Summary

If you’re just joining us now, here’s a quick rundown of developments:

  • Three people including a child have been killed after Russia launched a wave of ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv overnight. Another 12 people including a child were injured, according to city officials. Ukraine’s air force shot down all 10 missiles launched at the city. Those killed and injured were hit by falling debris. Air raid sirens sounded briefly again at around 7.30am.

  • Ukrainian forces shelled the Russian border town of Shebekino in Belgorod overnight, according to the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov. Five people were injured in the attack, the fourth of its kind this week.

  • Emmanuel Macron has said a negotiated peace in Ukraine may have to be prioritised over putting Vladimir Putin on trial for war crimes. In a speech in Bratislava, the French president said: “If in a few months to come, you have a window for negotiation with the existing Russian political power, the question you will have is an arbitrage between a trial and a negotiation. And you will have to negotiate with the leaders you have, de facto, even if the day after you will have to judge them in front of international justice … Otherwise you can put yourselves just in an impossible situation where you say ‘I want you to go to jail but you are the only ones I can negotiate with’.”

  • Macron urged Nato to offer Ukraine “tangible and credible” security assurances, arguing that it was in the west’s interests to do so as Kyiv “is today protecting Europe”. Leaders will meet in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in July to discuss Nato membership for Ukraine.

  • The US has announced a new $300m arms package for Ukraine, including air defence systems and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition, but warned Kyiv that US weaponry should not be used for attacks within Russia. “We have been very clear with the Ukrainians privately – we’ve certainly been clear publicly – that we do not support attacks inside Russia,” said the national security council spokesman John Kirby.

  • A German government spokesperson has said Ukraine has the right to attack Russian territory as it qualifies as self-defence. In an interview with the German news website Deutsche Welle, Steffen Hebestreit said: “International law allows Ukraine to carry out strikes on the territory of Russia for the purpose of self-defence.”

  • Russia does not plan to declare martial law after Tuesday’s large-scale drone strike on Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has said. Several leading Russian officials and pro-war figures including the Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov have urged Vladimir Putin to respond to the drone attacks by declaring a state of total war.

  • The UN has proposed that Kyiv, Moscow and Ankara start preparatory work for the transit of Russian ammonia through Ukraine as it tries to salvage a deal allowing safe Black Sea grain exports, a source close to the talks has told Reuters. Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, accused Russia of blocking all activity at the port of Pivdennyi, with 1.5m tonnes of agricultural products unable to move.

  • Only 500 people are left in Bakhmut, the city in the east of Ukraine that has been subject to heavy fighting in the last year, according to its mayor. The figure from Oleksii Reva, reported by the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, is a tiny fraction of its prewar population of 70,000.

  • Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, has said he has asked prosecutors to investigate “crimes” committed by senior Russian defence officials before and during the invasion of Ukraine.

  • An Iraqi citizen fighting with Wagner was killed in Ukraine in early April, the first confirmed case of someone from the Middle East dying in the conflict, Prigozhin told Reuters. Abbas Abuthar Witwit died on 7 April, a day after arriving at a Wagner hospital in the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, the RIA FAN news site also reported.

  • Russia claimed it destroyed Ukrainian naval forces’ last major warship, the Yuri Olefirenko, which it said was stationed in the southern port of Odesa. The Russian air force said it attacked the ship on 29 May. Ukraine has not commented.

  • Analysis from the Kyiv Post suggests about 90% of the 500 missiles and drones launched by Russia in May in attacks on Ukraine failed, to the cost of $1.7bn. It said 533 of them were destroyed by the Ukrainian air force, including 401 Shahed-136 drones that cost about $20,000 each.

  • The Russian security council deputy chair, Dmitry Medvedev, said Britain was Moscow’s “eternal enemy”. Any British officials who facilitated the war in Ukraine could be considered legitimate military targets, he said.

Key events

Exams cancelled in part of Russia’s Belgorod region after cross-border shelling

The governor of Belgorod in Russia reports that state maths exams in Shebekino have been cancelled as a result of shelling.

Vyacheslav Gladkov posted to Telegram:

I reported to the president of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin on the situation at the border. It was decided that schoolchildren from the Shebekino district will not take exams. Now a mechanism is being worked out that will allow children from the Shebekino district to enter universities without exams.

The latest air alert to sound in Kyiv was brief and has ended, but not without having an impact on the local population.

Fucking awful to hear kids screaming and running to shelters in the nearby school on an international children’s protection day.

— Nika Melkozerova (@NikaMelkozerova) June 1, 2023

Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region in Russia, reports on his Telegram that two teachers at a rural school in Novopetrovka received shrapnel wounds and have been hospitalised after the building was struck by fire from the Ukrainian armed forces. The claims have not been independently verified.

Another air alert has been declared in several regions of Ukraine, including Kyiv.

Ukraine’s ministry of defence has just issued this statement about the earlier attack on the capital, saying:

Last night, the Russians attacked Kyiv with seven Iskander-M ballistic missiles and three Iskander-K cruise missiles. All missiles were shot down. Unfortunately, fragments of the destroyed missiles hit an apartment building and a pediatric hospital. Three civilians, including a child, were killed, and 10 were injured.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy said during a trip to Moldova on Thursday that Ukraine was ready to be in the Nato military alliance and that Kyiv was waiting for the bloc to be ready to admit his country.

He spoke to reporters as he stood beside Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, after arriving for a summit of the European Political Community, which is being hosted by Ukraine’s neighbour.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Maia Sandu
Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Maia Sandu. Photograph: Vladislav Culiomza/Reuters

Nato foreign ministers are discussing the issue at a meeting in Oslo.

The Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said in Norway that Ukraine must be given a strong political message of support regarding its Nato membership bid.

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, sounded a more cautious note, stating that “Nato’s open-door policy remains in place, but at the same time it is clear that we cannot talk about accepting new members in the midst of a war.”

Germany’s Annalena Baerbock speaks at Oslo City Hall.
Germany’s Annalena Baerbock speaks at Oslo City Hall. Photograph: NTB/Reuters

Investigation launched after claims deaths occurred in Kyiv after people unable to get into ‘locked’ shelter

Ukrainian media and authorities are reporting that the three people killed in Kyiv this morning had tried to get into a shelter but found it locked and then were hit by debris.

Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, has two recent reports on its Telegram channel. It writes:

Locals told Suspilne that it was not the first time they were unable to get to the shelter in the polyclinic in the Desnyan district of Kyiv, where debris fell that night. Mayor [Vitali] Klitschko reported that experts from the municipal security department went there to find out why the shelter was closed.

It subsequently added:

Due to the closed shelter in the Desnyan district, the Kyiv police started criminal proceedings under the article of official negligence, which caused serious consequences, the head of the ministry of internal affairs, Ihor Klymenko, said.

The head of the Desnyan district administration, Dmytro Ratnikov, said that, according to the director of the polyclinic, the night shift worker opened the central entrance: some people managed to enter, some were near the shelter, where three people died.

Director of the security department of Kyiv, Roman Tkachuk, who arrived at the scene, said that the guard tried to open the shelter, but an explosion occurred, and he is now in the hospital. At the same time, a local resident claims that after the explosion he found the guard in the shelter in a drunken state.

Tkachuk also stated that the security department did not receive complaints from people about shelters in the polyclinic – according to him, they check the shelters about which they receive complaints.

There is considerable comment about the incident unfolding on social media.

This is the reality for much of Kyiv. Many of the shelters that people relied on earlier in the war are no longer being operated 24/7. You need someone to open the locked door with a key. If that person doesn’t arrive… https://t.co/5RQHBCdxOF

— Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) June 1, 2023

Three people, including a mother and a child, were killed by Russian missile debris while standing near a *locked* shelter in #Kyiv.

An utter failure of Kyiv city authorities, who can’t provide shelters a year into the war. And this issue is endemic in many 🇺🇦 cities.

— Anastasiia Lapatina (@lapatina_) June 1, 2023

While that meeting is being held in Moldova, there is also a flurry of Nato diplomacy taking place in Oslo, where Nato’s foreign ministers are meeting. The admission process for Sweden is high on the agenda, as well as the topic of conflict in Ukraine.

The Nato alliance needs to think about what kind of security guarantees it can give Ukraine, the French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said on Thursday, Reuters reports, while Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said the time had come for Nato members to find a concrete answer to the question of how Ukraine could become a member.

France’s Catherine Colonna at Oslo City Hall for Nato’s informal meeting of foreign ministers
France’s Catherine Colonna at Oslo City Hall for Nato’s informal meeting of foreign ministers. Photograph: NTB/Reuters

Landsbergis also said there was a high expectation that the Swedish flag would be raised at Nato’s Vilnius summit in July.

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Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, is in Oslo and said the time had come for Turkey and Hungary to ratify his nation’s Nato membership application. “We have fulfilled all our commitments,” Billström said.

Earlier, the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said he would soon travel to Turkey to discuss Sweden’s Nato membership.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has arrived in Moldova. Ukraine’s president was greeted by the Moldovan president, Maia Sandu.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy shakes hands with Maia Sandu at a welcome ceremony at Mimi Castle in Bulboaca, Moldova.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy shakes hands with Maia Sandu at a welcome ceremony at Mimi Castle in Bulboaca, Moldova. Photograph: Vladislav Culiomza/Reuters

European leaders are gathering for the European Political Community (EPC) meeting in Moldova.

Initially envisaged by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as a platform for unity across the wider European front, the EPC will bring together the leaders of the 27 EU member states as well as 19 other countries including the UK, Ukraine, Turkey, and Moldova’s Balkan neighbours.

If you haven’t seen it yet, my colleague Julian Borger has been with Artem Mazhulin in Kramatorsk, talking to Ukrainian troops training ahead of their expected counteroffensive:

The officers and soldiers doing live-fire training in the Donetsk countryside are under no illusions about the task ahead them. Once one platoon had performed the exercise, they got out of the armoured vehicle and another platoon got in immediately to do the same drill: storm the treeline, clear the trenches and form a defensive perimeter until they are picked up. Elsewhere, soldiers from the brigade are rehearsing urban and village combat.

“We’re training in certain places where there are certain landscapes that are the exact landscapes that we will have to fight in, so we train there for every stage of the operation,” said the battalion commander, Petro Horbatenko.

The 3rd assault brigades are training for combat a few miles from Bakhmut.
The 3rd assault brigades are training for combat a few miles from Bakhmut. Photograph: Emre Çaylak/The Guardian

“You win battles not by conquering and occupying land but by destroying your enemy and their equipment and their storage depots,” Horbatenko said. “We killed 10 of them for every one they killed of ours [in the battle for Bakhmut], and that is not counting artillery casualties. So we did kill off a lot of them, but they were mostly from the Wagner group. To them they were just meat. So it is hard to say who won.”

Read more of Julian Borger and Artem Mazhulin’s report from Kramatorsk here: ‘Fear is contagious but so is courage’ – the Ukrainian soldiers training to retake Bakhmut

Eight people were wounded by overnight shelling that continued into the morning in the Russian town of Shebekino and damaged multiple buildings, the governor of the Belgorod region said on Thursday.

Reuters reports that in a video posted on Telegram, the governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said: “In Shebekino district, there is ongoing shelling by the armed forces of Ukraine. Eight people have been wounded. There are no dead.”

He said local authorities would evacuate civilians as soon as the shelling was over.

“Of course, the lives of civilians, of the population, is under threat. Primarily in Shebekino and in the surrounding villages,” he added.

Olena Zelenska has commented on the overnight strike on Kyiv. Ukraine’s first lady tweeted:

Children’s day has always been about a safe childhood, the beginning of summer, life. Today it is about the new crimes of the Russian Federation against Ukrainian children. As a result of shelling in Kyiv, a nine-year-old girl died, and another was put in the hospital. Every affected child causes pain for the whole country. Our thoughts are with their families.

День захисту дітей завжди був про безпечне дитинство, початок літа, життя… Сьогодні ж він – про нові злочини РФ проти 🇺🇦 дітей. Внаслідок обстрілу Києва загинула 9-річна дівчинка, ще одна – в лікарні. Кожна постраждала дитина – біль для всієї країни. Наші думки з їхніми рідними.

— Олена Зеленська (@ZelenskaUA) June 1, 2023

International Children’s Day is celebrated on 1 June in many post-Soviet nations, including Ukraine, but Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, has just announced on Telegram that events scheduled in the capital to celebrate it have been cancelled.

Three people including a child were killed and at least 11 people were injured in an early morning missile attack on Kyiv that hit apartment buildings, two schools and a children’s clinic, according to city authorities.

The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Thursday that he would soon travel to Turkey to discuss Sweden’s Nato membership, Reuters reports

“I spoke with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan earlier this week and I will also travel to Ankara in the near future to continue to address how we can ensure the fastest possible accession of Sweden,” he said during a two-day meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Oslo.

Sweden and Finland began the process of attempting to join the alliance in May 2022, three months after Russia staged its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Finland joined in April 2023, but Hungary and Turkey are yet to ratify Swedish entry.

Turkey claims that Sweden’s Kurdish population harbours people that it considers to be terrorists, while Hungary has expressed concern that government ministers in Sweden have criticised Hungary’s record on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, has addressed the plight of children in Ukraine in a message on Telegram. He writes:

At night, Russia again killed a child in Kyiv. Since 2014, the terrorist country has been committing crimes against little Ukrainians.

Since 24 February 2022, no one has any doubts – this is a real genocide. Forced deportation, violence, murders …

This is happening today. And there will be responsibility for this. We won’t let the enemy be silent and hide their crimes. Every case is recorded.

Our task is to return home all kidnapped children, as well as those who were forced to leave the war for other countries.

Our mission is to bring to justice all those who killed, kidnapped and forcibly “adopted” Ukrainian children in the Russian Federation.

Justice will be restored. We protect and fight for our future.

Earlier this year the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children. A panel of judges agreed there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that the Russian president and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, bore responsibility for the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children.




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