Ukraine has recaptured Snake Island. According to Ukrainian authorities, 40 tons of grain were destroyed in an attack. UK MoD says attack on Kremenchuk shopping mall may have been accidental You can find all the news about the war in Ukraine in the ticker.
10.38 a.m .: According to the General Staff, Ukraine has recaptured the famous Snake Island. “There are no more Russians on Snake Island. The Ukrainian armed forces conducted a brilliant operation,” said Chief of Staff Andrei Yermak.
The Russian agency “ria” reports that Russia has withdrawn from the island. “Today, as a show of goodwill, the Russian military completed its duties and withdrew the garrison stationed there,” the report reads. Also to make grain exports possible.
Ukrainian media had already reported in the morning that the Ukrainian military had carried out attacks on the island (see below).
9:11 a.m .: According to the authorities, large quantities of grain were destroyed in an attack in eastern Ukraine. A fire broke out in the affected warehouse in the city of Zelenodolsk, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentyn Resnichenko, wrote on Thursday in the Telegram news service. 40 tons of grain were destroyed. The governor blamed Russia. Information from the war zone is difficult or impossible to independently verify.
Along with Russia, the Ukraine is the most important supplier of grain and fertilizers for a number of poor countries, especially in Africa. However, because Russia is blocking Ukrainian ports, a lot of grain cannot be exported. In some areas of the world there is therefore a risk of the hunger crisis escalating further.
7:44 a.m.: The “Kiev Indipendent” reports that the Ukrainian military has destroyed Russian military material on Snake Island. A “Panzir-S1” missile defense system was destroyed in the attack and 40 Russian soldiers were killed.
1:27 p.m .: Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin empire, has visited Hostomel in Kyiv Oblast. According to local authorities, the billionaire was interested in the Antonov airfield, where the An-225 Mriya is based. The machine was the largest cargo plane in the world and was destroyed in an attack by Russian troops in the first weeks of the Ukraine war. The British entrepreneur is said to have found ways to repair the aircraft on site.
12:05 p.m .: According to the “Institute for War (ISW)”, the Ukrainian armed forces may withdraw from Lysychansk and Luhansk Oblast in the near future in order to prematurely end the Russian offensive. For example, Rodion Miroshnik, a Russian ambassador from the Luhansk “People’s Republic”, announced that on June 28 Ukrainian troops began a large-scale retreat towards the Ukrainian strongholds of Siversk, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Although the ISW was not able to independently confirm this information, the institute believes that a continuation of the withdrawal is conceivable.
Meanwhile, how quickly and successfully Russian troops can complete the next phase of the ongoing offensive, such as capturing Lysychansk, will depend in part on Russia’s ability to restore the fighting strength of the troops that fought for Sieryerodonetsk.
The remaining forces still in the Ukrainian city must first cross the Severskyi-Donetsk River to get to Lysychansk and take part in the Russian offensive there. This may take time as the Russians have destroyed three important bridges crossing the river near Lysychansk. According to Miroshnik, Russian troops have already crossed the river from Kreminna and are now building bridgeheads to attack Lysychansk from the north.
If the ambassador’s statements turn out to be true and Russia actually encircles the city from the north and south-west, Ukrainian troops are likely to withdraw from Lysychansk. In that case, they will station themselves in more defensible positions along a straight line with towns and villages safely held by Ukraine.
9:02 a.m .: The Russian rocket attack on a shopping center in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk with at least 20 dead could have been a mistake, according to British secret services. It is quite realistic that the attack on Monday should have hit a nearby infrastructure target, according to an update published by the British Ministry of Defense on Wednesday.
Moscow’s long-range missile attacks have also been inaccurate in the past, leading to a high number of civilian casualties – such as the shelling of the train station in the city of Kramatorsk in April, it said. Moscow is ready to accept “high collateral damage”. Since Russia has a lack of modern precision weapons and significant weaknesses in planning its targets, further attacks must be expected to result in more civilian casualties, it said.
London usually uses sharp words against Russia. This time the British assessment contrasts with that of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In his daily video message, he accused Russia of terrorism and emphasized that the attack on the shopping center was aimed at killing as many people as possible.
8:22 a.m .: According to Ukrainian sources, at least three people were killed and five injured in a Russian attack on the city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine on Wednesday morning. This is what the military governor of the Mykolayiv region Vitaly Kim wrote in the Telegram news service. “The Russian occupiers flew a rocket attack on Mykolaiv.” A rocket hit a high-rise building.
Local authorities called on people to stay in a safe place during the air raid and not to post pictures of the attack site. Information from the war zone is difficult or impossible to independently verify.
Wednesday, June 29, 7:35 a.m.: According to the Ukrainian military, Russian troops in eastern Ukraine are trying to encircle the strategically important city of Lysychansk. This is one of the enemy’s main efforts, the Ukrainian General Staff said in its situation report on Wednesday morning. The offensive towards the city will continue. Details were not given. Russian troops are already on the southern outskirts of the city. Representatives of pro-Russian separatists had also reported that fighting was already taking place in the city.
There are also attacks by Russia in the direction of the city of Bakhmut, west of Lysychansk. In order to keep up the pace, the occupiers had strengthened their battalion group, it was said. This information could not be independently verified.
There is little movement in the Russian advance on the Slovjansk-Kramatorsk conurbation. There the enemy is concentrating on creating conditions for further attacks.
9:38 p.m .: The Russian occupying forces arrested Igor Kolychayev, the elected mayor of the city of Cherson in southern Ukraine. This was confirmed by the pro-Russian deputy chief of the military and civil administration in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, on Tuesday to the Ria Novosti news agency. Kolychayev had openly called on the employees of the city administration to sabotage and Stremusov justified the arrest by ignoring the instructions of the new administration.
The ex-mayor was a “hero of the Nazi environment” and caused great damage to the “denazification” of Ukraine, Stremusov claimed. Kolychayev remained in the city after the occupation of Kherson, but refused to cooperate with the occupying Russian forces. “Denazification” is a catchphrase that Russia uses to justify its invasion of the neighboring country.
According to his assistant Galina Lyashevska, Kolychayev was detained by the Russian National Guard and the FSB secret service after a meeting with other former members of the city council. She spoke of a “kidnapping”. Resistance to the Russian occupation is relatively high in southern Ukraine. A member of the pro-Russian administration in Kherson was killed in a bomb attack last week.
3:31 p.m .: The Russian military has confirmed an attack on the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk – but at the same time denied that the shopping center that caught fire was in operation. The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Tuesday in Moscow that there had been an air raid on halls in which weapons and ammunition delivered from the USA and Europe were stored. The detonation of the ammunition then triggered a fire “in a shopping center that is no longer in use” nearby.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, X-22 air-to-surface missiles were used in the attack. These were fired by Tu-22 long-range bombers from the Russian region of Kursk, it said.
Tuesday, June 28, 1:39 a.m .: After the rocket attack on a shopping center in Ukraine, the authorities received more than 40 missing person reports. This was announced by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office on Tuesday night. Meanwhile, the number of people killed rose from 13 to 15, according to the governor of the Poltava region, Dmytro Lunin. According to the prosecutor, 59 people received medical treatment, around half of them are in a serious condition. Ukraine blamed Russia for the attack. The attack was harshly condemned internationally.
The rocket hit the building in the afternoon. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, X-22 air-to-surface missiles were used in the attack. These were fired by Tu-22 long-range bombers from the Russian region of Kursk, it said.
10:13 p.m .: According to the authorities, eight people were killed in a queue in front of a tanker truck with drinking water in the Ukrainian city of Lysychansk in a Russian rocket attack. Another 21 were injured, the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajday, wrote to the Telegram news service on Monday. Lysychank is the last major city in the region still under Ukrainian control after the Russian military seized neighboring Seyerodonetsk.
According to Ukrainian regional commander Oleg Sinegubov, Russian shelling killed 5 civilians and wounded 22 others in the city of Kharkiv. Sinegubow wrote on Telegram that five children were among the injured.
8:36 p.m .: After a rocket attack on a shopping center in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, at least 13 people died, according to official information. In addition, around 40 people were injured, some seriously, said the governor of the Poltava region, Dmytro Lunin, on Monday evening. Ukraine blamed Russia for the attack. “The occupiers fired rockets at a shopping center where more than a thousand civilians were staying,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram news service.
In a video that Selenskyj distributed, among others, the burning building could be seen with thick clouds of dark smoke. In the immediate vicinity of the shopping center there are several industrial plants, including a factory for road construction machinery. According to civil protection, 115 firefighters with 20 fire engines were deployed. According to local authorities, the fire was extinguished in the evening. A largely burned-out building could be seen in a video distributed by Governor Lunin on Telegram.
The rocket hit the building in the afternoon. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, X-22 air-to-surface missiles were used in the attack. These were fired by Tu-22 long-range bombers from the Russian region of Kursk, it said. Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said a second missile had hit a local sports stadium.
3:43 p.m .: Russian troops say they killed more than 40 Ukrainian soldiers in attacks on the Mykolaiv region in southeastern Ukraine. Military equipment was also destroyed near the village of Vyssunsk on Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced in Moscow on Monday. In addition, a total of 24 command posts were destroyed in several areas. The information cannot be independently verified.
Meanwhile, Moscow also confirmed rocket attacks on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Sunday – but denied hitting a residential building. The attack was aimed at the Artem armaments factory. Moscow said Ukraine had probably used anti-aircraft missiles, one of which fell into a residential building. The Ukrainian side, in turn, blamed Russian missiles and spoke of several injured residents and one dead.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
