Live blog: Ukraine claims recapture of three more settlements in southeast

Monday, June 12, 2023

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar has said that the country's forces have made further advances in a counter-offensive launched last week.

In a Telegram post, she said seven settlements had been liberated, including three not previously claimed - Lobkove, Levadne and Novodarivka in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.

More updates 👇

1837 GMT - France to intensify arms delivery to Ukraine

French President Emmanuel Macron has confirmed that a long-anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive had started a few days earlier and said it had been meticulously planned by military leaders with a great tactical sense.

"We have done everything to help it," Macron told a joint news conference with German and Polish leaders. "We have intensified the delivery of ammunitions, weapons and armed vehicles... We'll continue in coming days and weeks."

1713 GMT - UN working to renew Ukraine grain export deal

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he is working to extend an agreement that allows grain from war-torn Ukraine to reach the global market and prevent shortages.

That crucial accord granting safe passage for Ukrainian grain to be exported via Black Sea ports despite Moscow's offensive was signed in July 2022 by Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye and the United Nations. It was renewed again in May but for only two months, until July 17.

The accord helped alleviate foot shortages triggered by the conflict and Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports.

Moscow is demanding guarantees on another agreement concerning its own exports, in particular of fertilizer components.

1612 GMT - Putin visits Russian troops wounded in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited Russian soldiers wounded in Ukraine in a rare face-to-face meeting with troops, as Kiev pushed ahead with its counteroffensive against Moscow's forces and fighting intensified over the weekend.

The Russian leader visited the soldiers at the Central Vishnevsky Military Clinic outside Moscow on "Russia Day", a patriotic public holiday.

The Kremlin aired images of Putin accompanied by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

1414 GMT - Russian attack kills one in southeastern Ukraine: governor

One man has been killed and another has been wounded in a Russian attack on the small town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region of southeastern Ukraine, regional governor Yuri Malashko has said.

Malashko said three bombs had damaged private houses and communications in the small town, about eight km from the front lines. He said the man who was killed had been 48 and the one who was wounded was 32.

Officials have said several hundred residents remain in the town although infrastructure there has been largely destroyed by Russian forces, which seized most of the Zaporizhzhia region in the early months of its full-scale offensive last year.

1404 GMT - G7 working on scheme to combat theft of Ukraine grain: UK

The Group of Seven (G7) rich nations are working on a scheme to combat the suspected theft of Ukraine's grain by using chemical identification of grain origin, Britain's Food and farming minister Mark Spencer has said.

Spencer told an International Grains Council (IGC) conference in London that Britain was leading on the scheme and that G7 countries were also working closely with Ukraine, the world's fourth-largest grains exporter.

"We believe (chemical identification) will be an effective means for deterring further theft of Ukraine's grain," said Spencer.

Britain announced a new wave of sanctions last month on Russia over its war against Ukraine, targeting "shady individuals and entities" connected to the suspected theft of Ukrainian grain.

1400 GMT - Death toll from flooding of Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam rises

The death toll from the flooding caused by the explosion at the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine has risen to 10.

In a statement on Telegram, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said eight people have died, while 42 people, including seven children, have been missing in Kherson Oblast, where 46 settlements remain flooded.

The statement further said that two people were killed in the neighbouring Mykolaiv region, where it said 31 settlements were flooded.

It also said that 2,743 people were evacuated from the Kherson region, including 205 children and 76 people with reduced mobility. Meanwhile, 982 people were evacuated, including 167 children, from the Mykolaiv region, it added.

1209 GMT - Russia says beat back Ukraine near villages claimed by Kiev

Russia has said it had repelled Ukrainian attacks around several villages in the war-battered southeast of the country, contradicting earlier claims from Kiev's forces that they had retaken the settlements.

The Russian defence ministry said that Russia forces had fought back three Ukrainian assaults near Velyka Novosilka, a town in the eastern Donetsk region where Kiev has claimed gains.

"Decisive actions of defending units - artillery fire and heavy flamethrower systems of the Vostok grouping - repelled three enemy attacks," it said in a statement.

The defence ministry also said that Russian troops had fought off Ukrainian attacks just west of Velyka Novosilka, around the nearby village of Levadne in the neighbouring southern region of Zaporizhzhia.

0826 GMT - Ukraine sets 'fighter jet coalition' on agenda of upcoming meeting

Ukraine has said early that the "fighter jet coalition" led by Western countries in support of Kiev will be discussed during an upcoming Ramstein format meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group.

“During the meeting, we will discuss the details of the ‘aircraft coalition’. In this case, we are talking about the training of pilots and not only pilots but also our technicians and engineers who will deal with aircraft maintenance. Because this is a very complex system,” Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said, according to a statement by the ministry on Telegram

Reznikov said that the issue will be discussed with the teams of the defence ministries of the Netherlands, Denmark, the US and other countries that have joined the coalition, adding that he included representatives of the Air Force in the Ukrainian delegation.

He also said issues related to the provision of air defence systems, ammunition and artillery will also be discussed during the meeting.

0816 GMT - Ukraine recaptures 4th village in counteroffensive gains: Kiev

Ukraine has said its troops had recaptured a fourth village in a cluster of settlements in the southeast, a day after reporting the first small gains of a counteroffensive against Russian forces.

Soldiers held up the Ukrainian flag in Storozheve in the Donetsk region in unverified video footage posted online and the defence minister thanked the 35th Separate Brigade of Marines for regaining control of the village.

Ukraine has enforced strict operational silence to avoid compromising an operation it hopes will retake swathes of land in the east and south, and threaten the land bridge Russia uses to supply the occupied Crimea peninsula.

0649 GMT - From GPS-guided bombs to electronic warfare

Ukrainian troops are probing Russian defences as spring gives way to a second summer of fighting, and Kiev's forces are facing an enemy that has made mistakes and suffered setbacks in the 15-month-old war.

But analysts say Moscow also has learned from those blunders and improved its weapons and skills.

Russia has built heavily fortified defences along the 1,000-kilometres front line, honed its electronic weapons to reduce Ukraine's edge in combat drones, and turned heavy bombs from its massive Cold- War-era arsenal into precision-guided gliding munitions capable of striking targets without putting its warplanes at risk.

The changing Russian tactics along with increased troop numbers and improved weaponry could make it challenging for Ukraine to score any kind of quick decisive victory, threatening to turn it into a long battle of attrition.

0615 GMT - Heavy battles ongoing after first counteroffensive gains: Ukraine

Ukraine's top military command said its forces were engaged in heavy battles in frontline hot spots, as the defence ministry said several villages were liberated from Russian occupation in the opening phase of a counteroffensive.

Some 25 battles had taken place over the past day near the eastern town of Bakhmut, and further south near Avdiivka and Maryinka, all in the Donetsk region, but also near Bilohorivka in the Luhansk region, Ukraine's armed forces general staff said.

Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar posted on Monday a photo showing soldiers hoisting the Ukrainian flag at what she said was the village of Storozheve in Donetsk, and thanked the 35th Separate Brigade of Marines for liberating it.

0025 GMT - UN nuclear watchdog concerned over water levels at Ukraine plant

The UN atomic watchdog said that it needs wider access around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to check "a significant discrepancy" in water level data at the breached Kakhovka dam used for cooling the plant's reactors.

International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi, who is to visit the plant this week, said that measurements the agency received from the inlet of the plant showed that the dam's water levels were stable for about a day over the weekend.

"However, the height is reportedly continuing to fall elsewhere in the huge reservoir, causing a possible difference of about two metres," Grossi said in a statement.

"The height of the water level is a key parameter for the continued operability of the water pumps."

The destruction of the Kakhovka hydropower dam in southern Ukraine last week has flooded towns downstream and forced thousands of people from their homes.

For our live updates from Sunday (June 11), click here.