Russia claims drone attack on Crimean port repelled
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet repelled a drone attack on the Crimean port of Sevastopol in the early hours of Monday, the Moscow-installed governor of the city has said on the Telegram messaging app.
“According to the latest information: one surface drone was destroyed … the second one exploded on its own,” governor Mikhail Razvozhaev wrote. “Now the city is quiet but all forces and services remain on alert.” No damage was reported, according to Razvozhaev.
Sevastopol, along with the rest of the Crimean peninsula, was declared annexed by Russia in 2014 but is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine. There was no immediate reaction from Ukraine. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia and on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
Explosions were last heard in Sevastopol in February, according to Ukrainian media, when Razvozhaev said Russian air defences had shot down a drone over the Balaklava Thermal Power Plant.
Crimea and Sevastopol, home to the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, have been the sire of regular explosions since August.
In October, a blast crippled the heavily guarded Kerch bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland, a key logistics link for Russian troops in southern Ukraine.
Key events
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, has posted to Telegram to report that overnight an educational establishment in Kramatorsk was hit by shelling. Accompanied by pictures showing damage to a sports hall, citing the local city council, it reports there were no injuries.
Russia is using passports as a tool in the “Russification” of parts of occupied Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update.
Authorities in occupied areas were “almost certainly” coercing the population to accept Russian passports, it said.
“Residents in Kherson have been warned that those who have not accepted a Russian passport by 01 June 2023 will be ‘deported’ and their property seized,” it wrote.
It also said that Russia was likely speeding up the integration of bureaucracy in areas of occupied Ukraine into that of Russia to help “paint the invasion as a success”, especially ahead of next year’s presidential elections.
AFP has published a series of new pictures by photographer Anatolii Stepanov showing some of the destruction inside the eastern city of Bakhmut, over which Ukrainian and Russian forces have been waging a brutal battle for months. Here are a sample:
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has threatened to end the UN-brokered deal allowing the export of Ukrainian grain if the G7 moves ahead with a potential ban on almost all exports to Russia.
The Group of Seven (G7) countries are considering a near-total ban on exports to Russia, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported last week, citing Japanese government sources. Russia has repeatedly threatened to scrap its participation in the grain deal, which is due to expire on 18 May.
Writing on his Telegram channel Medvedev wrote:
This idea from the idiots at the G7 about a total ban of exports to our country by default is beautiful in that it implies a reciprocal ban on imports from our country, including categories of goods that are the most sensitive for the G7.
In such a case, the grain deal – and many other things that they need – will end for them.
The G7 is reportedly discussing reversing its sanctions approach so that exports to Russia are automatically banned unless they are included on a designated list of products allowed to be shipped to the country, according to Reuters. Under the current framework, goods are allowed to be sold to Russia unless they are explicitly black-listed.
Medvedev, a longtime ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, is Putin’s deputy chair at the influential security council and heads a government commission on arms production for the war in Ukraine.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative was agreed by Russia and Ukraine last July to help alleviate a global food crisis. Moscow says it agreed to extend the deal only until 18 May while Kyiv and the UN say the deal has another 60 days to run after then, and are seeking an agreement to ensure it continues.
Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat and other grains, including to the Middle East and Asia. Russia’s invasion last year, however, disrupted the main Black Sea export route, pushing up prices of grain-based foods globally.
China’s cooperation with Europe and other nations is “endless” just as its ties with Russia are “unlimited”, China’s envoy to the European Union has said, in an interview published on Monday.
It was unclear when Fu Cong, the Chinese ambassador to the EU, gave the interview to the Chinese news outlet The Paper according to Reuters.
But its publication came just days after China’s ambassador to France sparked condemnation from Baltic nations Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia when he suggested that they were not necessarily sovereign states.
Fu said:
The European side should correctly understand the reference to ‘no upper limit’. Friendship and cooperation among countries are endless and should not be artificially limited. Sino-Russian cooperation is ‘unlimited’, and the same is true for China and Europe.
Fu warned against “attempts” to use Sino-Russian relations to sow discord between China and Europe, rejecting talk that China had “prior knowledge” of the Ukraine conflict or has been supplying weapons.
Last week ambassador Lu Shaye, when asked by a French television channel whether he considered the peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, part of Ukraine under international law, replied:
Even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective status, as we say, under international law because there’s no international accord to concretise their status as a sovereign country.
Russia claims drone attack on Crimean port repelled
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet repelled a drone attack on the Crimean port of Sevastopol in the early hours of Monday, the Moscow-installed governor of the city has said on the Telegram messaging app.
“According to the latest information: one surface drone was destroyed … the second one exploded on its own,” governor Mikhail Razvozhaev wrote. “Now the city is quiet but all forces and services remain on alert.” No damage was reported, according to Razvozhaev.
Sevastopol, along with the rest of the Crimean peninsula, was declared annexed by Russia in 2014 but is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine. There was no immediate reaction from Ukraine. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia and on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
Explosions were last heard in Sevastopol in February, according to Ukrainian media, when Razvozhaev said Russian air defences had shot down a drone over the Balaklava Thermal Power Plant.
Crimea and Sevastopol, home to the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, have been the sire of regular explosions since August.
In October, a blast crippled the heavily guarded Kerch bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland, a key logistics link for Russian troops in southern Ukraine.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Livingstone. Our top story today:
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet repelled a drone attack on the Crimean port of Sevastopol in the early hours of Monday, the Moscow-installed governor of the city has said through social media.
“According to the latest information: one surface drone was destroyed … the second one exploded on its own,” governor Mikhail Razvozhaev wrote on the Telegram messaging app according to Reuters. “Now the city is quiet.” No damage was reported, Razvozhaev added.
Sevastopol, along with the rest of the Crimean peninsula, was declared annexed by Russia in 2014 but is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine. There was no immediate reaction from Ukraine. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia and on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
Other key developments:
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Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said that if the G7 moved to ban almost all exports to Russia, Moscow would respond by terminating the Black Sea grain deal that enables vital exports of grain from Ukraine. Russia has strongly signalled that it will not allow the deal to continue beyond 18 May.
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Ukraine’s military has set up positions on the eastern side of the Dnipro River near Kherson city, the Institute for the Study of War cites Russian military bloggers as saying. Infiltrating the area could be a first step towards trying to dislodge Russians from positions they are using to shell and shoot at Kherson.
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China’s ambassador to France has sparked anger in eastern Europe and Ukraine while drawing a rebuke from Paris and the EU after questioning the sovereignty of post-Soviet countries. Ambassador Lu Shaye suggested countries that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union “don’t have effective status under international law because there is not an international agreement confirming their status as sovereign nations”.
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Europe’s military spending grew at a record pace in 2022, reaching a level unseen since the cold war following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global security researchers said. The rise in Europe helped global military expenditures reach an eighth straight record at $2.24tn, or 2.2% of the world’s gross domestic product, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
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The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said Moscow “will not forgive” Washington for denying US visas to Russian journalists who were meant to accompany him on a visit to UN headquarters. “We won’t forget, we will not forgive this,” he said. Russia took up the presidency of the 15-member security council in April.
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Russia is advising citizens to avoid travel to Canada. Russia cited what it called numerous cases of discrimination against its citizens, including physical violence, its foreign ministry said.
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Anti-Kremlin protesters staged a rally in Paris on Sunday, urging the EU to impose sanctions on the socialite wife of the Russian deputy defence minister, who they accuse of bypassing sanctions. The protesters said deputy defence minister Timur Ivanov had divorced his wife Svetlana Maniovich last year in order to enable her to live a luxury lifestyle in France and evade sanctions.
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Russia is appealing for “real men” in a new military recruitment drive. Russia’s defence ministry has launched a major drive for volunteer recruits, pitching to their masculine pride amid a limited pool of fighting-age men in Russia, the UK Ministry of Defence says.
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Russia’s defence ministry claims it has captured another three districts in the western part of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Troops who have continued into the heavily contested city are thought to be part of the Wagner group of mercenaries.
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Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba is expected to vent Kyiv’s frustration over wrangling that is holding up an EU plan to buy ammunition to help Ukraine during a video meeting with his EU counterparts. A landmark deal for EU countries to jointly buy artillery shells for Ukraine has not yet been implemented due to disagreements over how much of the business has to stay within Europe.