There are renewed reports of dead and wounded civilians in Russian attacks. Sieryerodonetsk is largely under Russian control – civilians seek refuge in chemical plant in Sieryerodonetsk. You can find all the news about the attack on Ukraine in the ticker.
12 noon: According to the Russian news agency Tass, more than 800,000 people have received Russian citizenship in a simplified way in the past three years in the eastern Ukrainian separatist areas. Just under one percent of the applications from residents of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk were rejected, Tass reported on Saturday, citing the Ministry of the Interior in Moscow. In April 2019, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin issued a decree that made it easier for Ukrainians in Donbass to become Russian citizens.
According to critics, the many new Russians serve as a tool for the Kremlin to expand its influence in eastern Ukraine. Areas that Russia’s troops have occupied since the war began at the end of February this year are also to be tied more closely to Moscow in this way. According to the administrations deployed by Russia, the distribution of passports began on Saturday in the Cherson and Zaporizhia regions. The Russian ruble is also to be introduced there as a means of payment.
9:54 a.m .: According to the British government, Ukrainians and Russians are fighting violent street battles around the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievjerodonetsk. Both sides are likely to suffer a high number of casualties, the British Ministry of Defense wrote in its regular intelligence update on the situation in the Ukraine war on Saturday.
The strategically important industrial city of Sieverodonetsk is the last major city in the Luhansk region that is not yet fully under Russian and pro-Russian control. They have been fighting for weeks.
The British also reported that the Russian air force had been using dozens of old, imprecise anti-ship missiles against land targets since April due to a lack of modern weapons. The Kh-22 missiles date back to the 1960s and were actually designed to destroy aircraft carriers with a nuclear warhead.
If they are instead used in a ground attack with a conventional warhead, they are very inaccurate and could cause significant collateral damage and civilian casualties, the update said. Russia is probably using these inefficient weapon systems because the armed forces lack more modern and accurate weapons.
7:46 a.m .: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of wanting to destroy “every city” in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region. “Russia wants to devastate every city in Donbass, every single one, without exaggeration. Like Volnovakha, like Mariupol,” said Zelenskyy in his video address on Friday evening, looking at two war-torn cities in southern Donbass. However, the Ukrainian military is doing everything “to stop the attacks of the occupiers”.
Fierce fighting continued on Friday, particularly in eastern Donbass, particularly in the embattled city of Sievarodonetsk in the Luhansk region. According to Governor Serhiy Hajday, the Russians destroyed an important sports hall in the city on Friday: “One of the landmarks of Sieverodonetsk was destroyed. The Ice Palace burned down,” he explained.
In the southern region of Cherson, the Ukrainian army says it has meanwhile attacked Russian military positions. The Air Force has flown attacks on equipment and personnel locations and field depots near five towns in the region, the General Staff said.
11:00 p.m.: Russia continues its attempts to tie occupied Ukrainian territories closer to itself. From Saturday, Russian passports are to be handed out in the parts of the Zaporizhia region controlled by Russian troops. The recipients would then be considered full citizens of Russia, a member of the occupation authorities Vladimir Rogov told Rossiya-24 TV channel on Friday. According to Rogow, more than 70,000 people have applied in the area.
President Vladimir Putin simplified the procedure for obtaining Russian passports in May. Russia also distributes them in other occupied territories and introduces the ruble there as a means of payment. Ukrainian authorities accuse the occupiers of forcing people into Russian citizenship and fear an annexation of the occupied territories.
8:25 p.m .: For the eleventh time since the war began, Ukraine and Russia have exchanged prisoners of war. This is reported by the Ukrainian side. According to a Ukrainian governor, four Russians and five Ukrainians were returned to their home countries. Oleh Pylypenko, a mayor in Ukraine, is one of the released prisoners. He was kidnapped by Russian soldiers on March 10th.
4:35 p.m .: The Russian military is still having problems assembling troops in Luhansk. This explains the American think tank “Institute for the Study of War” and refers to information from the Ukrainian Center for Defense. Accordingly, Russian officials in the Luhansk region had to scale back their mobilization efforts.
3.40 p.m .: According to pro-Russian separatists, the Azot chemical plant in the heavily contested city of Sievjerodonetsk in eastern Ukraine is completely surrounded. “A small group of Ukrainian formations on the territory of the Azot chemical plant can no longer leave the plant. All escape routes are cut off for them,” wrote the ambassador of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic in Moscow, Rodion Miroshnik, on Friday on the social network Telegram.
Miroshnik admitted the possibility that civilians could still be staying on the besieged Azot site. The Ukrainian side had recently spoken of several hundred people who used the factory basement as an air raid shelter and were now stuck. After more than three months of war, Russia has already occupied more than 90 percent of the Luhansk region, in which Sieverodonetsk is located.
11:59 a.m .: According to their own statements, the Russian armed forces attacked an airport and a tank factory in eastern Ukraine during the night. “At the Dnipro airport, high-precision surface-to-air missiles were used to destroy aircraft of the Ukrainian armed forces, and in the Kharkov area production capacities for the repair of weapons technology,” said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov on Friday.
At the front, more than 500 Ukrainian soldiers were killed by Russian air, rocket and artillery strikes, 13 armored cars, 9 artillery pieces, 6 rocket launchers and 16 military vehicles were disabled and 16 ammunition depots were destroyed. In addition, Konashenkov reported on the shooting down of two fighter jets and five drones. This information cannot be verified independently.
10:53 a.m.: “Given the difficult humanitarian situation in the Russian-held areas of Ukraine, Great Britain has warned of the spread of deadly diseases such as cholera. The Ministry of Defense in London announced on Friday that there is probably already a critical shortage of medicines in the southern Ukrainian city of Cherson. A cholera outbreak is threatening in the port city of Mariupol.
“Individual cases of cholera have been reported since May,” it said, citing intelligence findings. “Medical care in Mariupol is probably already on the verge of collapse. A larger cholera outbreak in Mariupol will exacerbate this further.” In 1995 there was a severe cholera epidemic and since then there have been repeated smaller outbreaks, especially in the south-east Ukrainian region around Mariupol on the Azov Sea.
“Russia is struggling to provide basic public services to people in Russian-occupied territories,” the ministry said. “Access to clean drinking water has been erratic, and phone and internet services remain severely disrupted.”
8:47 a.m.: The Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Secret Service, Vadym Skibitsky, has stated that Ukraine is losing the fight against Russia on the Eastern Front and is almost entirely dependent on weapons from the West. “This is an artillery war now,” he said. The future is now being decided on the front lines, he told the British newspaper The Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery.”
“Everything now depends on what the West gives us,” Skibitsky continues. Western countries have so far only given 10 percent of what they would have to Ukraine. Russia is militarily stronger, Skibitsky clarified. Ukraine has one artillery unit versus 10 to 15 Russian artillery units. “We have used up almost all of our artillery ammunition,” he laments. Currently, the troops would use 5,000 to 6,000 artillery shells per day. Instead, they would now have to use standard NATO 155 caliber shells. “Europe is delivering lower caliber shells as well, but as European stocks become scarcer, the quantity decreases,” says Skibitsy.
6:58 a.m .: According to Ukrainian information, the Russian troops recently advanced to the Bakhmut transport hub in the ongoing heavy fighting in the Donbass. They are threatening to cut off supplies to the administrative center of Sieverodonetsk. “The enemy attacked in the direction of Vozdvyschenka – Roty, was partially successful and is establishing itself on the positions taken,” said the Ukrainian General Staff in its situation report on Friday. The villages are only about ten kilometers southwest of Bachmut. The road from Bakhmut to Sievjerodonetsk can also be shelled with heavy equipment from there.
The fighting for the former city of Sievjerodonetsk, on the other hand, continues without major changes. Russian troops are trying “further unsuccessfully” to gain full control of the administrative center of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, the General Staff said. The attackers were also thrown back in other battles around the city.
Friday, June 10, 4:55 a.m.: Ukraine has sharply criticized a trial of three foreign fighters in its armed forces. The Supreme Court of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic had sentenced two Britons and a Moroccan to death as mercenaries. Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko said that foreigners in the Ukrainian army are regular soldiers and should be treated as such. They had the rights of prisoners of war. The process put propaganda above law and morality. The three men can still appeal.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
