Russia-Ukraine war: Moscow warns US over rocket shipments to Kyiv; Ukraine losing up to 100 soldiers a day – live
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.
Brazilian football legend Pele called Wednesday for Russian President Vladimir Putin to end his army’s invasion of Ukraine, as the war-torn country’s national team was set to vie for a World Cup spot, Agence France-Presse reports.
“Today Ukraine tries to forget, at least for 90 minutes, the tragedy that still engulfs their country,” Pele wrote in an open letter to Putin, posted on Instagram just before the Ukrainian men’s football team faced Scotland in a World Cup playoff semi-final.
“I want to use today’s match as an opportunity to make a request: stop the invasion. There is absolutely no justification for this continued violence,” added the three-time World Cup champion.
“This conflict is wicked, unjustifiable and brings nothing but pain, fear, terror and anguish… Wars only exist to separate nations, and there’s no ideology that justifies projectile missiles burying the dreams of children, ruining families and killing the innocent.”
Pele recalled meeting Putin in the past and exchanging “smiles accompanied by a long handshake.”
“The power to stop this conflict is in your hands. The same ones I shook in Moscow, at our last meeting in 2017,” he wrote.
Considered by many the greatest footballer of all time, Pele had one of the most storied careers in sport, scoring more than 1,000 goals before retiring in 1977.
His message comes as the Ukraine conflict nears its 100th day, with fierce fighting ongoing in the nation’s east, after the Russian army failed in its bid to overtake Kyiv.
The match in Glasgow is the first for the Ukrainian national team since the invasion began.
The winners will face Wales on Sunday to decide who will be the final member of Group B – alongside England, the United States and Iran.
A regional governor in western Ukraine said a Russian airstrike on transport infrastructure wounded two people Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.
Lviv region Gov. Maksym Kozytskyy didn’t name the target of the Russian strike near the city of Lviv.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the country’s interior minister, said the Russians hit the Beskidy railway tunnel in the Carpathian Mountains in an apparent effort to cut a key railway link and disrupt shipments of weapons and fuel.
The Lviv region has served as a key conduit for supplies of Western weapons and other supplies.
The Senate of Ireland passed a resolution on Wednesday declaring the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “genocide.”
“The acts carried out by the Russian military meet the criteria for genocide set out in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and as such, the illegal invasion of Ukraine by by the Russian Federation is an act of genocide,” the resolution stated.
Denmark will join the EU’s defence policy, public broadcaster DR projects.
Denmark will join the European Union’s defence policy after a referendum on Wednesday, public broadcaster DR projected, signalling the latest shift among Nordic countries to deepen defence ties in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Denmark is the only EU member that is not part of the bloc’s defence and security policy, after the country secured several exemptions in a 1993 referendum.
Preliminary results by DR showed 66.6% of voters were in favour of removing an opt-out to the EU’s so-called Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Almost 34 percent of voters polled were opposed, but the outcome will not change, according to DR.
“It is a completely new approach to Europe, that we are signalling to our European allies, to the whole world,” said former foreign minister and member of the Social Liberal Party, Martin Lidegaard.
“It can hardly be overestimated, the importance it has on our foreign and European policy,” Lidegaard said.
In the CSDP Denmark would be able to take part in joint military operations, such as those in Somalia, Mali and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to cooperate on acquisition of joint military capabilities.
“The United States has said it very clearly. Europe must be more responsible for security, and I think it makes good sense to be part of that cooperation instead of constantly hoping for the U.S. to come,” said Conservative People’s Party leader Soren Pape.
Daria Herasymchuk, the Ukraine Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights and Children’s Rehabilitation announced on Wednesday that over 234,000 Ukrainian children have been deported since the war began.
Russia deported 234,000 Ukrainian children to Belarus, Russian, or 🇷🇺-occupied territory – 🇺🇦 Children’s Rights Commissioner
This is prohibited by Geneva Convention. “Today we can also say that the world of adults has failed Children’s Day in Ukraine” https://t.co/sLNvbn4Z30
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) June 1, 2022
“According to open sources, as of today, more than 234,000 children have crossed the border to Russia and temporarily occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. These are forcibly deported, forcibly displaced children either to the temporarily occupied territories, or to Russia or the Republic of Belarus,” Herasymchuk said.
“We will fight for absolutely every Ukrainian child. Today we can also say that the world of adults has failed Children’s Day in Ukraine,” she added.
The head of Interpol, an international organization that that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control, raised alarms on Wednesday about a possible uptick in weapons trafficking once the war in Ukraine ends, the Associated Press reports.
Interpol Secretary-General Jurgen Stock told the Anglo-American Press Association that he has “no doubt” illegal arms trafficking will increase.
“We have seen that in the Balkans region,” Stock said. “We have seen that in theaters in Africa that, of course, organized crime groups try to exploit this chaotic situation, availability of weapons and even weapons that are used by the military.”
Small weapons are the main concern, he said.
Stock encouraged Interpol’s 195-member countries to “intensively use available databases that can help trace and track weapons, for instance those stolen in another country.”
“No country in our region can deal with it in isolation because the criminals I’m talking about are operating globally,” Stock said.
Interpol, based in Lyon, France, does not carry out investigations but provides training for police and customs officers to, for instance, identify trafficking routes, Stock said.
The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that the US will send Ukraine four sophisticated, medium-range rocket systems and ammunition to help try to stall Russian progress in the Donbas region of its country, the Associated Press reports.
It will take at least three weeks to get the precision weapons and trained troops onto the battlefield, the Pentagon added.
The rocket systems are part of a new $700m tranche of security assistance for Ukraine from the US that also includes helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems, radars, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more.
Asked if the weapons are arriving too late to make a difference, as Russia makes progress in the east and south, Colin Kahl, the defense undersecretary for policy, said he doesn’t think so.
“It is a grinding fight,” he said during a Pentagon briefing. “We believe that these additional capabilities will arrive in a timeframe that’s relevant and allow the Ukrainians to very precisely target the types of things they need for the current fight.”
The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday that the US is “deliberately and diligently pouring fuel on the fire.” He added that the Kremlin doesn’t trust Kyiv’s assurances that the multiple rocket launch systems supplied by the US will not be used to attack Russia.
“In order to trust [someone], you need to have experience with situations when such promises were kept. Regretfully, there is no such experience whatsoever,” Peskov said.
It’s the 11th package approved so far and will be the first to tap the $40bn in security and economic assistance recently passed by Congress. The rocket systems would be part of Pentagon drawdown authority, so would involve taking weapons from US inventory and getting them into Ukraine quickly. Ukrainian troops would also need training on the new systems, which could take at least a week or two.
Officials said the plan is to send Ukraine the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars, which is mounted on a truck and can carry a container with six rockets. The system can launch a medium-range rocket, which is the current plan, but is also capable of firing a longer-range missile, the Army Tactical Missile System, which has a range of about 190 miles and is not part of the plan.
Summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
- The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Ukraine has given “assurances” that it will not use long-range weapons systems provided by Washington against targets on Russian territory. Blinken’s remarks came after the US president, Joe Biden, 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.
- Following Biden’s announcement, the UK has reportedly asked the US to sign off on a plan to send advanced, medium-range rocket systems to Ukraine within a few weeks. Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, spoke with Biden about the transfer of US-made M270 multiple launch rocket systems this morning, which will be followed by a discussion between his foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Thursday, Politico cited a source as saying.
- During a joint news conference with Blinken, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said he will convene a meeting in Brussels in the coming days with senior officials from Sweden, Finland and Turkey to discuss Turkey’s opposition to Sweden and Finland joining the alliance. Blinken said there was a “strong consensus within Nato, broadly, to support the rapid accession of Sweden and Finland” to Nato and he was confident it would happen.
- Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, conceded that Kyiv’s forces are currently suffering up to 100 fatalities and 500 wounded every day. The most difficult situation is in the east of Ukraine and southern Donetsk and Luhansk, Zelenskiy said in an interview with the US Newsmax television channel. Western officials said Ukraine’s estimate that it is losing 60 to 100 troops a day killed is “pretty credible”.
- Russia said it 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. President Vladimir Putin has described the Zircon as part of a new generation of unrivalled arms systems, travelling at nine times the speed of sound.
- 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.
That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, today as I hand the blog over to my colleague in New York, Maya Yang. I’ll be back tomorrow, thank you.
Civilians sheltering under Sievierodonetsk’s Azot chemical plant, says governor
Civilians are sheltering from Russian shelling under a chemical plant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk, according to the regional governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Gaidai.
It is possible there are still stocks of dangerous chemicals at the facility, Gaidai told Reuters.
Referring to the siege of the Azovstal steel plant in the southern port city of Mariupol, Gaidai said:
There are civilians there in bomb shelters, there are quite a few of them, but it will not be a second Azovstal as that [plant] had a huge underground city – which isn’t there at Azot.
Jasper Jolly
Jasper Jolly speaks to Yuriy Ryzhenkov, whose Azovstal plant was devastated by Russian bombardment:
The Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol has become one of the symbols of the brutality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Soldiers held out for weeks in the warren of tunnels, warehouses and cooling blast furnaces as they and hundreds of civilians sheltering with them were encircled and eventually forced to surrender.
The site produced 40% of Ukraine’s entire steel output and was the key asset of the country’s biggest pre-war employer, Metinvest. Now its owner has an important role to play in the parallel battle to sustain the economy via its other plants outside occupied territory, according to its chief executive, Yuriy Ryzhenkov.
“The war effort is not only what you supply to the army, but also how [the] economy functions,” the Metinvest boss says, speaking via videolink from a company office in Lviv, western Ukraine. “So the better the economy functions, the better the country can fight a war.
In our view, in my personal view the people who are now at our steel mills are just as important to the victory of Ukraine as the soldiers on the frontline.
Ryzhenkov was in the capital, Kyiv, when he first heard Russian weaponry signalling the start of the invasion and was stunned that Vladimir Putin’s regime would launch open warfare. The company has since adjusted to operating in a warzone, but at least 153 Metinvest employees have died in the fighting.
Beyond keeping money flowing through the economy, the metals and mining group is playing a direct role in the war effort, delivering steel for 1,500 bulletproof vests a week to Ukraine’s armed forces, and importing military equipment such as drones, night-vision headsets and helmets.
It is a remarkable shift for a company whose main shareholder – Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov – was as recently as November cited by the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as a target to be recruited to back a possible coup attempt. Zelenskiy said Akhmetov was not involved in the plot, and the oligarch said claims of moves to draw him in were “an absolute lie”.
Read Jasper Jolly’s full article – Boss of devastated Azovstal plant: ‘Steel is as key to Ukraine’s victory as soldiers’
The UK has reportedly asked the US to sign off on a plan to send advanced, medium-range rocket systems to Ukraine within a few weeks, following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he will send similar weapons.
Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, spoke with Biden about the transfer of US-made M270 multiple launch rocket systems this morning, Politico reports, citing a person familiar with the matter.
The meeting will then be followed by a discussion between his foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Thursday, the source said.
The UK would be the first country to send the US-made MLRS, the news site reports. The US must officially approve the move due to export regulations.
Interpol’s secretary general, Jürgen Stock, has warned that many of the weapons being sent to Ukraine will eventually wind up in criminal hands in Europe and beyond.
Stark urged countries to start scrutinising arms-tracking databases, telling reporters:
The high availability of weapons during the current conflict will result in the proliferation of illicit arms in the post-conflict phase.
Organised crime groups will be empowered by the availability of weapons, he said.
Criminals are already now, here as we speak, focusing on that.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said he will convene a meeting in Brussels in the coming days with senior officials from Sweden, Finland and Turkey to discuss Turkey’s opposition to Sweden and Finland joining the alliance.
Speaking at a joint news conference with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, Stoltenberg said:
I’m in close contact with President Erdoğan of Turkey and with the leaders of Finland and Sweden.
Blinken said there was a “strong consensus within Nato, broadly, to support the rapid accession of Sweden and Finland” to Nato and he was confident it would happen.
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