Live blog: Kiev reports 'intensified' combat with Russia on front line

Sunday, July 16, 2023

1729 GMT - Ukraine has said fighting had "intensified" on the eastern front as Russian President Vladimir Putin deemed Kiev's counteroffensive a failure.

Putin is yet to decide if Russia will renew the grain deal -- expiring late Monday -- that allowed the resumption of Ukrainian exports through the Black Sea, temporarily halted when the conflict began in February 2022.

Ukraine last month began its highly anticipated fightback after stockpiling Western weapons and building up its offensive forces.

It has however admitted difficult battles and called on the United States and other allies to provide long-range weapons and artillery.

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Malyar said "the situation has somewhat intensified in the east."

"For two days in a row, the enemy has been actively attacking in the Kupiansk sector in the Kharkiv region. We are on the defence," Malyar wrote on Telegram.

She nevertheless said Ukrainian forces were "gradually moving forward" near the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Russian forces seized in May.

More updates: 👇

1717 GMT - US national security advisor says Ukraine’s future is in NATO

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said that Ukraine's future is in NATO and that this is not a “negotiable” issue.

The remarks come after questions on the July 11-12 NATO summit and Ukraine's membership during a television programme "This Week" on ABC News where Sullivan appeared as a guest.

“We said in the communique that Ukraine’s future is in NATO, period, full stop. No qualifications. No negotiations with anyone. It is going to happen,” said the national security advisor.

He stressed that the US support for Ukraine against Russia will continue, and he believed that the American people would continue to support this stance.

0854 GMT - Russian official says Ukraine shelled border town, killing one woman

The governor of Russia's Belgorod region has said that Ukrainian forces had shelled the Russian town of Shebekino near the Ukrainian border with Grad missiles, killing a woman riding her bike.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia. Reuters was not able to verify what happened.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, Belgorod's governor, said the Grad missiles had struck a market area, damaging a building and two cars.

"To much grief, one person was killed - a woman was riding a bicycle on the pavement at the time of the shelling.

0830 GMT - US supply of cluster munitions to Ukraine ‘crime’: Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Washington’s supply of cluster munitions to Ukraine should be treated as a crime.

“The US administration itself gave an assessment to these munitions through the mouths of its employees some time ago, when the use of cluster munitions was called a crime by the US administration itself. I think this is how it should be treated," Putin said in an interview to the TV channel Rossiya-1.

Putin further said that his country retains the right to “mirror actions” in the case where cluster munitions are used against Russia, adding that Moscow has a “sufficient stock of various types of cluster munitions.”

“Until now, we have not done this, we have not used it, and we have not had such a need, despite the well-known shortage in a certain period of time, and we also have ammunition, but we have not done this," Putin said.

0826 GMT - S Korea to provide more demining equipment to Ukraine -official

South Korea will provide more demining equipment to Ukraine, a South Korean official has said, following President Yoon Suk Yeol's visit to Kiev on the weekend where he pledged more military and humanitarian aid in the fight against Russia.

"We are thinking to expand support on mine detectors and demining equipment as Ukraine's demand for them was assessed to be desperately huge," Yoon's deputy national security adviser, Kim Tae-hyo, told a briefing.

Yoon made the pledge for more aid in talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday in a surprise visit to Kiev after attending a NATO summit in Lithuania and visiting Poland, where he expressed solidarity with Ukraine.

0811 GMT - Last ship leaves Ukraine port ahead of Black Sea grain deal deadline

The last ship to travel under a Ankara-brokered deal that allows the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain left the port of Odessa early on Sunday ahead of a deadline to extend the agreement, according to a Reuters witness and MarineTraffic.com.

Russia has not agreed to register any new ships since June 27 and the initiative will expire on Monday unless Moscow agrees to extend it.

A United Nations spokesman said on Friday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was waiting for a response from Russian President Vladimir Putin on a proposal to extend the deal.

Putin told South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in a phone call on Saturday that commitments to remove obstacles to Russian food and fertiliser exports had yet to be fulfilled, the Kremlin said.

Russia has repeatedly threatened to quit the deal, brokered by Türkiye and the UN in July 2022 following Russia's offensive in Ukraine. It had been previously extended for two months on May 17.

0726 GMT - Ukraine says Russian attacks hit Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia

A civilian was killed and another wounded in Russian shelling in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, while seven were injured in a village in Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian officials said.

The Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine's east and southeast have seen fierce combat throughout much of the 17 months since Moscow attacked its neighbour, with Kiev's forces fighting to liberate areas Russian forces now occupy.

In a move widely condemned as illegal, Russia said last year it was annexing Zaporizhzhia and other parts of Ukraine, and it controls a nuclear power plant there, Europe's largest, but the regional capital, the city of Zaporizhzhia, remains under Kiev's control.

Ukraine recaptured much of the eastern Kharkiv region in September, with Russian forces occupying now only a small strip of land there.

0609 GMT - Russia says its repelled Ukrainian attacks on Crimea

Russia's Defence Ministry said that it had thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack attempt near the port of Sevastopol in Crimea.

Russia's air defence forces and fleet in the Black Sea have engaged in repelling Ukrainian drone attacks over the Crimean port of Sevastopol, a Moscow-installed official said earlier.

The attacks were over the harbour of Sevastopol and the city’s Balaklava and Khersones districts, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol, said on the Telegram messaging app.

There were no immediate details of the scale of the attack or any damage from the attacks on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

0526 GMT - Yellen says Ukraine aid best boost for global economy

Redoubling support for war-stricken Ukraine is the "single best" way to aid the global economy, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

Yellen, speaking on the sidelines of a G20 finance minister summit in India, said a "key priority" was "to redouble our support for Ukraine" in its defence against Russia.

After visiting Kiev in February, Yellen said she had seen first-hand "the massive difference" that foreign assistance was making, both to civilians and the Ukrainian military.

"Ending this war is first and foremost a moral imperative," Yellen told reporters in Gandhinagar.

0204 GMT - G7 finance chiefs to discuss Ukraine aid

G7 finance chiefs are set to discuss Sunday aid to war-stricken Ukraine, debt distress faced by struggling economies, bank reform and a global tax deal, alongside wider G20 meetings in India.

A key focus of the talks, which will include US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, will be supporting multilateral development lenders such as the World Bank to better tackle challenges like climate change and poverty, US officials said.

"With over half of all low-income countries at high risk of or in debt distress, it is critical that we take collective action to help put them –- and by extension the global economy –- on a surer footing", the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement ahead of the meeting in Gandhinagar.

Last Wednesday, the Group of Seven -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and the United States -- promised at a summit in Lithuania to support Ukraine for as long as it takes to defeat Russia's offensive.

0043 GMT - Ukraine, Poland say Wagner fighters arrive in Belarus

Fighters from the mercenary Wagner group have arrived in Belarus from Russia, Ukrainian and Polish officials said, a day after Minsk said that the mercenaries were training the country's soldiers southeast of the capital.

"Wagner is in Belarus," Andriy Demchenko, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian border agency, said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app.

He added that the movement of "separate groups" from Russia has been observed in Belarus.

Poland's Deputy Minister Coordinator of Special Services Stanislaw Zaryn said that Warsaw also has confirmation of Wagner fighters' presence in Belarus.

"There may be several hundred of them at the moment," Zaryn said on Twitter.

2232 GMT - Ukraine, Russia accuse each other of shelling civilians in Zaporizhzhia

Three civilians were wounded in Russian shelling of a village in Zaporizhzhia, the head of Ukraine's presidential administration said, while Moscow-backed officials said that Kiev's forces shelled a school there.

Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine's presidential administration, said on his Telegram messaging app that Russian forces shelled the village of Stepnohirske in the region from multiple rocket launchers, hitting an administrative building.

"There are three wounded: two women and a man," Yermak said.

Russia also shelled the city of Zaporizhzhia, hitting and damaging at least 16 buildings there, Anatoliy Kurtiev, secretary of the city council, said on the Telegram.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in parts of Zaporizhzhia controlled by Moscow, said that Ukrainian forces destroyed a school in the village of Stulneve, while air defence forces intercepted a drone over the city of Tokmak.

1639 GMT - Zelenskyy says he can't leave his people to 'Russian occupation'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he can't leave his people, towns and villages to "Russian occupation", adding that separation is one of the worst things a war could bring.

"Wherever the Russian occupation continues, violence and humiliation of people reign," Zelenskyy said in his address.

"I am grateful to all our partners – every leader, every politician, public figure, every country who really supports us in the fact that only the complete liberation of our entire Ukrainian territory will allow the full force of the international rules-based order to be restored."

For our live updates from Saturday (July 15), click here.