From 8h ago
Fighting is continuing in Bakhmut, Ukraine’s armed forces have said in their morning update after Russia claimed to have completed the “liberation” of the eastern city over the weekend. Confusion has reigned as Ukrainian officials rejected the claims.
“[In Bakhmut] the enemy continues to lead offensive actions. Fighting for the city of Bakhmut continues,” the armed forces said, adding that over the past day Russian forces had “unsuccessfully tried to recover lost positions south of the [nearby] settlement of Ivanivske”. Russia had also carried out air strikes on Bakhmut.
It has been impossible to verify the conflicting statements over the devastated city, which has assumed symbolic importance as a measure of which side has the resilience to prevail in the war overall.
Here’s our full report on the back-and-forth by Peter Beaumont and Julian Borger:
Here are some pictures of the destruction caused overnight by what Ukraine claims were Russian strikes in Dnipro city in south-eastern Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian Army, Russian forces targeted the City of Dnipro with 16 missiles and 20 attack drones.
The Russian state-owned Tass news agency has reported on its Telegram feed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been informed about what is claimed to be an attempt to infiltrate the Belgorod region by Ukrainian forces.
Citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, it posted:
The ministry of defence, the FSB and the border service reported to Putin about an attempt by Ukrainian saboteurs to break into the Belgorod region, Peskov said.
The purpose of the Ukrainian sabotage in the Belgorod region is to divert attention from the situation in the Bakhmut direction, he noted.
Russian forces are working to squeeze out the Ukrainian saboteur group from the territory of the Russian Federation and destroy it. There are enough forces and means, the press secretary of the president of the Russian Federation added.
Reuters reports that Ukraine’s military intelligence service has blamed an armed operation in Belgorod on Russian citizens belonging to two paramilitary groups, Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske said.
It quoted military intelligence spokesperson Andriy Yusov as saying the Freedom of Russia Legion and Russian Volunteer Corps were responsible for the operation.
Tass identified the territory of the Graivoronsky district as the location for the incident.
None of the claims have been independently verified.
Reuters reports that Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, claimed on Monday that a Ukrainian army “sabotage group” had entered Russian territory in the Graivoron district, which borders Ukraine.
On Telegram, Gladkov claimed the Russian army and security forces were taking measures to fight off the incursion.
“A sabotage and reconnaissance group of the armed forces of Ukraine has entered the territory of the Graivoronsky district. The Russian armed forces, together with the border service, the Russian guard and the FSB, are taking the necessary measures to eliminate the enemy. I will report the details,” he said.
Reuters reports that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the private Russian army Wagner, repeated his vow to pull his troops out of Bakhmut in three days, and hand over the defence of the newly captured city to regular troops.
“On the western edges, defensive positions have been set up, and so Wagner will be leaving Artyomovsk between 25 May and 1 June,” he said, using the Soviet-era name for Bakhmut.
“If the Defence Ministry’s own forces aren’t enough, then we have thousands of generals – we just need to put together a battalion of generals, give them all guns, and it’ll all be fine.”
Prigozhin has been a vocal critic of the army and defence establishment support that his Wagner mercenaries have received. Moscow’s defence ministry acknowledged that some Russian troops fell back outside Bakhmut last week, but has denied Prigozhin’s repeated assertion that the flanks were crumbling, or that the military had withheld ammunition from Wagner.
Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned enterprise for the nation’s nuclear power plants, has released a statement on the restoration of power to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP).
Ukrainian experts restored the operation of the Dniprovsk 750 kV high-voltage power transmission line, from which the temporarily occupied ZNPP supplies its own needs.
The risk of a nuclear and radiation accident is minimised, the situation is stable.
We will remind you that on the morning of 22 May, at 5.26am, this line was disconnected as a result of Russian shelling. Since it is the last one that powers the ZNPP, all backup diesel generators are automatically turned on. As a result, the station experienced a blackout for the seventh time since the beginning of the occupation.
Earlier one of the Russian-installed leaders of the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region claimed it had been Ukraine who had disconnected the power plant.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Lars L?kke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister says his nation remains open to the idea of giving F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, but no firm position has been arrived at.
Rasmussen said: “It doesn’t make sense to train someone to fly a plane if you’ve decided in advance that they can never, ever be allowed to fly the plane. On the other hand, you cannot conclude from this that we have made a decision to donate aircraft.”
This follows on from comments earlier this morning where Rasmussen said his nation would like to host a summit in July about finding peace between Ukraine and Russia.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence appeared to gave a pictorial response to the proposed peace summit, tweeting a picture of a fighter jet superimposed over a peace symbol, with the caption “Ukraine’s Peace Formula”
The Russian-imposed leader of the occupied Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, has said that Russian forces have begun demining operations in Bakhmut. Tass quotes him appearing on the Rossiya-24 TV channel and saying: “There is a preliminary demining of the city. It is important for us to carry out a complete, thorough demining. This is a very painstaking and difficult work, given the scale of the hostilities that took place there.”
In another report, Tass quotes a source from the local Russian-imposed officials saying that “a few dozen more residents” remained in Bakhmut, but that “perhaps, the figure will change as the basements of houses are examined”. The source said that the “evacuation” of civilians continues.
Ukrainian troops are still advancing on the flanks of the devastated city, although the “intensity” of their movement has decreased and Russia is bringing in more forces, Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said on Monday. She said that Ukraine had a small foothold inside the city itself, again denying Russia’s assertion that it has established full control over Bakhmut.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had congratulated Wagner and Russian regular forces on “the completion of the operation to liberate Artemovsk [the city’s Soviet-era name]” after Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin posed among the wreckage, and said his mercenary group controlled the entire city at the weekend. It has not been possible for journalists to verify the battlefield situation in the city for months.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been reconnected to the power grid after it was switched to standby and emergency power supply generators. Russia-installed local official in the Moscow-controlled part of the region Vladimir Rogov said the plant was “completely” disconnected from external power supply after Ukraine disconnected a power line it controls.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has said the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) “cannot continue”.
At least eight people were wounded and scores of buildings were damaged in a Russian air attack on Dnipropetrovsk region. “The Russian invaders attacked military and infrastructure facilities of the eastern outpost of Ukraine – the city of Dnipro,” Ukraine’s air force said on the Telegram messaging service. “The attack was carried out by 16 different types of missiles and 20 Shahed-136/131 strike drones,” the air force said, adding that air defences brought down 20 Russian drones and four cruise missiles. At least one person was injured, and images from the city show destruction of emergency services equipment in what appears to have been a strike on a fire station.
Russia’s ambassador to the US appears to have warned Washington that any strike on Crimea could be considered a strike on Russian territory by Nato after the US president, Joe Biden, said he would support training for Ukrainian pilots on US F-16 fighter jets. In remarks published on the embassy’s Telegram channel, Anatoly Antonov wrote: “I would like to warn representatives of the administration against thoughtless judgments on Crimea, especially in terms of ‘blessing’ the Kyiv regime for air attacks on the peninsula. Let me remind you that strikes on this territory are considered by us as an attack on any other region of the Russian Federation. It is important that the United States is fully aware of the Russian response.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of president of Ukraine, has said “Crimea is an indisputable and inseparable part of Ukraine. It was, it is and it will be. The liberation of Crimea using any military force and means is the only rational way to stop ‘Russian aggressions’ and bring the world back to international law. It is Ukraine’s direct obligation and necessity today”
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region has claimed on Telegram that an explosive device dropped from an unmanned aerial vehicle in Novaya Tavolzhanka, without causing any injuries.
The governor of Russia’s Bryansk region has claimed this morning that Ukraine has shelled a village.
The EU’s top diplomat will propose further sanctions against Russia, following a promise by G7 leaders to intensify western restrictions on Vladimir Putin’s ability to wage war on Ukraine. Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, said he hoped to soon present “concrete proposals to implement the decision of the G7 on new kinds of sanctions against Russia”.
Citing Kharkiv’s regional governor, Oleh Synyehubov, Suspilne is reporting that two women have been hospitalised after shelling on Kupiansk. It reports “private houses and civil infrastructure were damaged in the city”.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that the external power supply to Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) has been restored, after an earlier outage forced the plant to rely on emergency diesel generators. It posted to Telegram:
Energy workers have restored the power transmission line that feeds the ZNPP. The station is switching to power from the Ukrainian energy system, Ukrenergo reported.
Finland‘s state-owned gas wholesaler Gasum said on Monday it had terminated a contract to buy natural gas from Gazprom Export via pipelines from Russia.
Reuters reports Gazprom ceased pipeline-based natural gas deliveries to Gasum in May 2022 in a dispute over payments, and the two sides had been in talks to resolve the matter.
Gazprom demanded that European countries pay for Russian gas supplies in roubles because of sanctions imposed over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which Finland refused to do.
Reuters reports Denmark‘s foreign minister Lars L?kke Rasmussen has said his nation would like to host a summit in July about how to find peace between Ukraine and Russia, citing the Ritzau news agency.
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