Ukraine’s defence minister said on Sunday the reluctance of Western allies to send fighter jets would cost Ukrainian forces “more lives” as fierce fighting continued in the eastern battleground city of Bakhmut.
Earlier, Germany’s prosecutor general said his office had collected “hundreds” of pieces of evidence showing war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine, calling for an international effort to bring leaders to justice. Follow our live blog to see today’s events. All times are Paris time (GMT+1).
9:10pm: Zelensky calls situation along Donetsk front line ‘very difficult’
Fierce battles are raging in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region as Russia intensifies pressure before the first anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said in his nightly address.
“Things are very difficult in Donetsk region – fierce battles,” the Ukrainian leader said. “But however difficult it is and however much pressure there is, we must endure… We have no alternative to defending ourselves and winning.”
Russia, he said, was applying increased pressure to “make up for its defeats last year. We see that on various sectors of the front and also pressure in terms of information.”
7:15pm: Fierce fighting for Ukraine’s Bakhmut, says Wagner chief
The head of Russia’s private Wagner militia says fierce fighting is ongoing in the northern parts of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has been the focus of Russian forces’ attention for weeks.
Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the founder and head of the Wagner group, said his soldiers were “fighting for every street, every house, every stairwell” against Ukrainian forces who were not retreating.
Russian forces have been attempting to encircle and capture Bakhmut, a city in the eastern Donbas region, for weeks, and appear to be making slow, grinding and costly progress.
Earlier in the day, Britain’s defence ministry said Russia had made “small advances” in its attempt to encircle Bakhmut.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday described Bakhmut as “our fortress”, saying Ukraine would fight for the city “as long as we can”.
5:40pm: EU bans Russian diesel and other oil products
An EU ban on Russian diesel fuel and other refined oil products has come into force, slashing energy dependency on Moscow and seeking to further crimp the Kremlin’s fossil fuel earnings as punishment for invading Ukraine.
The ban comes along with a price cap agreed by the G7 group of industralised nations. The goal is allowing Russian diesel to keep flowing to countries like China and India and avoiding a sudden price rise that would hurt consumers worldwide, while reducing the profits funding Moscow’s budget and war.
“Once we have these price caps set, we can squeeze the Russian price and deny them, deny (President Vladimir) Putin money for his war without a price spike that’s going to hurt Western economies and developing economies,” Thomas O’Donnell, a global fellow with the Washington-based Wilson Center, told AP.
However, the new sanctions create uncertainty about prices as the 27-nation EU finds new supplies of diesel from the US, Middle East and India to replace those from Russia. Those are longer journeys than from Russia’s ports, stretching available tankers.
4:35pm: Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Kharkiv hit residential building, university
Ukrainian officials say five people were injured in the Russian rocket attacks that targeted the centre of Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, earlier today.
Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said four people were injured when a Russian S-300 missile fell near an apartment block and another was hurt when a missile hit a higher-education building.
Local media reports said the building hit was the National Academy for Urban Economy, located about 700 metres from the city’s central square.
3:40pm: Ukraine has reserves to repel new Russian offensive
More from the Ukrainian defence minister, who says Kyiv is preparing for a possible major Russian offensive this month, to coincide with the first anniversary of the invasion.
Oleksii Reznikov told a news conference that Ukraine has the reserves to hold back Moscow’s forces even though not all the West’s latest military supplies will have arrived in time.
However, Reznikov also said the reluctance of Kyiv’s Western allies to send fighter jets to Ukraine would cost it “more lives”.
In an interview with FRANCE 24 this week, Igor Zhovkva, an aide to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Kyiv remained hopeful that Western countries would agree to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine “soon”.
2:35pm: Ukraine says it will not strike Russian territory with new missiles
Ukraine will not use longer-range weapons pledged by the United States to hit Russian territory and will only target Russian units in occupied Ukrainian territory, Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov has said.
The United States confirmed on Friday that a new rocket that would double Ukraine’s strike range was included in a $2.175 billion US military aid package to help Kyiv fight back Russian forces.
“We always tell our partners officially that we will not use weapons supplied by foreign partners to fire on Russian territory. We only fire on Russian units on temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory,” Reznikov told reporters at a news conference.
1:41pm: Germany has ‘hundreds’ of pieces of Ukraine war crime evidence, prosecutor says
Germany’s prosecutor general said Sunday that his office had collected “hundreds” of pieces of evidence showing war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine, calling for an international effort to bring leaders to justice.
He said most of the evidence came from interviews with Ukrainian refugees, and the goal was now to “prepare for a possible later court case – whether in Germany or with our foreign partners or an international court”.
Frank’s office has previously used the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows the prosecution of certain grave crimes regardless of where they took place, to try Syrians over atrocities committed during the country’s civil war.
11:10am: Fierce fighting in north of Ukraine’s Bakhmut, says Russian head of Wagner militia
The head of Russia’s private Wagner militia said on Sunday that fierce fighting was ongoing in the northern parts of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has been the focus of Russian forces’ attention for weeks. Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the founder and head of the Wagner Group, said his soldiers were “fighting for every street, every house, every stairwell” against Ukrainian forces who were not retreating.
Russian forces have been attempting to encircle and capture Bakhmut, a city in the eastern Donbas region, for weeks, and appear to be making slow, grinding and costly progress.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said repeatedly in recent days that the situation around the city is tough. “Nobody will give away Bakhmut. We will fight for as long as we can. We consider Bakhmut our fortress,” he said on Friday.
Britain’s defence ministry said on Sunday Russia had made “small advances” in its attempt to encircle Bakhmut.
8:45am: Ukraine’s forces still hold Bilohorivka, last part of Luhansk region
Ukrainian forces remained in control of the village of Bilohorivka, the Luhansk region governor Serhiy Haidai said on Sunday: “The situation at the front is tense, but controlled by Ukrainian forces,” Haidai said.
“Information is being spread in the Russian Federation about the alleged capture of Bilohorivka and the removal of our people from there,” Haidai told the national broadcaster. “Our troops remain in their positions, nobody has captured Bilohorivka, nobody has entered there, there is no enemy there.”
Some Moscow-installed officials and pro-Russian military bloggers have recently claimed Russian advances in the direction of Bilohorivka, the last part of Luhansk held by Ukrainian forces.
“The number of Russian attacks has … increased, but all of them have been repulsed by our troops, who remain in their positions.”
07:40am: Russian missile hits residential building in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, mayor says
Two Russian missiles hit the centre of Kharkiv, the administrative capital of the Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s northeast, with one of the missiles striking a residential building, the city’s mayor said on Sunday.
“At this time, it known that there is a fire in one of the residential buildings and one injured person,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging platform.
7:35am: Germany’s Scholz says Putin ‘has not threatened me or Germany’ in telephone calls
Russian President Vladimir Putin in his telephone conversations with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz “has not made any threats against me or Germany”, Scholz said in an interview with Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
Former British prime minister Boris Johnson, speaking to the BBC for a documentary early this week, said the Russian leader had threatened him with a missile strike that would “only take a minute”. The Kremlin said Johnson was lying.
Scholz said the conversations he had with Putin made it clear they had very different views of the war in Ukraine, which Russia calls a “special military operation”.
“I made it very clear to Putin that Russia has sole responsibility for the war,” Scholz said. “Russia has invaded its neighbour for no reason, in order to take parts of Ukraine or the whole country under its control.”
