While Russia intensifies its attacks in the east and advances towards Lysychansk, Ukraine reports bombings of its own grain storage terminals in the city of Mykolaiv. You can find all the news about the attack on Ukraine in the ticker.
07:41: Ukraine has raised money to buy “Bayraktar” drones for its army. The result: $20 million in just three days. This allowed four of the drones to be purchased. “We even have money left over for a fifth drone,” says Serhiy Prytula. The former comedian, who has since gone into politics, organized the collection. He runs a foundation that supports the Ukrainian army.
The “Bayraktar” from Turkey is a combat and reconnaissance drone that can fly for a particularly long time at medium altitudes. It is considered a “miracle weapon” in the war against Russia. Recently, however, there have also been reports that the drone is no longer as effective as it was in the earlier course of the war.
6:58 a.m .: According to their own statements, the Ukrainian armed forces have repelled attacks on an important supply route for the city of Lysychansk in the east of the country. “In the direction of Bakhmut, Ukrainian fighters stopped the attack of enemy infantry between the villages of Volodymyrivka and Pokrovske,” the Ukrainian General Staff said on Saturday. An important supply road leads from Bakhmut to Lyssychansk past the above-mentioned villages.
The city itself, which has become the Russians’ next strategic target after the Ukrainians largely retreated from neighboring Sieverodonetsk, is still under heavy fire. Both artillery and the Russian air force fired at Lysychansk. In addition, Russian troops “tried to block the city from the south,” reported the General Staff. The Russian military had previously announced that Lysychansk had been blocked from the south.
There have also been attacks on the Slovjansk – Kramatorsk – Kostyantynivka conurbation. According to the situation report, the Russian storm attempts were repelled from both the north and the south.
In the south of the country, the Russians had also tried unsuccessfully to recapture previously lost positions in the Cherson region with a counterattack. In the Black Sea region, which was occupied by Russia in the first days of the war, the Ukrainians recently launched a limited offensive and recaptured some towns. So far, however, these territorial gains have not been of strategic importance.
5:33 a.m .: The city of Dnipro on the river of the same name is one of the strategically most important regions in the Ukraine war. It forms the connecting line from Kyiv to eastern Ukraine. Now Russian attacks are probably concentrated on this area again. According to Ukrainian information, Putin’s troops shelled Grechanopodiv, Zelenodolsk and the Shyrokivsky district during the night. Rocket launchers were used. There weren’t any victims. However, infrastructure has been destroyed, it is said.
Saturday, June 25, 12:25 a.m .: In Ukraine, which was attacked by Russia, a nationwide air alarm was triggered on Saturday night. This emerged from a corresponding overview of the situation in the country. As reported by the Ukrainian news site 24tv, there were reports of explosions from the city of Zaporizhia in the south-east of the country – as well as from the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. The exact background was initially unclear. Russia launched its attack on neighboring Ukraine on February 24.
6 p.m.: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba continues to believe in a Ukrainian victory in the war. However, this still requires fast deliveries of arms to his country, said Kuleba in an interview with the “Bild” newspaper. “Each piece strengthens us and enables us to get closer to the day when we will win peace for ourselves and for all of Europe,” said Kuleba.
Ukraine is currently in particularly urgent need of MLRS and 155mm artillery systems. “We’re running out of Soviet caliber ammunition,” Kuleba said. “But our stocks of NATO calibers are increasing rapidly. We need more systems to be able to fire them.”
The Russian army currently has a decisive advantage, especially in artillery. As a result, the Ukrainians are losing some important territories – such as the city of Sievjerodonetsk. “It’s incredibly difficult to withstand artillery terror,” says Kuleba to “Bild”. But that could turn around again. And basically, the current situation is that the Ukrainian armed forces are advancing in some places on the front line, the Russians in other places. It’s a huge front line in the biggest war in Europe since World War II, and it’s understandable that the terrain is changing hands, that we’re making advances and retreats.”
12:11 p.m .: An employee of the Russian occupation administration was killed in an attack in the southern Ukrainian region of Cherson. According to Russian media reports on Friday, a bomb detonated in the man’s car. Details were not initially known. In the past few days, there have been several attacks on Ukrainian defectors in the occupied area.
According to a report by the Reuters news agency, the fatality is Dmitry Savluchenko. He was head of the family, youth and sports department of the military-civilian administration.
According to the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov, MP Oleksiy Kovalev was the target of an attack on Wednesday. The 33-year-old was expelled from the parliamentary group of the Ukrainian presidential party at the end of April on suspicion of cooperation with the Russian occupiers. Nothing was known about his whereabouts.
10:53 a.m .: According to their own statements, Russian and pro-Russian fighters have conquered the settlements of Hirske and Solote in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk. Luhansk separatists on Friday showed the hoisting of a Soviet flag atop the Zolote city government building, south of the embattled city of Lysychansk. Initially, there was no confirmation from the Ukrainian side.
It was announced on Thursday that Russian troops had surrounded the area around the two settlements. It remained unclear whether at least parts of the Ukrainian units were able to withdraw in time and thus save themselves.
9:39 a.m .: According to British intelligence experts, the Russian Air Force is likely to suffer from a lack of personnel. This was suggested by statements by a recently captured Russian fighter jet pilot who said he was in the service of the Wagner mercenary force, according to a statement on the Defense Ministry’s website in London on Friday.
“The deployment of retired close air support personnel now under contract to Wagner shows that the Russian Air Force is likely to have difficulty supporting the invasion of Ukraine with sufficient aircrew,” the statement said.
Since the start of the Russian war of aggression around four months ago, the British government has regularly published intelligence information on the course. Moscow accuses London of a targeted disinformation campaign.
7.47 a.m .: After weeks of bitter resistance against the Russian attackers, the Ukrainian army has to withdraw from the strategically important city of Sievjerodonetsk in the east of the country. The withdrawal of Ukrainian troops had been ordered, the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajdaj, said on Friday in the online service Telegram. The Russian units had recently taken over the city almost completely.
“There is no point in staying in positions that have been smashed for many months just to stay there,” Hajdaj added, referring to the near-total occupation of the city by Russian forces. The death toll would then rise sharply. ” Therefore, our defenders who are there have already received orders to withdraw to new positions and from there to conduct normal, full-fledged military operations.” According to the governor, up to 90 percent of the houses in Sieverodonetsk have now been destroyed.
The major city of Sievjerodonetsk in Luhansk was most recently under the control of Russian troops, even if they still encountered resistance. In the nearby city of Lysychansk, Russian soldiers also advanced to the outskirts on Thursday.
10:27 a.m .: In the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, Ukrainian troops south of the strategically important city of Lyssychansk are acutely threatened with encirclement by Russian units. “The enemy captured the settlements of Lozkutivka and Raj-Oleksandrivka in the direction of Sieverodonetsk,” the Ukrainian general staff said on Facebook on Thursday. This means that the Ukrainian units around the miners’ settlement only have a maximum of four kilometers wide to retreat. According to British intelligence, some Ukrainian troops withdrew.
According to the separatists, however, this is already controlled by the Russian units. This cannot be verified independently. According to the representative of the Luhansk separatists in Moscow, Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian troops have already cut the last connecting road from Lysychansk to the west. According to his estimates, at least 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers are surrounded.
Heavy fighting is also raging south of Sievjerodonetsk, which has largely been conquered by the Russians. Sievjerodonetsk and Lysychansk are the last major cities in the Luhansk region still under Ukrainian control. The conquest of Luhansk – like that of the Donetsk region – is one of Russia’s main goals in the war against the neighboring country that began four months ago.
The Russian advances are likely a result of recent reinforcements and a heavy concentration of shelling, the Ministry of Defense tweeted in London. Despite strong pressure exerted by Russian troops on the Lysychansk-Syeverodonetsk pocket, efforts to achieve a deeper encirclement of the western Donetsk region remained deadlocked.
5:54 a.m .: The positions of the Ukrainian army in the eastern industrial area of Donbass were bombed by the Russian military with planes and shelled with rockets and artillery, said the General Staff of Ukraine. In the evening situation report, more than four dozen cities and towns were listed that had been shelled. Russia relies heavily on artillery to advance from place to place after massive shelling.
The Russian military is advancing closer to the city of Lysychansk from several directions. Bombs are also flying towards the city. On Wednesday it hit the police station. 20 police officers were injured in the heavy attack on Monday evening, says Colonel Oleksandr Kutsepalenko.
Lysychansk is a strategically important industrial center in the eastern Donbass region. Opposite, on the other side of the river, lies Sieverodonetsk, which is now largely under the control of Russian troops. The colonel counted 54 craters after the most recent Russian attack. The governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajdaj, reported “catastrophic destruction” by “very heavy shelling” from the air. Residential buildings near the police station were also hit.
Despite the attacks, the station was still open on Tuesday. Citizens came to report deaths or needed help locating their loved ones. “Partition walls collapsed and the doors were blown out,” says a police officer, who only uses his nickname Petrovich, and shows the damage. There are three burnt-out police cars in front of the station. The agency had already been hit once in March, but not by such heavy artillery, says Petrovich. A block of flats opposite the train station was also hit, there too there is a huge hole in the facade.
Thursday, June 23, 1:38 a.m.: According to the operators, two grain storage terminals at the port of the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv were bombed by Russia. A Viterra spokesman said a person was slightly injured in the attack on one of the port terminals on Wednesday. Two silos caught fire and a third was damaged.
The Viterra terminal has a storage capacity of 160,000 tons and includes, among other things, a production facility for vegetable oil. The extent of the damage to the second terminal, which is operated by the Bunge group, was unclear according to the company.
The ports of Mykolaiv and Odessa have been blocked by Russian troops since the beginning of the war. Agricultural exports by sea are no longer possible.
10.30 a.m .: According to Ukrainian sources, the Russian armed forces heavily bombed the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday. “They are shelling Lysychansk with artillery, rockets, aerial bombs, rocket launchers,” said the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajday, on Wednesday in the online service Telegram. “They destroy everything.”
After weeks of fierce fighting, Russia has almost taken the city of Sieverodonetsk, which is separated from Lysychansk by a river. Most recently, fighting has mainly taken place in the surrounding villages, even if, according to Ukrainian sources, the city of Sievjerodonetsk is still not entirely under Russian control.
Lysychansk is still held by the Ukrainians. With a capture of the area and the two cities, Russia would control the entire Donbass sub-region of Luhansk. In addition, the way would be clear for further advances in the adjacent Donetsk region.
9:35 a.m .: According to British experts, the pro-Russian separatists of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine have suffered enormous losses since the beginning of the war. The troops have lost around 55 percent of their original combat strength, according to an update published by the British Ministry of Defense on Wednesday. This shows the extraordinary attrition of Russian and pro-Russian troops in the hard-fought Donbass region.
According to separatist representative Darya Morozova, from the beginning of the year to June 16, 2,128 pro-Russian fighters were killed and 8,897 wounded. British intelligence believes the separatists are fighting with outdated equipment. The extent to which reserve units could be mobilized would be decisive for the course of the war on both sides, it said.
According to Ukrainian sources, the total losses of the Russian and pro-Russian troops are now well over 30,000. This information cannot be independently verified.
Wednesday, June 22, 6:29 a.m.: The Ukrainian army says it has fired on Russian forces in southern Ukraine. On Tuesday there were a total of 150 rocket and artillery fires, according to the Operational Command of Southern Ukraine in its daily report. 49 Russian soldiers were killed. In addition, two howitzers and an ammunition depot belonging to the Russians could be destroyed.
The Russians, for their part, attacked Mykolaiv and Ochakov in the region. In the Mykolaiv region, a person was killed in a residential area. The Russians have set up a defensive line and are fighting from there, they say. The situation in the south is “tense but controlled,” according to the Ukrainian army.
10:55 p.m .: A Russian fighter plane crashed near the border with Ukraine, according to Russian military sources, its pilot was killed. The Sukhoi Su-25 crashed on Tuesday during a training flight in the Rostov region. According to initial information, the cause could have been a “technical malfunction”, the Russian news agencies quoted a press release from the Southern Military District as saying.
The statement did not mention a possible connection with the Russian military operation in Ukraine, which borders Rostov. On June 17, a Su-25 crashed during a training flight in the Belgorod region, which also borders Ukraine. At that time, too, the Russian military had spoken of a possible technical defect. Russia has repeatedly accused Kyiv of airstrikes on Russian soil in the border regions in recent months.
10:35 p.m .: According to Russian information, 70 ships from 16 countries are currently blocked in six ports in Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Defense accused Ukraine on Tuesday evening of not being able to put ships out to sea unhindered due to Ukrainian shelling and the high risk of mines. On the other hand, Ukraine – one of the largest grain exporters in the world – criticizes the fact that Russia is preventing the export of grain by blocking Ukrainian ports and thus causing a food crisis.
The international community has been demanding that Russia allow the export of Ukrainian grain for weeks. Ukraine complains that its ports in the Black Sea are blocked by the Russian Navy. Both countries are among the largest wheat exporters and play an important role in global food security.
In order to clarify questions about grain exports from Ukraine, a Turkish delegation is to travel to Moscow in the coming week, as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the TASS agency.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the port in Mariupol in southern Ukraine is now operational again. A Turkish ship was the first foreign ship to leave the port on Tuesday, the Russian agency Tass wrote.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
