have any illusions about any of that.”

Ukraine’s counteroffensive plans are hobbled by the lack of adequate firepower, from modern fighter jets to artillery ammunition, the country’s military commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said in an interview published on Friday.

The CIA director, William Burns, called the Russian spy chief, Sergei Naryshkin, after last week’s aborted mutiny in Russia to assure the Kremlin that the United States had no role in it, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have reported. The call was the highest-level contact between the two governments since the attempted mutiny, the WSJ said.

The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said he is certain Russian tactical nuclear weapons deployed in his country will never be used. Lukashenko and The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, have acknowledged that some tactical weapons have arrived in Belarus and the remainder would be put in place by the end of the year. Lukashenko said on Friday: “As we move along, we become more and more convinced that they [the weapons] must be stationed here, in Belarus, in a reliable place.”

A teacher and another employee of a school in the Donetsk region have been killed after the building was shelled, according to a report from Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster.

Pope Francis said there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine as his peace envoy wrapped up three days of talks in Moscow.

Russia is reducing its presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate has claimed. It said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”.

Ukrainian prosecutors charged a Russian politician and two suspected Ukrainian collaborators with war crimes over the alleged deportation of dozens of orphans from the formerly occupied southern city of Kherson, some of them as young as one, Reuters reported.

The US is strongly considering sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to boost its counteroffensive against Russian forces, according to several news reports that cite Biden administration officials.

Ukraine has conducted nuclear disaster response drills in the vicinity of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, regional officials say.