Conditions in Mariupol, where thousands lack access to clean water, could now lead to a cholera outbreak. The Ukrainian Ministry of Health is observing the first suspected cases. All news about the attack on Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.
5:25 p.m .: According to the country’s president, the situation for Ukrainian troops in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sieverodonetsk remains tense. “We are holding the position, just holding the position,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday, according to the Interfax-Ukraine agency. The Russian troops are superior. “Nevertheless, we have every chance of continuing to fight in this direction,” emphasized the 44-year-old.
For the Ukrainian troops there are “gradual” successes in the adjacent Kharkiv region. However, the situation is most “threatening” in the Zaporizhia region, where the Russian army is threatening the regional capital, he said after a visit to the front.
Army spokesman Olexander Motusianyk reported intense fighting “almost along the entire front line in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions”. The Russian Air Force has flown 39 air strikes outside of eastern Ukraine. Targets in the country were also fired at with land-based missiles from the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia.
5:07 p.m .: The inhumane conditions in Mariupol, which has been bombed for weeks, could now have led to the spread of cholera in the city. This is reported by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health. Accordingly, the main reasons for the “critical situation” are the mass burials and the lack of access to clean water. The ministry has been observing the first suspected cases of cholera since the beginning of June.
Cholera is an infection of the gut caused by bacterially ingested water and food. It can cause severe diarrhea and vomiting and, if left untreated, can also be fatal.
11:39 a.m.: The Ukrainian General Staff confesses that Russian troops with Iskander systems have positioned themselves along the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. In addition, surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery had been deployed there.
The Russian Iskander-M missile has a range of almost 500 kilometers. It can be equipped with different conventional as well as nuclear warheads. Ukraine and Belarus share a border of around 1,000 kilometers.
9:19 a.m .: The village of Tjotkino, located near the border with Ukraine in the Kursk region in western Russia, has been shot at again, according to the authorities. “There were no dead or injured,” said Governor Roman Starowoit on Monday on his account on the social network vkontakte car burned out.
Judging by the pictures, a railway bridge was destroyed by the impacts. The Russian military uses the railways in the border regions to resupply their own troops in Ukraine.
7:12 a.m .: The Ukrainian military says it has killed another high-ranking Russian officer with the rank of general. The commander of the 1st army corps of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, Major General Roman Kutuzov, had been “officially denazified and demilitarized”, the administration for strategic communication of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Monday night, according to the online portal “Ukrainskaya Pravda”. A correspondent for Russian state television first reported on Kutuzov’s death.
Kutuzov is said to have fallen while leading a Russian attack on a town near Popasna in the Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian side had previously reported that the Russian attack had been repelled and that the enemy had been forced to withdraw with “significant casualties”.
11:51 p.m .: During a visit to the contested Zaporizhia region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj informed himself about the military situation on Sunday. Almost 60 percent of the south-eastern Ukrainian region has been occupied by Moscow’s troops since the Russian invasion on February 24, said the region’s military governor, Olexander Staruch, during talks with the president in the city of Zaporizhia. “Many people are arriving from places temporarily occupied by the enemy,” Zelenskyy said in a statement.
The refugees must be provided with apartments, the President demanded. According to the United Nations, more than seven million people have fled within the country. “The employment of these people must also be considered,” he said. A particularly large number of people had fled to Zaporizhia from the port city of Mariupol, where pro-Russian separatists took control with the help of Moscow’s troops.
9:32 p.m .: According to the regional administration, the Ukrainian army has regained control of half of the embattled eastern city of Sieverodonetsk. The armed forces had “cleansed” half of the industrial city “of Russian troops,” said the Ukrainian governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Gajdaj, in Internet messages on Sunday. However, a larger Russian counterattack is expected in the coming days.
After being pushed back on the city of Sievryerodonetsk by a Russian offensive, Ukrainian troops had steadily regained ground there in recent weeks. However, Russian forces are tasked with taking control of Sieverodonetsk and a major artery connecting the cities of Lysychansk and Bakhmut by Friday, Gaiday said. “In the next five days, heavy artillery shelling from the Russian side will increase sharply.”
9:22 p.m.: Russian Major General Roman Kutuzov was killed in eastern Ukraine. The Russian TV reporter Alexander Sladkov did not say this in his message on Telegram. He did not comment on the circumstances. There is currently no comment from the Russian Defense Ministry. From the Russian side little is said about their own losses. However, in the 101 days of the war, dozens of majors were reported by Ukrainian and foreign authorities.
8:35 p.m.: The Russian Defense Ministry said after the missile attack that tanks and other military equipment housed in a railway carriage repair plant were destroyed. This was claimed by Igor Konashenkov, the spokesman for the ministry. However, Ukraine firmly denies this. Instead, wagons used to transport grain were said to have been destroyed, says Kiev’s railway chief Olexander Kamyshin. There were no tanks or military equipment on the site, Kamyshin writes on Telegram. Rather, Russia wants to prevent Ukraine from exporting goods to the West, said the railway boss.
1:11 p.m .: On Saturday evening the first report appeared that a German fighter had died in Ukraine. The Foreign Legion, joined by Björn C. from Brandenburg, confirmed his death. Now his closest comrade, also a foreign fighter, spoke to the “Bild” newspaper.
The comrade describes that the unit of the two men was near Kharkiv. There, where bombs fell every day and Russian artillery fire did not want to tear it down. The Ukrainians were able to push back the Russians at last, but not far enough to be out of artillery range. Björn C.’s comrade describes that on the fateful day, May 31, he was on the second shift at the observation post.
At around 6:30 p.m., a grenade hit the house where the unit was stationed. The comrade describes how he ran outside to C., who was standing by a wooden fence. “He was still alive, but his body was completely pierced by splinters and he was bleeding from so many wounds,” the comrade told the “Bild” newspaper. “I tried everything, really everything, to stop the bleeding, but I knew it was impossible,” he continues.
Two hours later he was dead. The comrade reports that Björn C. actually wanted to go home to Brandenburg soon. Back to his girlfriend and child. “He was always kind to everyone, one of the best people I knew. He was big and strong, that’s why we called him Panzer,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Damien Magrou, spokesman for the “International Legion”, in which Björn C. fought, did not want to comment on the circumstances of the German’s death when asked by FOCUS Online. It is true that Björn C. died near Kharkiv last week. What happens to his body will now be decided after consultation with his family. The bereaved could also count on financial compensation for his death. According to the spokesman, three more legionnaires have fallen in the past three weeks. These come from the Netherlands, Australia and France. The spokesman declined to comment on the total number of foreign fighters deployed to Ukraine IM, or the number of legionnaires wounded or killed.
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