Ukraine reports small advances in ‘extremely fierce’ fighting amid counteroffensiveUkraine reported incremental advances in its counteroffensive against Russian forces on Wednesday, in what it said was “extremely fierce” fighting Reuters reports.
In a post on Telegram, the deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said the Ukrainian actions had had “partial” success.
In the past day, Ukrainian troops advanced 200-500 metres in various areas near the small eastern city of Bakhmut, and 300-350 metres in the direction of the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, she said.
She reported continuing fighting near the village of Makarivka in the direction of the southern port city of Berdiansk, and said battles were raging in the areas of Novodanylivka and Novopokrovsk in the Mariupol direction.
Maliar said:
Our troops are moving in the face of extremely fierce fighting, and air and artillery superiority of the enemy.
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Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, has said alliance members must ensure Ukraine keeps getting enough arms to pursue its counter-offensive against Russia.
Kyiv’s Western backers will meet on Thursday at Nato headquarters in Brussels to get the latest update from Ukraine’s defence minister on the progress of the assaults.
“The most obvious thing is to ensure they have the weapons, the supplies, the maintenance to continue to conduct the offensive,” Stoltenberg told journalists.
He added that there was always recognition that Ukraine would suffer losses as it seeks to breach heavily fortified Russian lines.
Stoltenberg said:
There will be casualties, also, when it comes to modern Nato equipment. No one expected there to be zero casualties. The realities of this is fierce, fierce fighting.
Jens Stoltenberg gives a press conference at the Nato headquarters in Brussels on 14 June, 2023. Photograph: Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP/Getty ImagesSummary of the day so far … Ukrainian troops have advanced 200-500 meters at various sections of the front line around the small eastern city of Bakhmut and 300-350 meters in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister said.
The UN nuclear chief, Rafael Grossi, delayed a planned trip to Ukraine’s Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant until it is safer to travel, a senior Ukrainian government official said on Wednesday.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was concerned by unconfirmed media reports that a senior Chechen commander had been wounded in Ukraine and was awaiting clarification about what had really happened. Earlier on Wednesday, the defence ministry’s TV channel reported that Adam Delimkhanov, head of Chechnya’s national guard, had been injured in Ukraine.
Overnight, Russian missile attacks killed three people in the Black Sea city of Odesa and three in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.
Patrick Wintour
Ukraine is taking significant casualties and making slow progress towards the Russian main line of defence, western officials have admitted in one of the west’s first assessments of the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched on 4 June.
The officials’ sombre tone was clearly designed to lower expectations of a transformative breakthrough. However they nevertheless insisted the counteroffensive was “going in the right direction” and the losses were not unexpected.
They said the counteroffensive was still in its early days and involved a form of warfare not seen in decades as Ukraine forces are forced to build single lanes of armoured vehicles through mines heading to main Russian defences that in some cases may be still as far as 20km away.
“The vulnerability of the classic single lanes through the minefields make the Ukrainian armoury very vulnerable to attack,” the officials said . The officials denied Ukraine had lost as many as 120 armoured vehicles – a figure touted by Moscow.
One official said: “The Russian manoeuvre and defence approach is proving challenging for the Ukraine and costly to attacking forces hence the advance at the moment is slow”.
The officials suggested there is likely to be “grinding costly warfare likely for many months to come. This is incredibly difficult. They are going against a well-prepared line that the Russians have had months to prepare. Russia has generally put up a good defence from their well prepared positions and falling back to tactical lines. Whilst they are inflicting casualties on the Russians they are not significant because the Russians are choosing the time to withdraw in a manner similar to the way the Ukrainians defended themselves against Russian vehicles.
“The idea that the Russians were just going to melt away and the Ukrainians were going to drive straight through their defensive line was in people’s wildest dreams.
“In this conflict the advantage has always been with the defender”.
The officials said it may not be clear for as long as three months whether the offensive could be classified as a success.
Most of the vehicles that have been damaged have been hit by mines. As the Ukrainians advance they are also more exposed to drone assaults.
The officials played down suggestions that this assault was likely to give Ukraine a tactical advantage as early as September, and so give it space to reopen talks with Vladimir Putin. “We are a long way away from Ukraine being in a position to reopen negotiations”, the officials said.
The slow progress is likely to place greater pressure on the west to signal to Putin that it is prepared for a long haul, and will not treat the counteroffensive as Ukraine’s one shot at reclaiming its territory. Ukraine has long feared support may decline in the west if the supply of western arms does not produce early tangible results.
Western officials admitted that western-supplied jets may not be available in the short term, even if training of Ukrainian pilots is now underway.
The officials also suggested Putin might have taken a truth serum before meeting military correspondents where he said Russia was suffering severe tank losses and suffering problems with its military industrial base.
Even though there was still a huge amount of confusion about exact Russian deployment, the officials said the vast majority of Russian forces are now committed to positions on the line partly due to the sheer size of the line that has to be defended. That gave Russia little room for further manoeuvre to deploy reinforcements if a point in the line became vulnerable.
By contrast Ukraine was holding back some of its heaviest armoury, including Challenger tanks.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has rebuffed growing international pressure on Ankara to ratify Sweden’s Nato membership bid before the western defence alliance meets in July.
Western officials had hoped Erdoğan would soften his position on the diplomatically charged issue after he secured a hard-fought re-election last month (AFP reports).
But Erdoğan signalled no major shift in comments released by his office while Turkish and Swedish officials were locked in last-minute negotiations in Ankara.
Sweden and its Nordic neighbour Finland ended decades of military non-alignment and applied to join the US-led defence bloc in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Turkey and fellow Nato member Hungary ratified Finland’s membership this year. But both countries’ parliaments have yet to approve Sweden’s entry.
Turkey is pushing Sweden to ban and crack down on rallies by Kurdish supporters of a group recognised as a terrorist organisation by Ankara.
Sweden hopes to be able to determine who was behind the Nord Stream gas pipeline sabotage by the autumn, the prosecutor leading the country’s investigation told Swedish radio, Reuters reports.
In September 2022, several unexplained underwater explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and newly-built Nord Stream 2 pipelines that link Russia and Germany across the Baltic Sea.
The blasts occurred in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark and both countries say the explosions were deliberate though they have yet to single out who was responsible.
There has been an update on the fire that broke out on Wednesday at the Novocherkassk power station in Russia’s southern Rostov region, close to the border with Ukraine (See post at 12:54).
Citing reports, the Kyiv Independent tweeted that the fire was said to have started due to “non-compliance with safety precautions during repair work”.
Here are some pictures of a local clean up effort in Odesa after a missile attack hit the southern Ukrainian city.
Religious icons were reportedly removed from the church to be cleaned by locals in Odesa. Photograph: Igor Tkachenko/EPAA woman cleans religious icons near a damaged church after a missile strike in Odesa. Photograph: Igor Tkachenko/EPAA view of damage inside a church after a missile strike in Odesa. Photograph: Igor Tkachenko/EPAThe Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, said on Wednesday it had voted to give its initial backing to legislation that would allow the defence ministry to sign contracts with suspected or convicted criminals to fight in Ukraine.
More than 15 months into its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is trying to recruit more soldiers for Europe’s largest land conflict since the second world war.
Under the proposed changes, a contract could be concluded with someone being investigated for committing a crime, or who is having their case heard in court, or who has been convicted – but before the verdict takes legal effect, according to the database of the Duma.
People convicted of sexual crimes, treason, terrorism or extremism would not be able to sign up, Reuters reports.
Those who do sign up would be exempt from criminal liability upon completion of their contract or if they receive awards for their combat prowess.
The Wagner mercenary group was previously allowed to recruit convicts from prisons to fight in Ukraine, but said in February it had stopped. Prison rights activists say the defence ministry has taken over that process but wanted to make changes.
The new changes being examined by the Duma do not cover recruitment of people already serving their sentences and the defence ministry has not commented.
Kremlin worried by reports a senior Chechen commander has been injured in UkraineThe Kremlin said on Wednesday it was concerned by unconfirmed media reports that a senior Chechen commander had been wounded in Ukraine and was awaiting clarification about what had really happened, Reuters reports.
Earlier on Wednesday, the defence ministry’s TV channel reported that Adam Delimkhanov, head of Chechnya’s national guard, had been injured in Ukraine (See post at 10:32am).
Delimkhanov, who is a member of the Duma as well as commander of the Chechen division of the Russian national guard, is widely seen as the Caucasian region’s second most senior official, behind Ramzan Kadyrov.
Vladimir Putin will hold talks in Moscow on Wednesday with Cuba’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, the Kremlin said.
Russia is seeking to bolster relations with Latin American, African and other non-western countries as the west tries to isolate and economically punish it for its invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, with the prime minister of Cuba, Manuel Marrero Cruz. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/APGermany enshrined a Nato commitment to spending 2% of its gross domestic product on defence and identified Russia as the biggest threat to European security as the government announced its first ever National Security Strategy on Wednesday.
Here are some of the highlights of Germany’s strategy outlined in a policy document and at a government press conference, as reported by Reuters:
Russia is the biggest threat to peace in the Euro-Atlantic area
Russia is trying to destabilise European democracies, weaken EU and Nato
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it is important to continue to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine, including when the war ends
Germany’s military budget was the seventh largest in the world last year behind the US, China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia and the UK.
Nato members pledged in 2014 to move towards spending 2% of GDP on defence by 2024.