Ukraine deputy defence minister says forces moving to ‘offensive actions’ in some areas – as it happened
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Hanna Maliar says Kyiv’s forces are moving to ‘offensive actions’, heightening speculation that a counteroffensive is close to launch. This live blog is closed
Ukraine deputy defence minister says Kyiv's forces moving to 'offensive actions' in some areas
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister has confirmed that in some areas Kyiv’s forces are moving to “offensive actions”, heightening speculation that a counteroffensive is close to launch.
The minister also claimed Russian reports that Ukraine has started a counteroffensive are intended to distract from losses Russia has sustained in the Bakhmut region.
In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Hanna Maliar wrote:
What is happening now? We are continuing the defence that began on 24 February, 2022.
The defensive operation includes everything, including counteroffensive actions. Therefore, in some areas we are moving to offensive actions.
In particular, the Bakhmut direction remains the epicenter of hostilities. There we are moving along a fairly wide front. We are successful. We occupy the dominant heights. The enemy is on the defensive and wants to hold his position.
In the south - the enemy is on the defensive. Fighting of local importance continues.
Why are the Russians actively releasing information about a counteroffensive?
Because they need to divert attention from the defeat in the Bakhmut direction.
The live blog is now closed. Below is a round-up of today’s stories:
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister has confirmed that in some areas Kyiv’s forces are moving to “offensive actions”, heightening speculation that a counteroffensive is close to launch. In a post on Telegram, Hanna Maliar said:“We are continuing the defence that began on 24 February 2022. The defensive operation includes everything, including counteroffensive actions. Therefore, in some areas we are moving to offensive actions.”
Russia claimed to have repelled a “major offensive” in the Donetsk region and to have killed hundreds of Ukrainian troops, but the claims could not be independently verified. The defence ministry in Moscow said Ukraine had attacked with six mechanised and two tank battalions from two brigades.
The ministry claimed 250 Ukrainian troops had been killed, and 16 tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles and 21 armoured personnel carriers destroyed. It also claimed that Valery Gerasimov, the Russian chief of general staff, had been near the frontlines when the attack was repelled. The Russian defence ministry has consistently made exaggerated claims about the casualties its forces have inflicted.
A Moscow-backed militia leader and Russian military bloggers admitted that Ukrainian forces had achieved a breakthrough in at least one point in south-western Donetsk. Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Monday that Ukrainian forces had retaken part of the settlement of Berkhivka, north of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, calling it a “disgrace”. Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that a 55-year-old security guard has been killed by a Russian attack on a business in Kherson, citing the head of the region, Oleksandr Prokudin.
The US imposed sanctions on Monday on members of a Russian intelligence-linked group for their role in Moscow’s efforts to destabilise democracy and influence elections in Moldova, the Treasury department said. The sanctions target seven individuals, several of whom maintain ties to Russian intelligence services, the department said. They include the group’s leader, Konstantin Prokopyevich Sapozhnikov, who organised the plot to destabilise the government of Moldova, which borders Ukraine, earlier this year.
The British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, met with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv. They discussed preparations for the Nato summit in Lithuania next month and Ukraine’s plan for ending Russia’s invasion. During the meeting, Cleverly said: “Ukraine will win this war and can count on our support.”
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed leader in the occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast has rebuked those sharing information. He wrote on Telegram: “Friends, I ask you not to rush to publish news about the mass use of Leopard [tanks] on the Zaporizhzhia front. Wait for the official or at least video confirmation of their use by the enemy in our direction. Observe information hygiene!” Alexander Khodakovsky, the head of the pro-Moscow Vostok Battalion in the Donbas, had posted to Telegram to say that “the situation on Novodonetsk and to the left towards Velykonovosilkivskyi is difficult” and that “for the first time we saw Leopards [tanks] in our tactical area”.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, said three people were killed in the region yesterday as a result of Russian attacks.
Two drones have fallen on the M3 Ukraine highway, in the Russian region of Kaluga, just south of Moscow, the region’s governor has said. There was no detonation and the sites have been cordoned off by investigators, said governor Vladislav Shapsha.
Poland’s agriculture minister has received a draft regulation from the European Commission extending a ban on Ukrainian grain imports until 15 September, he said on Monday.
Belgium will ask Ukraine for clarification on reports that rifles made in Belgium had been used by pro-Ukrainian forces to fight Russian troops inside Russia’s western border, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo said on Monday.
Sky News has reported it has seen documents it believes are authentic that show Iran supplying arms to Russia.
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, who has been tasked by Pope Francis to carry out a peace mission to try to help end the war in Ukraine, will visit Kyiv on 5-6 June.
Russia’s Baltic fleet started naval exercises in the Baltic Sea on Monday. About 3,500 soldiers and up to 40 ships and boats will take part in the drills, which are scheduled to last until 15 June, the military said.
Luke Harding, one of our foreign correspondents, says the Ukrainian counteroffensive has begun, with qualifications.
On Sunday night, the Ukrainian army appeared to have moved forward in several directions and there were reports of a significant escalation of fighting along the frontlines in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. However, there was no confirmation from Ukrainian officials that the counteroffensive – months in the planning – had actually begun.
The Ukrainian government stresses the need for operative secrecy. Over the weekend, the defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, released a video featuring soldiers putting their fingers to their mouths. Reznikov cited Depeche Mode: “Words are very unnecessary. They can only do harm.”
Ukrainian commanders say the term counteroffensive is overused. They talk instead of a “spring-summer military campaign”, stretching into September, and probably well beyond. This campaign appears to have entered a new active phase. It is too early to say if it will succeed.
Ukraine’s armed forces have seemingly launched probing attacks, in an attempt to find weaknesses and to break through Russian lines. The main push is yet to come. Kyiv’s strategic objective is to sever Russia’s land corridor in the south of Ukraine. That means decoupling the occupied parts of the eastern Donbas from Crimea and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, along the left bank of the Dnipro River.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told Reuters on Monday that the country has enough weapons for its counteroffensive against Russia, and the operation will give the country the victory it needs to join Nato but did not say whether the counteroffensive had started.
Kuleba said membership of the military alliance would “probably” only be possible for Ukraine after the end of active conflict. When asked, he did not say whether the counteroffensive had started.
US imposes sanctions on Russian-linked group for role in destabilising democracy in Moldova
The US imposed sanctions on Monday on members of a Russian intelligence-linked group for their role in Moscow’s efforts to destabilise democracy and influence elections in Moldova, the Treasury department said.
Brian Nelson, the Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement:
The sanctions imposed today shine a light on Russia’s ongoing covert efforts to destabilise democratic nations.
Russia’s attempted influence operations exploit the concerns of the citizens of these countries, to destabilise legitimately elected governments for Moscow’s own interests.
The US remains committed, along with the EU, to target individuals who engage in such activities against the government of Moldova.
The sanctions target seven individuals, several of whom maintain ties to Russian intelligence services, the department said.
They include the group’s leader, Konstantin Prokopyevich Sapozhnikov, who organised the plot to destabilise the government of Moldova, which borders Ukraine, earlier this year.
Anti-Kremlin candidate Maia Sandu won a presidential run-off against the pro-Russian incumbent, Igor Dodon, in 2020. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moldova had to contend with large numbers of refugees, soaring inflation, power cuts, and instability in the breakaway region of Transnistria, which is controlled by Russian separatists.
In February, Moldova’s president accused Russia of plotting to overthrow the country’s pro-EU government through violent actions disguised as opposition protest.
Earlier that month, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told the European parliament that his intelligence services had intercepted a Russian plan to “establish control over Moldova”. He said the plan “shows who, when and how was going to break the democracy of Moldova and establish control over Moldova”. Zelenskiy’s claims have not been independently verified.
Following the economic crises after the invasion of Ukraine and street protests allegedly financed by a pro-Russian fugitive oligarch, the country’s pro-western prime minister, Natalia Gavrilita,resigned in February, blaming “crises caused by Russian aggression”.
The British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, met with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv on Monday.
They discussed preparations for the Nato summit in Lithuania next month and Ukraine’s plan for ending Russia’s invasion.
In a Telegram post, Zelenskiy said: “We are very grateful for the support that the UK has provided and continues to provide to Ukraine.”
He also said “important agreements” have been reached in recent weeks.
When Moscow was attacked for the first time in the 15-month war last week with Ukrainian-manufactured drones, Cleverly told reporters that Ukraine has the “legitimate right” to defend itself and can “project force” beyond its borders.
Last month, Britain became the first western country to provide Ukraine with the long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles. Ben Wallace, the UK’s defence secretary who has expressed interest in becoming the next Nato head, said the “path is open” for Ukraine to join Nato at a meeting in Singapore last week.
Zelenskiy also thanked the UK for its recently revealed plan to start training Ukrainian pilots to use fighter jets.
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has called the defence minister, Ben Wallace, “widely-respected” when asked about his potential candidacy to lead Nato at a press conference in Kent on Monday.
“I would say Ben is widely-respected amongst his colleagues around the world, particularly for the role he’s played in Ukraine,” Sunak said.
“Britain has always been a leading contributor to Nato … And we will always continue to be a strong contributor, a participant in Nato.”
The Telegraph reported on Sunday that Sunak was going to use his two-day trip to the US to encourage the US president, Joe Biden, to back Wallace to become the next head of Nato.
While Wallace has never said outright that he would like the job, he told the German news agency dpa last week: “I’ve always said it would be a good job. That’s a job I’d like. But I’m also loving the job I do now.”
Under Wallace, Britain became the first western country to provide Ukraine with the long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles last month. Wallace also said the “path is open” for Ukraine to join Nato at a meeting in Singapore last week.
Should Wallace become the next Nato head, a byelection in his Wyre and Preston North seat could be triggered.
Ukraine deputy defence minister says Kyiv's forces moving to 'offensive actions' in some areas
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister has confirmed that in some areas Kyiv’s forces are moving to “offensive actions”, heightening speculation that a counteroffensive is close to launch.
The minister also claimed Russian reports that Ukraine has started a counteroffensive are intended to distract from losses Russia has sustained in the Bakhmut region.
In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Hanna Maliar wrote:
What is happening now? We are continuing the defence that began on 24 February, 2022.
The defensive operation includes everything, including counteroffensive actions. Therefore, in some areas we are moving to offensive actions.
In particular, the Bakhmut direction remains the epicenter of hostilities. There we are moving along a fairly wide front. We are successful. We occupy the dominant heights. The enemy is on the defensive and wants to hold his position.
In the south - the enemy is on the defensive. Fighting of local importance continues.
Why are the Russians actively releasing information about a counteroffensive?
Because they need to divert attention from the defeat in the Bakhmut direction.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us from the conflict in Ukraine over the news wires.
Local residents walk on a street while smoke rises after shelling near the Ukraine-Russia border in the town of Vovchansk, in Kharkiv region. Photograph: Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters
This photo taken from video released by the Russian defence ministry press service shows an Su-25 ground attack jet of the Russian air force firing rockets during a mission over Ukraine. Photograph: AP
Local resident Lilia Tabala, 75, looks at the ruins of her garage and summer kitchen, destroyed by recent shelling in the town of Horlivka in the Donetsk region, in Russian-occupied Ukraine. Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
Ukrainian service members gesture as they ride an armoured vehicle in the town of Vovchansk, in Kharkiv. Photograph: Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters
The information war over releasing details of what is taking place in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia is liable to be fraught, and Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed leader in the occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast has rebuked those sharing information.
He wrote on Telegram: “Friends, I ask you not to rush to publish news about the mass use of Leopard [tanks] on the Zaporizhzhia front. Wait for the official or at least video confirmation of their use by the enemy in our direction. Observe information hygiene!”
Earlier, Alexander Khodakovsky, the head of the pro-Moscow Vostok Battalion in the Donbas, had posted to Telegram to say that “the situation on Novodonetsk and to the left towards Velykonovosilkivskyi is difficult” and that “for the first time we saw Leopards [tanks] in our tactical area”.
Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has reported on Telegram that two vehicles, including an ambulance, were damaged by shrapnel after air defences intercepted a target approaching the city of Belgorod. He stated that there were no casualties.
My colleague Dan Sabbagh, our defence and security editor, offers this analysis of developments in the ground on Ukraine:
Ukraine may not have formally declared its counteroffensive has begun, but the attacks being reported on Russian lines overnight and into Monday morning look like the first steps of what is likely to be a tough military campaign.
Individual reports should be viewed sceptically but taken together they can build up a picture. What is clear is that there is not an all-out assault, but also that the level of forces being committed are non-trivial. These are not exploratory raids, but most likely probing attacks, searching for local Russian weaknesses.
If the Russian Ministry of Defence is correct, and Ukraine has attacked with two brigades, that amounts to a force of several thousand troops.
There is also evidence of Ukraine undertaking attacks elsewhere on the 1,000km front. The leader of the Wagner mercenary forces, Yevgeny Prigozhin, complained that Russian troops had fled from part of Berkhivka, a village north of the recently taken Bakhmut, on the eastern front, suggesting that exploratory attacks may not only be taking place in the south.
It is possible, too, that Ukraine does not even know where it wants to place its key counter-attack forces, until a point of weakness is found. The aim of the initial attacks would be to secure a breakthrough that a subsequent force, held in reserve, can exploit to then surround the defenders.
A supposed radio address by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, heard on Monday on Russian stations in regions bordering Ukraine was fake and the result of a hack, the Kremlin said.
RIA, the state-owned news agency, said a number of radio stations had carried the hoax address.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, said: “All of these messages are an utter fake,” the RIA reported.
Independent Russian media reported that the announcement had told residents of the Rostov, Belgorod and Voronezh regions, all of which adjoin Ukraine, that Kyiv’s forces had crossed the border with Russia.
They cited the address as saying, wrongly, that martial law had been declared in border regions and a nationwide military mobilisation had begun for Russia’s war with Ukraine, and that residents should evacuate deeper into Russia.
On Sunday, TV broadcasts in Crimea were reportedly hacked with a clip from a short film released by the Ukrainian government showing members of the military putting their fingers to their lips and saying “Shh” followed by the words: “Plans love silence. There will be no announcement about the start.”
Ukraine’s border force said in a Telegram post: “Several cable operators in Crimea are turning off the signal due to the fact that good people hacked TV broadcasts.”
Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister, shared the clip on Twitter on Sunday with a quote from the Depeche Mode song Enjoy the Silence.
“Words are very unnecessary / They can only do harm,” he tweeted.
"Words are very unnecessary They can only do harm"
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has warned against trusting reports from Russia.
On Twitter, he said: “Russian news reports have long since become a separate virtual meta-universe.”
Russian news reports have long since become a separate virtual meta-universe. #Moscow is already actively involved in repelling... a global offensive that "does not yet exist." The million-strong Russian army is actively repelling attacks, destroying thousands of tanks, hundreds…
Reuters reports that two Russian strategic bomber planes have carried out routine flights over the Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea off the north coast of Nato member Norway, the defence ministry said on Monday.
Russia regularly flies its Tu-95 long-range bombers, which are capable of carrying nuclear missiles, over international waters.
The flight lasted five hours and was carried out “in strict compliance with international airspace regulations”, the ministry said.
German media has likened the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to an “erupting volcano”, after he broke through his usual reserve and delivered a fiercely passionate defence of sending military aid to Ukraine following heckling at an event in the town of Falkensee outside Berlin on Friday evening.
A few dozen protesters had booed and jeered the chancellor during the “Europe festival” event, chanting “warmongers” and “Create peace without weapons”. Some of the protesters wore T-shirts with anti-vaxxer messages, others waved a blue flag with a white dove, a mainstay of the West Germany anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s.
Scholz eventually talked back at the hecklers. “First of all: warmonger,” he shouted, gripping his microphone with both hands. “Putin is the warmonger. He marched into Ukraine with 200,000 soldiers, he mobilised many more and risked the lives of his own citizens for an imperialist dream. Putin wants to destroy Ukraine.”
Russia’s president had killed many Ukrainians including children and old people, he said. “That is murder,” Scholz said in the impromptu speech, which lasted about four minutes. “Peace and freedom are under attack in this war.”
Scholz, a trained lawyer, is usually known for his clipped and restrained manner of public speaking, though he has dialled up the volume at strategic moments at campaign events or Bundestag debates in the past. “Scholz is like a volcano,” Süddeutsche wrote on Monday. “He rarely erupts, but when he does sparks start flying.”
Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday that “more than 10” Ukrainian fighters had been killed by air and artillery strikes in Russia’s Belgorod region, repelling a Ukrainian attempt to cross into the region on Sunday, Russian news agencies reported.
These reports have not been independently verified.
The governor of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported fighting in the town of Novaya Tavolzhanka with what he called “Ukrainian saboteurs”. He said on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had launched 185 shells at the town.
On Sunday, two pro-Ukraine groups of Russian fighters said they had captured several soldiers during a cross-border raid into the region. They said they were willing to hand over the soldiers in exchange for a meeting withGladkov but claim he did not show up. They shared a video clip showing what appeared to be about a dozen Russian soldiers being held captive, with two lying on hospital beds, and said they would be sent to Ukraine.
A two-day event has started in the European parliament that has brought together more than 200 Russian opposition and civil society activists to discuss how the EU can support Russian democratic forces.
Convened by four MEPs, the conference is entitled The Day After, and is meant to discuss strategy for a hypothetical post-Putin Russia.
“I would call this the first gathering of people who believe in the future of a democratic Russia,” said Andrius Kubilius, the Lithuanian MEP behind the forum.
Speaking in the opening session, the exiled opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was the richest person in Russia until he was jailed for a decade in 2003, said the only hope for a future Russia that does not cause problems for the rest of the world was fundamental political change.
“This regime should be destroyed, there is no other road to a peaceful normal future for Russia and for Europe and the whole world. The simple change of Putin to another person with a different name but no move to a federalised parliamentary system with free elections will not change anything,” he said.
How to get to that stage is a more difficult question, of course. “The conditions in Russia are certainly not ideal for the rise of democracy,” said Katarina Barley, vice-president of the European parliament, in what is perhaps the understatement of the day.
Ukraine says it has 'no information' about major offensive Russia claims Kyiv has launched
Ukraine’s military said on Monday it had no information about a major offensive which Russia said Kyiv had launched in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk, Reuters reports.
“We do not have such information and we do not comment on any kind of fake,” a spokesperson for the Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff said in response to a question from Reuters.
