Zelenskiy: Ukraine losing up to 100 soldiers every day
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has conceded that Kyiv’s forces are currently suffering up to 100 fatalities and 500 wounded every day.
In an interview with the US Newsmax television channel that aired yesterday, Zelenskiy said:
The situation is very difficult; we’re losing 60-100 soldiers per day as killed in action and something around 500 people as wounded in action. So we are holding our defensive perimeters.
The most difficult situation is in the east of Ukraine and southern Donetsk and Luhansk, Zelenskiy added.
Ukraine and its people are the “defensive perimeter” for the world against Vladimir Putin’s aggression, he told the channel.
We have to realise who is the dark power: it’s Russia. And Russia is not going to stop in Ukraine, for sure. The other countries, the former Republics of USSR and the members of the EU – some of them are already Nato member nations – they’re already under threat.
The Ukrainian president called out the “weakness” of Putin and Russia, not only in failing to occupy a smaller neighbouring nation but also in attempts to take him out as leader.
He said:
Attempting to kill the leader of this or that country is a weakness, I would say. If you can’t talk, then it’s a weakness.
Putin cannot win, and the world must stop defending him amid the latest “atrocities” committed by Russian troops, he continued, while also calling out the lack of fully enforcing sanctions.
Now, he’s almost isolated. The world always keeps giving him a chance, because the sanctions are not imposed completely. There’s gaps in some of the leaders saying the Russian leader should be offered with a way out.
There has been another Telegram update from Serhiy Haidai, governor of Luhansk, this time with what he says is good news – a successful evacuation. He posted:
The mountain community suffers daily from enemy shelling, the racists level the settlements with artillery and aircraft. The hottest in Toshkivka and Zolote, orcs [a slang term for Russian forces] deliberately roam the high-rises. It was extremely difficult to drive, the road is constantly under fire, but our heroes broke through – brought in ambulances and evacuated nine people – retirees and people with limited mobility.
Haidai goes on to claim that the people are now safe.
A Ukrainian MP has warned of an impending famine if action is not taken to unblock the country’s ports and release millions of tonnes of grain.
PA Media reports Kira Rudik, leader of the liberal Voice party, was speaking to journalists at the Scottish Parliament.
“Before the war, Ukraine was top three of the countries producing grains: wheat, sunflower oil, tomatoes and corn,” Rudik said.
Exports that could feed the rest of the world, the MP said, were stuck in ports in Ukraine with “no way of getting them out”.
“In 10 weeks, we are facing famine, especially for countries in the [global] south. We need a unified approach to help unblock our ports and help get all this harvest out.”
Rudik said she raised the issue in a meeting with Westminster Conservative MP, Tobias Ellwood, the chair of the defence select committee, adding: “This is a humanitarian mission that needs to happen, not for the Ukrainian good but for the good of the whole world.”
Rudik was interviewed by our defence and security editor Dan Sabbagh earlier in the week: Ukrainian MP urges west to supply long-range rockets or risk Russian victory
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, said he was hopeful of easing the food crisis prompted by the war in Ukraine, but warned that “we are not yet there” in terms of reaching any agreement to unblock shipments of commodities such as grain.
Speaking at a news conference with Sweden’s prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, in Stockholm, Guterres said:
I think that there is progress, but we are not yet there. These are complex things and the fact that everything is interlinked makes the negotiation particularly complex.
Guterres has been attempting to broker what he calls a package deal to resume both Ukrainian food exports and Russian food and fertiliser exports. He said:
As I said to the security council, I’m hopeful, but there is still a ways to go and we are totally committed to make things happen.
Just 20% of Sievierodonetsk in Ukrainian hands, says official
Ukrainian forces are holding just 20% of the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk, the largest still held by Kyiv in the Luhansk region, according to the Ukrainian head of the city administration, Oleksandr Stryuk.
There is still hope, however, that Ukrainian forces can prevent Russia from taking full control of the city, he said.
Russian forces now control 60% of the city while the rest has become “no-man’s land”, Stryuk told Reuters.
Stryuk said:
The 20% is being fiercely defended by our armed forces. Our troops are holding defensive lines. Attempts are being made to drive out the Russian troops.
We have hope that despite everything we will free the city and not allow it to be completely occupied
Earlier today, Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said Russia now “controls 70% of Sievierodonetsk” and that Ukrainian troops had “retreated to more advantageous, pre-prepared positions”.
Between 12,000 to 13,000 people remain in the city and it was impossible to get food or aid in or to get people out, Stryuk said.
There was no information on how many people have died in the city in recent days, he added.
Residents of Sievierodonetsk, Luhansk, were told yesterday to remain in bomb shelters after a strike on a chemical factory created a toxic cloud.
This footage shows brown plumes of gas ascending after a container with chemicals was blown up at the Azot chemical works.
The factory, one of Ukraine’s biggest chemical works, employs about 7,000 people.
Zelenskiy: Ukraine losing up to 100 soldiers every day
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has conceded that Kyiv’s forces are currently suffering up to 100 fatalities and 500 wounded every day.
In an interview with the US Newsmax television channel that aired yesterday, Zelenskiy said:
The situation is very difficult; we’re losing 60-100 soldiers per day as killed in action and something around 500 people as wounded in action. So we are holding our defensive perimeters.
The most difficult situation is in the east of Ukraine and southern Donetsk and Luhansk, Zelenskiy added.
Ukraine and its people are the “defensive perimeter” for the world against Vladimir Putin’s aggression, he told the channel.
We have to realise who is the dark power: it’s Russia. And Russia is not going to stop in Ukraine, for sure. The other countries, the former Republics of USSR and the members of the EU – some of them are already Nato member nations – they’re already under threat.
The Ukrainian president called out the “weakness” of Putin and Russia, not only in failing to occupy a smaller neighbouring nation but also in attempts to take him out as leader.
He said:
Attempting to kill the leader of this or that country is a weakness, I would say. If you can’t talk, then it’s a weakness.
Putin cannot win, and the world must stop defending him amid the latest “atrocities” committed by Russian troops, he continued, while also calling out the lack of fully enforcing sanctions.
Now, he’s almost isolated. The world always keeps giving him a chance, because the sanctions are not imposed completely. There’s gaps in some of the leaders saying the Russian leader should be offered with a way out.
Russian troops accused of torture of Kherson residents, reports say
Russian troops have been accused of committing acts of torture against residents in the Russian-controlled Kherson region in southern Ukraine.
The BBC has gathered multiple first-hand testimonies from Kherson residents who say they were tortured while in the hands of Russian forces. In one case, Olexander Guz, a deputy in the village of Bilozerka in the Kherson region, said he was left with severe bruising after being beaten.
“They put a bag on my head,” he said.
The Russians threatened that I would not have kidneys left.
Oleh Baturin, a journalist for an independent newspaper in the Kherson region, said he was kidnapped and imprisoned by Russian forces for more than a week.
During his imprisonment, he said he heard others being tortured and witnessed a young man’s mock execution. He himself was beaten “on the back, ribs and legs” with “the butt of a machine gun” and suffered four broken ribs.
The BBC spoke to a doctor who worked in a hospital in Kherson, who said he has seen signs of electrocution, traces of binding on the hands and strangulation marks on the neck, as well as burns on people’s feet and hands.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has been speaking at his regular conference call with reporters, where he blamed “illegal restrictions” imposed on Russia by western countries for a potential “very deep” food crisis.
Russia has been blockading Ukrainian ports but is trying to pin the blame for the lack of grain shipments on western sanctions and on Kyiv itself.
Peskov told reporters today:
We are potentially on the verge of a very deep food crisis linked to the introduction of illegal restrictions against us and the actions of Ukrainian authorities who have mined the path to the Black Sea and are not shipping grain from there despite Russia not impeding in any way.
His remarks come after European leaders appealed to African countries, who are facing “a catastrophic scenario” of food shortages and price rises, not to fall for the Kremlin’s propaganda campaign that paints the impending global food crisis as the result of western sanctions against Russia.
Peskov also warned that the EU’s sanctions on Russian oil would hit the global energy market, but said Moscow could re-route exports to limit its own losses.
He did not rule out a meeting between Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, but said talks needed to be prepared in advance.
Peskov said work on a peace document with Ukraine had stopped a long time ago and had not restarted.
Fuel believed to be partially made from Russian crude reached US shores despite a ban on all imports of Russian oil, gas and energy, according to reports.
Traders are attempting to evade US sanctions by obscuring the origins of Russian oil, concealing the oil in blended refined products such as gasoline, diesel and chemicals, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The cargoes that landed in New York and New Jersey last month were brought through the Suez Canal and across the Atlantic from Indian refineries, which have been big buyers of Russian oil.
One analyst who has been tracking Russian fossil fuel exports and their role in funding the Ukraine war told the paper:
It does look like there’s a trade where Russian crude is refined in India and then some of it is sold to the US.
Oil is also being transferred between ships at sea in the Mediterranean, off the coast of west Africa and the Black Sea, and then taken toward China, India and western Europe, the paper reports.
In March, the US president, Joe Biden, announced that “Russian oil will no longer be acceptable at US ports”. The UK announced a similar move to phase out Russian oil imports by the end of 2022.
Today so far …
- Russia has said that a US decision to supply advanced rocket systems and munitions to Ukraine was extremely negative and would increase the risk of a direct confrontation. Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said that Moscow viewed US military aid to Ukraine “extremely negatively”. “Attempts to present the decision as containing an element of ‘self-restraint’ are useless,” Ryabkov said. “The fact that the United States, at the head of a group of states, is engaged in a purposeful pumping of weapons into the Kyiv regime is an obvious thing.”
- The US president, Joe Biden, has confirmed he will send the more advanced, longer-range rocket systems to Kyiv, a critical weapon that Ukrainian leaders have been asking for as they struggle to stall Russian progress in the Donbas region. The medium-range high mobility artillery rocket systems are part of a new $700m (£555m) tranche of security assistance from the US.
- Serhiy Haidai, Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk, has said that Russia now controls 70% of the city of Sievierodonetsk, which is the main crucible of Russia’s attack at the present time, and a key objective if Russian forces are to control the whole of the Donbas region. Haidai posted to Telegram claiming that “the Russians control 70% of Sievierodonetsk. Ukrainian troops retreated to more advantageous, pre-prepared positions. Another part continues fighting inside the city.”
- President Zelenskiy has blasted the “madness” of bombing a chemical plant in Sievierodonetsk. “Given the presence of large-scale chemical production in Sievierodonetsk, the Russian army’s strikes there, including blind air bombing, are just crazy.” Local officials said a nitric acid tank was hit and posted images of pink smoke billowing.
- Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s military forces have had some successes near Kherson and in parts of the Kharkiv region.
- The UK’s ministry of defence latest assessment of the situation on the ground in Ukraine says: “Russian ground operations remain tightly focused, with the weight of fire power concentrated within a small sector of Luhansk oblast. Over 30-31 May, fighting intensified in the streets of Sievierodonetsk, with Russian forces pushing closer to the town centre. Over half of the town is likely now occupied by Russian forces, including Chechen fighters. Beyond the Donbas, Russia continues to conduct long-range missile strikes against infrastructure across Ukraine.”
- Overnight a video depicting children alleged to have been killed by Ukrainian forces in the Russian-occupied Donbas region of Ukraine was projected on to the US embassy in Moscow as part of a protest to coincide with International Children’s Day.
- Germany will supply Ukraine with the IRIS-T air defence system, the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said, following pleas from Kyiv and German opposition parties to step up heavy weapons deliveries.
- Switzerland’s government has vetoed Denmark’s request to send Swiss-made armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine. Denmark votes today in a referendum asking the nation whether it wants to end its decades-long opt-out from common European Union defence policies. Denmark’s foreign minister, Jeppe Kofod, has said he will ask parliament tomorrow for Denmark’s support of the accession of Sweden and Finland to Nato.
- Ukraine is working on an international UN-led operation with naval partners to ensure a safe trade route for food exports, according to Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, who said Russia was playing “hunger games with the world by blocking Ukrainian food exports”.
- Pope Francis appealed to authorities to lift the block on wheat exports from Ukraine, saying the grain cannot be used as a “weapon of war”.
- The African Union warned EU leaders that Moscow’s blockade of Ukraine’s ports risked “a catastrophic scenario” of food shortages and price rises. Senegal’s president, Macky Sall, who chairs the union, said “the worst is perhaps ahead of us” if current global food supply trends continued.
- Russia says it has has completed testing of its hypersonic Zircon cruise missile and will deploy it before the end of the year on a new frigate of its Northern Fleet.
- Ukraine will face Scotland tonight in what is set to be a highly emotionally charged football match in Glasgow. The winners will play Wales on Sunday for the final berth at the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, until later on. Léonie Chao-Fong will be here with you shortly.