Russia-Ukraine war: Kremlin insists invasion going to plan despite counterattacks; first grain ship docks in Africa – live | Russia

The first shipment of grain from Ukraine to the drought-stricken Horn of Africa since the war began has docked in Djibouti.

The UN-chartered vessel Brave Commander, carrying 23,000 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat, set sail from the Ukrainian port of Yuzhne, east of Odesa, two weeks ago.

The vessel is the first specially chartered by the UN’s World Food Programme to unblock food shipments stuck after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It will soon be followed by another carrying 7,000 tonnes. The total shipment, which will be unloaded in Djibouti and transported to Ethiopia, is enough to feed 1.5m people for a month.

Michael Dunford, the UN’s World Food Programme director for Eastern Africa, said:

This shipment, the first of many we hope, will allow WFP to deliver this grain to 1.53 million people in Ethiopia and cover their needs for a month. It’s a start but we must continue to keep the food flowing to save lives across the region.

The European Commission has said it will donate 5.5m potassium iodide tablets to Ukraine amid fears that fighting in the area of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant could lead to nuclear catastrophe.

The Commission said it had received a request from the Ukrainian government for potassium iodide tablets “as a preventative safety measure” to increase the level of protection around the nuclear plant.

The tablets would be used “in limited scenarios to avoid that inhaled or swallowed radioactive iodine is absorbed by the thyroid”, the commission said.

The EU is “pre-emptively” delivering the potassium iodide tablets to Ukraine to offer people protection “in case of exposure to high levels of radiation”, the commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarčič, said in a statement.

He added:

No nuclear power plant should ever be used as a war theatre. It is unacceptable that civilian lives are put in danger.

The Kremlin has insisted that its so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine is going to plan despite the news that Kyiv’s troops have launched a long-awaited counteroffensive in the south of the country.

At his regular briefing with reporters, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was asked to respond to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s comments that Russian troops should flee after his military reportedly broke through several of their defences on Tuesday.

Peskov replied:

The special military operation continues, it continues methodically, and in co-ordination with the current plans. All objectives will be fulfilled.

He also commented on calls by some European leaders for a ban on tourist visas for Russians, describing the proposals as “irrational” and the latest manifestation of the west’s anti-Russian agenda.

He said Europe’s actions towards Russia were “bordering on insanity” adding:

Of course, such decisions cannot go unanswered.

It is just past 1pm in Ukraine. Here is what you might have missed:

• Germany and France have issued a joint warning against a ban on tourist visas for Russians, saying such a step would be counter-productive, reports Reuters. The split on tourist visas will be at the heart of a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Prague on Tuesday and Wednesday, as they discuss what further steps they can take to sanction Russia for its six-month old invasion of Ukraine. Defence ministers meeting in Prague are likely to agree in principle on the less controversial step of organising joint military training missions for Ukrainian troops.

• Russia’s Gazprom has informed Engie it is reducing its gas deliveries, starting Tuesday, due to a disagreement between the parties over contracts, adding to concerns related to energy supplies, the French utility company said.

• At least four people were killed and four wounded in Russian shelling of Kharkiv, the regional governor said. Writing on the Telegram messaging app, Oleh Synehubov said:”As a result of the shelling of the central part of Kharkiv, at least 4 people died and 4 more were injured.”

• European Union defence ministers are set to pave the way for the establishment of an EU training mission for Ukrainian forces, the bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said. Reuters reports that Borrell said: “The situation on the ground continues to be very bad. Ukraine needs our support, and we will continue providing support. A general, overall political agreement (on the training mission) is what I think we have to get today … I hope we will have a political green light for this mission.”

• Russia has faced “numerous failures” with Iranian-made drones acquired from Tehran this month for use in its war with Ukraine, according to a senior US administration official. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the US understood that Russia had received the delivery of Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over several days this month. The official said it is likely to be part of a Russian plan to acquire hundreds of such vehicles, reports Reuters.

• Russian forces have killed two people and injured four others in Donetsk, the region’s governor said on Telegram. Pavlo Kyrylenko said the two people were killed in Rozdolne and Pivnichne.

• Ukrainian troops are mounting a long-awaited counteroffensive in the southern region of Kherson, military officials have said. “Today we started offensive actions in various directions, including in the Kherson region,” Ukraine’s southern command spokesperson, Natalia Humeniuk, said on Monday. She declined to provide more details about the new offensive but said Ukraine’s recent strikes on Russia’s southern logistical routes had “unquestionably weakened the enemy”. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, added in a Monday evening address: “If they want to survive, it is time for the Russian military to flee. The occupiers should know: we will oust them to the border. To our border, the line of which has not changed.”

• Senior adviser to Ukraine’s president Oleksiy Arestovych described the counteroffensive as a “planned slow operation to grind the enemy”. In an update posted to his official Telegram account, Arestovych said: “We do not fight for show-offs and high-profile phrases as an enemy. We fight for a cause. And this thing takes time and effort. Therefore, be patient. This process will not be very fast, but will end with the installation of the Ukrainian flag over all the settlements of Ukraine.”

• Kyiv’s forces have broken through Russian defences in several sectors of the frontline near the city of Kherson, a senior adviser to Zelenskiy claimed. Oleksiy Arestovych said Ukrainian forces were also shelling the ferries in the Kherson region that Moscow is using to supply Russian-occupied territory on the west bank of the Dnieper River. A separate Ukrainian military source told CNN that its forces have taken back four villages near the city of Kherson after breaking through the frontline in three places, with the main “target” being Kherson. The operation began with heavy shelling of Russian positions and the rear, forcing them to flee, the source was quoted as saying.

• Ukrainian forces have heightened artillery fire in the south, according to British intelligence. Several brigades of the Ukrainian armed forces increased the weight of artillery fires in front line sectors across southern Ukraine early on Monday, the UK Ministry of Defence said in its latest report. Ukrainian long-range precision strikes also continue to disrupt Russian resupply.

• A Ukrainian barrage of rockets left the Russian-occupied town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region without water or power, officials at the Russian-appointed local authority told Russia’s RIA news agency. The town lies just to the east of the city of Kherson.

• A team of inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog arrived in Kyiv on Monday night en route to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief, Rafael Grossi, said a team will visit the plant from Wednesday to Saturday. “We must protect the safety and security of Ukraine’s and Europe’s biggest nuclear facility,” Grossi tweeted. Missiles and shells are frequently hitting areas around the power station and nearby towns, prompting fears it may be too dangerous for the mission to proceed.

• The Kremlin said the IAEA mission was “necessary” but has ruled out vacating the site. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said Ukraine expects the IAEA delegation to “state the facts” regarding the violation of all nuclear safety protocols, adding that Russia “is putting not only Ukraine but also the entire world at threat of risk of a nuclear accident”.

• Russian forces fired at Enerhodar, the city where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located, according to Ukraine’s armed forces. Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, also appeared to confirm the reports on his Telegram channel alongside a video of firefighters dousing burning cars.

• Russia is struggling to find more soldiers to fight in Ukraine and has expanded recruitment efforts by eliminating the upper age limit and by tapping into prisons. “Many of these new recruits have been observed as older, unfit and ill-trained,” a Pentagon official told journalists on Monday. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, decreed last week that his army would increase by about 10%, to 1.15 million service personnel, starting January next year.

• Ukrainian officials have warned politicians, experts and opinion leaders not to speculate about the progress of a military counteroffensive. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern command, Nataliya Humenyuk, said the operation in Kherson needed “silence” as media attention could affect the results. Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, added it was necessary to wait for official statements from Ukraine’s ministry of defence and army. “I understand our wishes and dreams … But war is not ‘content’. Let’s filter information and work professionally out of respect for our defenders,” he wrote on Telegram.

Germany and France have issued a joint warning against a ban on tourist visas for Russians, saying such a step would be counter-productive, reports Reuters.

The split on tourist visas will be at the heart of a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Prague on Tuesday and Wednesday, as they discuss what further steps they can take to sanction Russia for its six-month old invasion of Ukraine.

Defence ministers meeting in Prague are likely to agree in principle on the less controversial step of organising joint military training missions for Ukrainian troops.

France and Germany said in the joint memo seen by Reuters:

We caution against far-reaching restrictions on our visa policy, in order to prevent feeding the Russian narrative and trigger unintended rallying-around the flag effects and/or estranging future generations.

Others, in particular eastern and Nordic member states, have argued strongly for a ban.

Denmark’s foreign minister Jeppe Kofod said last week:

It is very provocative to me that you see Russian men on European beaches in southern Europe and at the same time Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 years cannot even leave their country but have to fight for their freedom.

We think it is right that we together in Europe can limit and cut off tourists from Russia and it would send a clear message to (President) Putin.

Russians mostly enter the EU via the land borders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland, Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said last week, adding that these countries may act on their own if the EU does not agree on a union-wide ban.

At least four people were killed and four wounded in Russian shelling of Kharkiv today, the regional governor said.

Writing on the Telegram messaging app, Oleh Synehubov said:

As a result of the shelling of the central part of Kharkiv, at least 4 people died and 4 more were injured.

Kharkiv is the country’s second-largest city and was the subject of fierce attacks in the early stages of the war.

Isobel Koshiw reports for us from Kyiv:

The long-awaited counter-offensive by Ukrainian troops appears to have started in the southern region of Kherson, with the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, saying: “If they want to survive, it is time for the Russian military to flee.”

Ukrainian troops have broken through Russian defences in several areas of the frontline near the city of Kherson, a senior adviser to Zelenskiy claimed.

Oleksiy Arestovych said in a video interview Ukrainian forces were also shelling the ferries in the Kherson region that Moscow is using to supply Russian-occupied territory on the west bank of the Dnieper River. But he cautioned Ukrainians against expecting a quick win in the south.

Read more: Zelenskiy tells Russian forces to flee as Ukraine counteroffensive begins in Kherson