Ukrainian soldiers arrive in UK for training
The Ukrainian soldiers being trained in the UK have met UK defence secretary Ben Wallace, Press Association reports, at the start of their training, which is expected to last several weeks.
Wallace said: “This ambitious new training programme is the next phase in the UK’s support to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression. Using the world-class expertise of the British Army we will help Ukraine to rebuild its forces and scale up its resistance as they defend their country’s sovereignty and their right to choose their own future.”
The training will give volunteer recruits with little or no military experience the skills to be effective in frontline combat. Based on the UK’s basic soldier training, the course covers weapons handling, battlefield first aid, fieldcraft, patrol tactics and the law of armed conflict.
The government has procured thousands of AK assault rifles for the programme, meaning Ukrainian soldiers can train on the weapons they will be using on the front line.
Key events:
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, were holding talks on the Indonesian island of Bali on Saturday, a day after they both attended a gathering of top diplomats from the Group of 20 wealthy and large developing countries.
Blinken discussed Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, and raised concerns over Beijing’s alignment with Moscow, AP reports.
Speaking to reporters after talks with Wang, which lasted more than five hours, he said:
We are concerned about the PRC’s alignment with Russia. I don’t believe China is acting in a way that is neutral.
Blinken said they see no signs “at this moment in time” that Russia is willing to engage in meaningful diplomacy, according to Reuters.
The aggression is not only against Ukraine, he said but against the basic principles of the world order. “We will see in coming days if Russia got the message at G20.”
Ukraine restores Danube River ports in emergency effort to get grain out
Ukraine is restoring and expanding some of its long-decommissioned river ports on the Danube to facilitate the exportation of grain due to Russia’s Black Sea blockade.
Before the war, Ukrainian river ports on the Danube were seldom used, with some of them in complete disrepair. But following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its control of exit routes to the Black Sea , Kyiv is resuscitating its old river harbours in order to avoid the sea blockade and accelerate the exportation of the country’s wheat.
“Take the example of the Reni River port,’’ Alla Stoyanova, the head of the department of agricultural policy of Odesa region, told the Guardian. The port was among the most important of the Danube region during the Soviet Union and a passageway to Romania. “It wasn’t used at all recently. So now we are working to expand it, alongside other river ports, to increase capacity. As we speak, over 160 ships are awaiting in the Black Sea to enter the Sulina canal, but they can’t because the capacity of that canal is only 5-6 ships a day.”
Read more from my colleagues Lorenzo Tondo in Odesa and Pjotr Sauer:
Russian shelling on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih has killed two people and injured three, according to the governor of Dnipropetrovsk.
In a Telegram post, Valentyn Reznichenko also said:
A 43-year-old man is in the hospital. This is the father of the dead girl. How to tell him that his child is no longer there…
Earlier we reported on Ukrainian soldiers arriving in UK for training. Around 1,050 UK service personnel are running the programme which will train up to 10,000 Ukrainians over the coming months.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who visited the training this week, said:
This ambitious new training programme is the next phase in the UK’s support to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression. Using the world-class expertise of the British Army we will help Ukraine to rebuild its forces and scale-up its resistance as they defend their country’s sovereignty and their right to choose their own future.
A woman’s portrait painted in the blue and yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag and also streaked with blood-red paint is among 300 pictures by Ukrainian children being displayed in a Kyiv bomb shelter.
The exhibition – titled Children. War. Future – opened to journalists on Friday in a central Kyiv metro station that has been closed since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on 24 February, Agence France-Presse reports.
Olena Sotnyk, an exhibition organiser as well as a Ukrainian politician and adviser to the prime minister, said: “It’s worth reminding adults – the whole world – that children see all this, experience it, feel it. And, unlike us, they can’t make decisions.
“They expect adults and the world to act to stop the war.”
The paintings by Ukrainian children from across the country depict horrors in places such as Mariupol – a city brutally besieged and bombed by Russian forces – and Bucha, one of the first towns where civilians were found killed en masse.
Others are optimistic: a smiling soldier straps on a helmet, a woman wears a blue and yellow wreath of flowers with a dove surrounded by multicoloured flowers.
But the captions are unambiguous: “No to war” and “I don’t want to die”.
Here are some of the latest images to be sent to us from Ukraine and elsewhere over the newswires.
Russia launches shelling in east Ukraine
Russia launched a shelling of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Saturday, according to the region’s governor.
Pavlo Kyrylenko said according to “preliminary information” there had been a missile strike in the city of Druzhkivka. He said a hospital, the Palace of Culture, residential buildings and a playground were damaged. They are awaiting information about victims.
In Slovyansk, a home was targeted, burying the owner under rubble. Kyrylenko said rescue workers are on site.
Russian’s also fired at a railway station in Chasovoy Yar, the governor said, where several people were injured. And overnight, the city of Hirnyk came under fire, he said, cutting power lines, wounding two civilians and damaging residential buildings and infrastructure. Parts of Svitlodar are also under fire.
“The only correct way out is evacuation!” Kyrylenko said in a post on Telegram.
Germany says it hopes to convince Canada to deliver a turbine needed to maintain the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, with Russia waiting on the machine’s arrival before increasing supplies, Agence France-Presse reports.
Germany is seeking to bolster waning energy supplies, but Ukraine has accused Berlin of giving in to Russian “blackmail” after Moscow blamed reduced supplies on the need for pipeline repairs, not market conditions amid the Ukraine war.
The turbine is currently undergoing maintenance at a Canadian site owned by the German industrial giant Siemens.
Russian energy behemoth Gazprom last month blamed the issue for a reduction in supplies to Germany via the controversial pipeline, with Berlin facing a serious energy crisis.
Berlin says it has been in regular contact with Ottawa in recent weeks to ensure the turbine’s swift transfer back to Europe without Canada falling foul of Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia.
Germany has been concerned by a wider pipeline maintenance session set to start on Monday and for around 10 days.
A German government spokesperson, Steffen Hebestreit, said on Friday that Berlin had received “positive signals” from Canada.
Russia is moving forces across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, according to Britain’s ministry of defence.
The latest intelligence update from Saturday said a large proportion of the new infantry units are “probably” deploying with MT-LB armoured vehicles taken from long-term storage.
The update said Russia has long considered them unsuitable for most infantry transport roles.
Despite president Putin’s claim on 07 July 2022 that the Russian military has ‘not even started’ its efforts in Ukraine, many of its reinforcements are ad hoc groupings, deploying with obsolete or inappropriate equipment.
This is Geneva Abdul in London, I’ll be taking you through updates over the next few hours.
A Ukrainian regional official has warned of deteriorating living conditions in a city captured by Russian forces two weeks ago, saying Sievierodonetsk is without water, power or a working sewage system while the bodies of the dead decompose in hot apartment buildings.
Governor Serhiy Haidai said on Friday that Russian forces were unleashing indiscriminate artillery barrages as they tried to secure their gains in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk province.
Moscow this week claimed full control of Luhansk, but the governor and other Ukrainian officials said their troops retained a small part of the province.
“Fierce battles are going on in several villages on the region’s border,” Haidai told Associated Press. “The Russians are relying on tanks and artillery to advance, leaving scorched earth.”
Occupied Sievierodonetsk, meanwhile, “is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe”, the governor wrote on social media. “The Russians have completely destroyed all the critical infrastructure.”
The Guardian’s weekly wrap is here and contains a selection of crucial points from the past week’s coverage, from the fighting in Donbas and the retaking of Snake Island to the $750bn “Marshall plan” to rebuild postwar Ukraine.
Ukrainian soldiers arrive in UK for training
The Ukrainian soldiers being trained in the UK have met UK defence secretary Ben Wallace, Press Association reports, at the start of their training, which is expected to last several weeks.
Wallace said: “This ambitious new training programme is the next phase in the UK’s support to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression. Using the world-class expertise of the British Army we will help Ukraine to rebuild its forces and scale up its resistance as they defend their country’s sovereignty and their right to choose their own future.”
The training will give volunteer recruits with little or no military experience the skills to be effective in frontline combat. Based on the UK’s basic soldier training, the course covers weapons handling, battlefield first aid, fieldcraft, patrol tactics and the law of armed conflict.
The government has procured thousands of AK assault rifles for the programme, meaning Ukrainian soldiers can train on the weapons they will be using on the front line.
Summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here is a summary of the latest developments.
- Ukraine’s deputy prime minister has asked all residents in the Russian-occupied territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to “evacuate by all possible means”. “Please leave – our army will begin retaking these areas. Our determination is rock solid. And it will be very difficult later to open humanitarian corridors when children are involved,” said Iryna Vereshchuk, according to Ukrainian media.
- The first cohort of Ukrainian soldiers have arrived in the UK to be trained in combat by British forces. The programme will train up to 10,000 Ukrainians over the coming months to give volunteer recruits with little to no military experience the skills to be effective in frontline combat. Around 1,050 UK service personnel are being deployed to run the programme, which will take place at Ministry of Defence sites across the the UK.
- Luhansk’s governor said Russian forces were indiscriminately shelling populated areas on Friday, Reuters reports. “They are not stopped even by the fact that civilians remain there, dying in houses and yards,” Serhiy Gaidai said.
- Belgium will reopen its embassy in Kyiv and send a new ambassador, the Belgian prime minister confirmed. The embassy would open next week and ambassador Peter Van De Velde, whom Alexander De Croo met before he was sent to Ukraine, will represent Belgium.
- Ukraine’s military says it has destroyed two Russian command posts near Kherson, according to Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for the joint southern command of Ukraine’s armed forces.
- The Ukrainian foreign minister criticised Russia at the G20 summit in Bali, saying it prefers to follow its own rules instead of cooperating multilaterally with the international community. “I am strong supporter of multilateralism,” Dmytro Kuleba said. “But it lacks tools to protect itself from those who disrespect other nations, who prefer to play with common rules instead of playing by the rules. We have such a country at this table today – Russia.”
- The Ukrainian parliament adopted a set of new laws on Friday during its plenary session. The new laws include safety guarantees for journalists working in battle areas, improved social protection for rescuers, and postponed transitioning to keep records of the gas volumes in units of energy.
- The US is sending four more Himars, or high mobility artillery rocket systems, to Ukraine, a US senior defence official said at a press briefing on Friday. The four additional Himars will bring the total number given to Ukraine to 12. According to the official, the first eight were especially useful as the fighting in Donbas against Russian forces evolved into an artillery fight.
