Russian authorities reported that a town in western Russia was being shelled. However, there would have been no deaths or injuries. All news about the attack on Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.
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 communications 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.
1:04 p.m .: In its situation report on the war against Ukraine on Sunday, the Russian military confirmed the rocket attacks on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. T-72 tanks and other military equipment supplied by Eastern European countries were destroyed on the outskirts of Kiev. They were housed in a plant that repairs railway carriages, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
Kiev’s mayor Vitali Klitschko and the Ukrainian general staff had previously reported several rocket attacks. According to Klitschko, one injured person had to be treated in hospital. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, the rockets were fired from bombers over the Caspian Sea.
According to the Russian military, several targets were also destroyed by rocket attacks in the Donetsk region, for example in the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine, including a workshop for restoring damaged war weapons. Ammunition depots, assembly and command points were again destroyed in further attacks by the Russian air force. More than 350 Ukrainian fighters were also “destroyed,” Konashenkov said.
A Ukrainian MiG-29 aircraft was shot down in a dogfight near the city of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region. In the Odessa region, Russia’s air defenses took down an Antonov An-26 carrying military technology. Ministry spokesman Konashenkov said Russian artillery hit dozens of other military targets in Ukraine. The Russian information could not be verified by an independent party.
10.47 a.m .: According to British findings, Ukrainian troops recently counterattacked in the embattled city of Sievjerodonetsk. The Ministry of Defense in London said on Sunday that they would have probably weakened the operational dynamics that the Russian armed forces had previously gained by concentrating their units and firepower.
The deployed Russian forces are also reserves of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Luhansk, it said. These troops are poorly equipped and trained, lacking heavy equipment compared to regular units.
The deployment of auxiliary troops to clear cities from the enemy is a tactic that Russia has already used in Syria, the ministry said. This approach is believed to have arisen from a desire to limit the casualties of regular Russian forces.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
