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Ukraine is reportedly planning to attack occupied Crimea with Himars and British Storm Shadow missile, Russia has claimed in a warning to Kyiv and the West.
Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, said that Russia would retaliate if Ukraine started hitting the territory that Vladimir Putin annexed in 2014
“The use of these missiles outside the zone of our special military operation would mean that the United States and Britain would be fully dragged into the conflict and would entail immediate strikes on decision-making centres in Ukraine,” warned Mr Shoigu.
Crimea may become within target of Ukraine’s arsenal of missiles and artillery as its counter offensive pushes further south. Ukraine says it has recaptured 113 square km (44 square miles) of land from Russian forces.
Last week, Russian sources said that more than a hundred Russian soldiers may have been killed by a Ukrainian Himars strike after they were ordered to wait in large numbers to listen to a general’s speech.
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Ukraine said that one rescue worker and several others were injured by Russian forces in the southern city of Kherson, which was recently flooded after the breach of a major dam nearby.
“One employee of the State Emergency Service dead, another eight were injured in Kherson,” Ukrainian interior minister Igor Klymenko said on social media, adding that the team was involved in clean up efforts in the wake of the flood.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would set out a new assistance package for Ukraine on Wednesday at a conference aimed at encouraging private companies to invest in the country’s reconstruction after Russia’s invasion.
Kyiv and London will host the Ukraine recovery conference in London on Wednesday and Thursday, when more than 1,000 foreign officials from over 60 states along with business chiefs and global investors will discuss ways to help the country rebuild.
“President Biden said … that we would stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes, and both of our countries are deeply committed to that,” Mr Blinken told a press conference alongside British foreign minister James Cleverly.
“We will continue to deliver on that commitment, including through a new robust US assistance package that I’ll be able to announce tomorrow.”
A “significant” ammunition dump in Russian-occupied Rykove has been destroyed, new satellite imagery shows.
Pictures show widespread destruction of an alleged supply depot in Rykove, 125 miles southeast of the city of Kherson, near the port town of Henichesk.
“This was a very significant ammunition depot. It has been destroyed,” said Odesa’s military administration.
Rykove, located on the railroad between Crimea and Melitopol, is an important logistical hub for Russians in the occupied part of Kherson region.
In the southern Kherson region on Tuesday, Ukrainian forces reportedly struck the Russian-controlled town of Nova Kakhovka with drones,local Russian-appointed authorities said.
On Monday, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said that the Ukrainian counter offensive was making “good progress”.
Even by the standards of a Protestant preacher, Pastor Ihor Yershov’s services are austere affairs. He wears a t-shirt and flak jacket rather than collar and cassock, and his “church” constitutes whichever building still happens to be standing in the bomb-ravaged Donbas villages where his flock continue to dwell.
Yet for residents of hamlets like Maximilianivka, close to the front lines of Ukraine’s ongoing counter-offensive, his pop-up preaching sessions in homes and basements are their only chance to hear the word of God.
“Maximilianivka is about 70 per cent destroyed and the people that are still there are living in terrible conditions,” Mr Yershov told The Telegraph from his base in nearby Kurakhove, as distant explosions sounded from the fighting outside the nearby separatist-held city of Donetsk.
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A Russian soldier who destroyed a German-made Leopard tank in a battle in Ukraine has been given a 1 million rouble ($11,842) reward by a private foundation, Russia’s defence ministry said on Tuesday.
It published a video showing the soldier, Andrei Kravtsov, sitting on a hospital bed and receiving a reward certificate from Alexander Karelin, a three-time Olympic champion in Greco-Roman wrestling.
The ministry did not say when and where Kravtsov had destroyed the tank or what he was being treated for in hospital. In the video, he appeared to be missing his right hand.
Russia says its forces have destroyed a number of German-made Leopards and U.S.-supplied Bradley fighting vehicles since Ukraine launched a counteroffensive earlier this month. Reuters could not independently verify the numbers involved.
The defence ministry last week said it had paid individual bonuses.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he had called on China to use its influence over Russia more in regards to the war in Ukraine.
Speaking alongside China’s Premier Li Qiang after bilateral talks in the German capital, Mr Scholz also said China should not supply weapons to Russia and that the war in Ukraine should not become a frozen conflict.
This is the Chinese Premier’s first foreign trip since taking office in March.
The meeting in Berlin is the seventh time Germany and China have held high-level government consultations and comes a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, indicating an effort by Beijing to reach out to the West and improve frosty relations.
Germany is keen to maintain good ties with China, its biggest trading partner, despite wariness over Beijing’s growing assertiveness and refusal to criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Germany’s recently published national security strategy describes China as “a partner, competitor and systemic rival.”
The European Union’s chief executive, Ursula von der Leyen, on Tuesday unveiled an aid package for Ukraine worth 50 billion euros.
The figure comes after a review of the bloc’s 2021-27 budget and ahead of an international conference in London this week aimed at raising more funds to rebuild Ukraine from its war with Russia.
The 50-billion-euro budget reserve will provide perspective and reliability to the blocs Ukrainian partners, von der Leyen said in remarks to journalists after an EU commission meeting in Brussels.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that Ukraine was planning to attack Moscow-controlled Crimea with HIMARS long-range artillery systems and Storm Shadow missiles, and warned that Russia would retaliate, TASS reported.
Such strikes, which Russia considers to be outside the area of what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, would also mean full-scale involvement of the United States and Britain in the conflict, TASS quoted Shoigu as saying.
Yevgeny Prigozhin has complained that most of his fighters had not yet received medals promised by President Vladimir Putin for their role in the Ukraine war’s bloodiest battle, the latest twist in a feud with the top brass.
Prigozhin’s Wagner private army spearheaded the assault on the eastern city of Bakhmut, captured last month by Russian forces after nine months of fighting.
Putin congratulated Wagner and the Russian army at the time and said that all those who distinguished themselves would get state awards.
But Prigozhin, who has publicly accused the Defence Ministry and its leadership of incompetence and of failing to adequately supply his forces, said most of his men had not been decorated.
“Of the state awards for Bakhmut, only Hero of Russia stars have been received. Nothing has been awarded to the fighters, the bulk of the fighters. The lists are with the Ministry of Defence,” he said in a statement released by his press office.
“According to my information, there is a fuss over signing off on the awards. Everybody has already forgotten that they fought and died there,” Prigozhin added, accusing generals of instead “adorning themselves with trinkets”.
There was no immediate reaction to his criticism from the Defence Ministry which has ignored his public complaints.
More footage of fire and detonations in occupied Rykove
📹 via UNIAN pic.twitter.com/mse26sc10l
The threat of Vladimir Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is “real”, Joe Biden has said, days after denouncing Russia’s deployment of such weapons in Belarus.
“When I was out here about two years ago saying I worried about the Colorado river drying up, everybody looked at me like I was crazy,” the US President told a group of donors in California on Monday.
“They looked at me like when I said I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons. It’s real,” Mr Biden said.
On Saturday, Mr Biden called Putin’s announcement that Russia had deployed its first tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus “absolutely irresponsible”.
Last week, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country has started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The deployment is Russia’s first move of such warheads – shorter-range, less powerful nuclear weapons that could be used on the battlefield – outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine is in negotiations with Western arms manufacturers to boost production of weapons, including drones, and could sign contracts in coming months, a Ukrainian minister told Reuters.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year Ukraine has been scrambling to secure weapons ranging from munitions to rocket launchers to missiles.
It has received support from countries such as the United States, Germany and Britain and Sergiy Boyev, deputy minister for Strategic Industries in Ukraine, said Kyiv was in talks with manufacturers from Germany, Italy, France and eastern Europe about them producing weapons in Ukraine itself.
“We are in very detailed discussions with them. And we are certain that we will have the contracts agreements signed within the next few months,” Mr Boyev told Reuters on the sidelines of the Paris Airshow.
In May, Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy said the country was working with British defence company BAE Systems to set up a Ukrainian base to both produce and repair weapons from tanks to artillery.
No deal has been signed yet.
Russia jailed a dual Ukrainian and Russian national for 16 years on Tuesday on terrorism-linked charges for fighting alongside Kyiv’s forces in Ukraine.
A judge in a military court in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don handed down the ruling to a man named Denis Muryga, accusing him of fighting as part of Ukraine’s Aidar battalion, Russian news agencies reported.
The unit is active around Bakhmut, a persistent hotspot of fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claimed to have annexed last year.
“Muryga is found guilty,” the judge said, the Interfax news agency reported, citing a journalist in the courtroom.
State prosecutors had requested a sentence of 18 years, it said.
Ukrainian forces reportedly struck the Russian-controlled town of Nova Kakhovka in the southern Kherson region with drones and three civilians were wounded, the TASS news agency reported, citing the local Russian-appointed authorities.
The attack took place in the morning, TASS said, and was carried out by loitering munitions, also known as kamikaze drones.
Reuters could not independently verify the report.
There is absolutely nothing in this brutal war that is taking place on our land that would make our Ukraine a source of war or the territory of those who want to take something away from another people. We are defending the lives of our people, our freedom, our independence, our… pic.twitter.com/D425Dej7k9
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that India’s stance on Russia in the Ukraine conflict has not faced widespread criticism in the United States.
Asked in an interview with the Wall Street Journal about critical comments in the US for not taking a more forceful stance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Modi said: “I don’t think this type of perception is widespread in the US.”
“I think India’s position is well known and well understood in the entire world. The world has full confidence that India’s top-most priority is peace.”
Modi left on Tuesday on a state visit to the US billed as a turning point for bilateral relations, with deeper cooperation in defence and high technology in focus.
Russia launched a widespread overnight air attack on Ukraine on Tuesday, targeting military and infrastructure facilities in Kyiv and other cities, officials said on Tuesday.
Ukraine said it had shot down 32 out of 35 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched from Russia’s Bryansk region and the Azov Sea.
There was no mention of any casualties in the latest air strikes launched by Moscow since Kyiv began a counteroffensive in which it says it has recaptured 113 square km (44 square miles) of land from Russian forces.
The air force said on the Telegram messaging app that air defences had been in action in most regions of Ukraine.
“However, the main direction of attack by Iranian drones was the Kyiv region. More than two dozen Shaheds were destroyed here,” its said on the Telegram messaging app.
Britain will keep sanctions against Russia in place until the Kremlin has compensated Ukraine for the destruction it has caused, under new legislation introduced by the Government.
A raft of measures to tighten the sanctions regime will also create a route for sanctioned individuals to “do the right thing” by voluntarily donating frozen assets to a Ukrainian recovery fund, Number 10 said.
James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, said: “As Ukraine continues to defend itself against Russia’s invasion, the terrible impacts of [Vladimir] Putin’s war are clear. Ukraine’s reconstruction needs are – and will be – immense.
Read more from The Telegraph’s Senior Foreign Correspondent here
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 20 June 2023.
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/sbCxVQyYL8
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Russia launched a widespread overnight air attack on Ukraine targeting the capital and cities from east to west as most of the country spent the night with air raid sirens blasting for several hours.
The military administration of Lviv, a city of about 700,000 people and 70km from the border with the Nato country of Poland, said Russia hit a “critical infrastructure” in the city, sparking fire.
According to preliminary reports, there were no casualties.
Yuri Malashko, head of the military administration of the Zaporizhzhia region in southeast Ukraine, said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia’s raid targeted telecommunication infrastructure and agriculture and farming properties.
There were no casualties reported in Zaporizhzhia.
Russia launched an overnight air attack on the Western Ukraine city of Lviv, rocking it and the surrounding region with explosions, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said on the Telegram messaging app early on Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear whether the explosions were Ukraine’s defence systems repelling the attack or target being hit.
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