Summary and welcome
Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These are the latest developments
- Ukraine has ceded some territory in the Donbas region to Russian forces, with Kyiv acknowledging Russia’s “partial success” in recent days. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has described the pressure his forces are under in the east of the country as “hell”. They have recaptured two villages near the city of Sloviansk, according to Ukrainian general Oleksiy Hromov, but have been forced to abandon a coal mine regarded as a key defensive position as forces are pushed to the outskirts of Avdiivka.
- Russia may launch an offensive in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson to try to wrest back momentum from Kyiv and has been visibly building up forces, Hromov said on Thursday. Much of the region is already occupied by Russia after it captured areas at the beginning of its invasion, but Ukrainian forces have been developing a counter-offensive to regain territory.
- Three more ships carrying grain have been authorised to leave Ukraine’s ports on Friday as part of an international accord brokered to unblock grain exports and alleviate the global food crisis. The ships are bound for Turkey, Ireland and the UK. Millions of tonnes of grain have been stuck in Ukraine since Russia invaded just over six months ago.
- Ukraine will receive another financing package worth about $8bn from the European Union by September, a German government source told Reuters.
- Canada is sending up to 225 Canadian armed forces to the UK to recommence the training of Ukrainian military recruits, the Canadian defence minister has announced. Since 2015, Canada has trained 33,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel but in February paused aspects of the training.
- Eight people have been killed and four wounded in Russian artillery shelling in the eastern Ukrainian town of Toretsk in Donetsk oblast on Thursday, the regional governor has said. The shelling hit a public transport stop where people had gathered. Three children were among the wounded, said the area’s governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
- Nato members are working closely with defence companies to ensure Ukraine gets more supplies of weapons and equipment to be prepared for a drawn out war with Russia, the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Thursday. He told Reuters in an interview: “We are providing a lot of support but we need to do even more and be prepared for the long haul.”
- A US official accused Moscow of preparing to plant fake evidence to make it look like the recent mass killing of Ukrainian prisoners in an attack on a Russian-controlled prison was caused by Ukraine. Kyiv and Moscow have traded blame over the strikes on the prison in Kremlin-controlled Olenivka, in eastern Ukraine, last week.
- Amnesty International has said the Ukrainian army is endangering the life of civilians by basing themselves in residential areas. The report has been rejected by Ukrainian government representatives, who say it places blame on Ukraine for Russia’s invasion. The human rights group’s researchers found that Ukrainian forces were using some schools and hospitals as bases, firing near houses and sometimes living in residential flats. Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, accused Amnesty of “distorting the real picture” and of failing to understand the situation on the ground.
Key events
A team of inspectors in Turkey on Friday began checking an empty cargo ship before it heads off to collect grain from the Ukrainian port of Chornomorsk under a deal to restart Ukrainian grain exports, the Turkish Defence Ministry has said.
The ministry published photos on Twitter showing the inspection team boarding a boat to head out to the Barbados-flagged general cargo ship Fulmar S, which was at anchor in the Black Sea just to the north of Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait.
Ukrayna’nın Çernomorsk Limanı’ndan tahıl almaya gitmek üzere İstanbul’un kuzeyindeki demir yerinde bulunan Barbados bandıralı FULMAR S isimli boş geminin Müşterek Koordinasyon Merkezi timi tarafından denetimine başlanmıştır. pic.twitter.com/hItI1XYVsb
— T.C. Millî Savunma Bakanlığı (@tcsavunma) August 5, 2022
Ukraine has called for the deal that relaxes Russia’s blockade of its Black Sea grain exports to be extended to include other products, such as metals, the Financial Times has reported.
“This agreement is about logistics, about the movement of vessels through the Black Sea,” Ukraine’s deputy economy minister Taras Kachka told FT. “What’s the difference between grain and iron ore?”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has lashed out at Amnesty International after it accused his forces of violating international law and endangering civilians in their defence against Russia’s invasion.
In a report on Thursday, Amnesty listed incidents in 19 cities and towns in which Ukrainian forces appeared to have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases in residential areas – findings Zelenskiy equated to victim blaming in his evening address.
The rights group, he said, had sought to offer “amnesty (to) the terrorist state and shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim”.
“There is no condition, even hypothetically, under which any Russian strike on Ukraine becomes justified. Aggression against our state is unprovoked, invasive and terrorist.
If someone makes a report in which the victim and the aggressor are supposedly equal in some way … then this cannot be tolerated.”
Relatives of prisoners of war captured by the Russians following the fall of Mariupol gathered in central Kyiv Thursday demanding information about their husbands, fathers and sons following a strike on a prison housing PoWs in a separatist region of eastern Ukraine last week that killed and wounded dozens.
Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for the attack, while US officials believe Russia is looking to plant false evidence to make it appear that Ukrainian forces were responsible.
Relatives of prisoners of war are increasingly frustrated at the lack of information they are getting about the fate of their loved ones. Because the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) acted as a guarantor of the security of the military members who left Azovstal in May, they are looking to the committee to give them answers.
“Our goal is to reach the Red Cross, to say that they are not fulfilling their duties. We entrusted them with the lives of our boys,” says Iryna Yermoshyna, the wife of a PoW.
Summary and welcome
Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These are the latest developments
- Ukraine has ceded some territory in the Donbas region to Russian forces, with Kyiv acknowledging Russia’s “partial success” in recent days. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has described the pressure his forces are under in the east of the country as “hell”. They have recaptured two villages near the city of Sloviansk, according to Ukrainian general Oleksiy Hromov, but have been forced to abandon a coal mine regarded as a key defensive position as forces are pushed to the outskirts of Avdiivka.
- Russia may launch an offensive in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson to try to wrest back momentum from Kyiv and has been visibly building up forces, Hromov said on Thursday. Much of the region is already occupied by Russia after it captured areas at the beginning of its invasion, but Ukrainian forces have been developing a counter-offensive to regain territory.
- Three more ships carrying grain have been authorised to leave Ukraine’s ports on Friday as part of an international accord brokered to unblock grain exports and alleviate the global food crisis. The ships are bound for Turkey, Ireland and the UK. Millions of tonnes of grain have been stuck in Ukraine since Russia invaded just over six months ago.
- Ukraine will receive another financing package worth about $8bn from the European Union by September, a German government source told Reuters.
- Canada is sending up to 225 Canadian armed forces to the UK to recommence the training of Ukrainian military recruits, the Canadian defence minister has announced. Since 2015, Canada has trained 33,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel but in February paused aspects of the training.
- Eight people have been killed and four wounded in Russian artillery shelling in the eastern Ukrainian town of Toretsk in Donetsk oblast on Thursday, the regional governor has said. The shelling hit a public transport stop where people had gathered. Three children were among the wounded, said the area’s governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
- Nato members are working closely with defence companies to ensure Ukraine gets more supplies of weapons and equipment to be prepared for a drawn out war with Russia, the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Thursday. He told Reuters in an interview: “We are providing a lot of support but we need to do even more and be prepared for the long haul.”
- A US official accused Moscow of preparing to plant fake evidence to make it look like the recent mass killing of Ukrainian prisoners in an attack on a Russian-controlled prison was caused by Ukraine. Kyiv and Moscow have traded blame over the strikes on the prison in Kremlin-controlled Olenivka, in eastern Ukraine, last week.
- Amnesty International has said the Ukrainian army is endangering the life of civilians by basing themselves in residential areas. The report has been rejected by Ukrainian government representatives, who say it places blame on Ukraine for Russia’s invasion. The human rights group’s researchers found that Ukrainian forces were using some schools and hospitals as bases, firing near houses and sometimes living in residential flats. Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, accused Amnesty of “distorting the real picture” and of failing to understand the situation on the ground.