The Ukrainian General Staff has admitted defeat in the battle for Sieverodonetsk. The last bridge is destroyed – evacuation is impossible. Heavy Ukrainian shelling continues in occupied Donetsk. All news about the attack on Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.
11:25 p.m.: According to pro-Russian separatists, “almost 300 rockets and artillery shells” fell on Donetsk within two hours. Several residential areas were hit. An AFP reporter in the city had heard five explosions there Monday morning.
The Donetsk separatist leader Denis Pushilin accused the Ukrainian troops of having “crossed all borders” with the “bombing of residential areas”. “Additional allied forces, including from the Russian Federation, would now have to be mobilized” to defend Donetsk.
10:12 p.m .: The Russian-controlled separatists in Donetsk reported on Monday that the city had allegedly been hit by the most violent Ukrainian shelling since the beginning of the war. Four people were killed and at least 23 people were injured, local media reports said. A maternity clinic in the former metropolis caught fire, but nobody was injured there. The reports were not independently verifiable.
To protect the city and the People’s Republic of Donetsk, more troops from “allied forces”, i.e. the Russian army, are needed, said separatist leader Denis Puschilin, according to the DAN agency.
The so-called People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk have existed in Donbass in eastern Ukraine since 2014. They are said to rely on local anti-Kyiv separatists, but are in fact channeled and militarily backed from Moscow. Russia recognized the entities as independent states shortly before the February 24 invasion of Ukraine. The complete conquest of the Ukrainian administrative regions of Donetsk and Luhansk is a Russian war aim.
10:08 p.m .: Ukraine has lost around a quarter of its agricultural land since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression. Despite this loss, enough can be planted this year to ensure food security for the population, Ukraine’s Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said on Monday. Because demand has fallen sharply due to “mass expulsions” and emigration abroad.
“Ukrainian farmers were able to prepare themselves relatively well for sowing before the war began,” said Vysotsky. By February, Ukraine had already imported about 70 percent of the fertilizers it needed, 60 percent of pesticides and about a third of the fuel it needed for sowing.
However, the invasion of Russian troops and the ongoing blockade of the Ukrainian Black Sea ports are preventing the export of grain. According to the United Nations, this poses a threat to the food supply in many other, especially poorer, countries.
8:34 p.m .: The third and last bridge from the city of Sievjerodonetsk over the River Síwerskyi Donets was also destroyed. This was announced by the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajday, on Monday evening. This means that Sievjerodonetsk is not completely sealed off. However, it is not possible to evacuate civilians or bring aid supplies into the city, he wrote on Telegram.
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6:16 p.m .: According to information from Kyiv, volunteers from around 55 countries – including Germany – are now fighting Russian troops in Ukraine. “We can confirm that we have German legionnaires, but cannot comment on any numbers,” said a spokesman for the International Legion on Monday at the request of the German Press Agency. At the beginning of June, the Legion, which was set up as a state agency, also confirmed the death of a German for the first time, who had died in the fighting during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Legion had previously announced that Americans and British volunteers in particular were deployed, followed by Poles and Canadians. There are also fighters from Brazil, Australia, South Korea and the Baltic EU states, as well as from northern European countries, including Finland in particular.
Legion spokesman Damien Magrou denied in Kyiv that they were mercenaries. The volunteers are part of the Ukrainian armed forces. The Legion will be financed from funds from the defense budget. “This refers to all expenses for housing, soldiers’ salaries, weapons and ammunition,” he said. There are also Western sponsors who finance the Legion’s work. “The money comes from different directions and is only spent on equipping our soldiers.”
5:15 p.m .: According to the police, the bodies of seven other civilians were found near the Kiev suburb of Bucha. They were “tortured by the Russians and then cowardly executed with a shot in the head,” Kyiv police chief Andriy Nebytov said on Facebook on Monday. Several of the victims, who were discovered in a pit near the village of Myrozke, had their hands and knees tied.
The authorities are now working on “identifying the victims,” Nebytow explained. Myrozke is around ten kilometers from Bucha and 35 kilometers from Kyiv. At the end of April, three bodies with their hands tied were discovered in a pit.
2:52 p.m .: According to Ukrainian information, more than 12,000 civilians died in the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Most of the victims were killed by explosions, Ukrainian police chief Ihor Klymenko said in an interview published by the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Monday. 75 percent of those killed are men, two percent are children and the rest are women. “These are civilians, these people had no connection with the military or law enforcement agencies,” Klymenko stressed. 1200 victims have not yet been identified.
More than 1,500 dead were found after the withdrawal of Russian troops at the end of March in the area around the capital Kyiv alone. Findings of mass graves and people who had been shot dead in chains, especially in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, had caused horror around the world. The United Nations has so far only recorded 4,300 civilian deaths
2.47 p.m .: In the contested Donbass, according to Ukrainian information, Russian troops have taken most of the important city of Sievjerodonetsk. “Unfortunately, as of today, Russia controls more than 70 percent, but not the entire city,” said the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajdaj, on Monday on the TV channel Belsat. There are hard fights for every house. With the capture of the administrative center of Sievjerodonetsk, the pro-Russian separatists, with Moscow’s help, had almost completely controlled the Luhansk region and achieved an important war goal.
Around 500 civilians, including around 40 children, would remain in the embattled industrial area of Azot. “We are trying to reach an agreement on an evacuation corridor with the help of Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk,” Hajdaj said. The bomb shelters at the Azot chemical plant are not as stable as those at the Azovstal steel plant, which has been under siege for weeks in the port city of Mariupol, which has since been conquered by Russia.
Separatist representatives had already reported on ongoing negotiations about the evacuation of civilians from the factory premises. Accordingly, 300 to 400 Ukrainian soldiers are also trapped there. However, Hajdaj had repeatedly denied the encirclement claimed by the separatists. The information cannot be independently verified.
2:07 p.m .: The mayor of the Ukrainian city of Sviatohirsk in the north of Donetsk Oblast has defected to the Russian occupiers. According to the pro-Russian newspaper “Strana”, Mayor Vladimir Bandura is said to have been appointed “head of administration” of the city that was conquered about a week ago. He got this post from Denis Puschilin, the president of the Donetsk separatist republic DNR, which is only recognized by Russia.
Six days ago, Puschilin spoke of the Russian capture of the city, which is important for the Russian Orthodox Church. According to Puschilin, a “cleansing” was going on. Mayor Bandura then accused the Ukrainian army of setting fire to the Archmonastery of the Dormition. The place is considered one of the most important shrines of the Russian Orthodox Church. Because of these allegations, criminal proceedings against Bandura are already underway in Ukraine.
12:36 p.m .: After weeks of fierce fighting, the Ukrainian army claims it has been pushed back from the center of the strategically important city of Sievjerodonetsk in the Donbass region. The Russian army, with the support of its artillery, “partially” managed to push back the Ukrainian soldiers in the city center, the Ukrainian general staff announced on the online service Facebook on Monday.
The governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajdaj, also reported a “partial” success of the Russian troops on Monday night. Russian forces continued to “destroy” Sieverodonetsk, Hajday said on Facebook.
Moscow is providing its troops in the Luhansk region with “more and more equipment” to “encircle” Sieverodonetsk and neighboring Lysychansk, the Ukrainian regional governor said.
As Hajdaj further reports, the Russian troops are currently deliberately destroying the escape bridges for Ukrainian fighters in order to cut off the escape route. Only one bridge is still passable. “If the bridge collapses after being shelled again, the city will really be cut off. There will be no possibility to leave Sieverodonetsk by vehicle,” the governor said. According to him, the bridge is “old and life-threatening”.
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