Ukraine’s president is expecting Russia to intensify attacks this week as Kyiv awaits an EU decision on its candidate status.
Here are all the latest updates:
Ukraine’s forces in Severodonetsk are holding the line, as fighting rages around the clock, Luhansk’s governor has said.
“The enemy regularly uses prohibited ammunition,” Serhiy Haidai wrote on Telegram.
Mayor Alexander Stryuk said that Russian forces were deporting the city’s residents.
They control all of Severodonetsk’s residential areas, he added.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office says 323 children have died amid the war and 586 have been injured.
An eight-year-old girl was wounded as a result of shelling in Donetsk’s village of Zheleznoye on Sunday, the office said.
In the Kharkiv region on the same day, another two children aged 13 and 14 received shrapnel wounds when a shell fell into a pond they were swimming in, the office said.
Ukraine is “by no means” a suitable candidate for European Union membership, the speaker of Russia’s parliament has said.
“Total corruption, rampant crime, oligarchic power and a ruined economy are the characteristics of modern Ukraine. Europe understands this very well too, but the desire to weaken Russia prevails,” Viacheslav Volodin wrote on Telegram.
Volodin said the 27-nation union was ready to give Ukraine candidate status because Washington and Brussels want “to keep hostilities going”.
“The result for Ukraine will be sad. The decision-making centre will be officially transferred to Brussels. It will finally lose its independence,” he added.
Russia’s air forces are underperforming in Ukraine, and Moscow’s campaign is relying more than planned on its exhausted ground troops and advanced cruise missiles that are running low on stock, the UK’s ministry of defence has said.
The inadequacy of Russia’s air forces is one of the most important factors behind its limited success in Ukraine, the ministry said in an intelligence briefing on Twitter, adding that the forces operated “in a risk-adverse style, rarely penetrating deep behind Ukrainian lines.”
One reason for this was the heavily scripted training designed to impress senior officials, rather than to develop initiative among the crew, the ministry said.
“While Russia has an impressive roster of relatively modern and capable combat jets, the air force has also almost certainly failed to develop the institutional culture and skill-sets required for its personnel to meet Russia’s aspiration of delivering a more Western-style modern air campaign,” it added.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 20 June 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/HLNJBEbcJV
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/FwRvFrbyLb
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) June 20, 2022
Russian shelling injured three children in the Kharkiv region on Sunday, the head of the regional police force has said.
Attacks occurred in the city of Kharkiv itself, as well as the towns of Chuhuiv and Lyubotyn, and the villages of Baranivka, Ivanivka and Korobochkino, Volodymyr Timoshko wrote on Facebook.
“In the village of Ivanivka, as a result of the explosion of a shell, three children were wounded,” Timoshko said.
“Due to the increase in the intensity of city shelling in the afternoon, the Kharkiv metro has been allocated to citizens where they can wait out the danger,” he added.
The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has expressed confidence that Ukraine will be granted official candidate status ahead of a key EU summit in Brussels later this month.
“I firmly believe that we will get a positive decision, that we will get support, that the course has now been set,” von der Leyen told German public broadcaster ARD on Sunday evening.
“Of course, this is also a historic decision that the European Council now has to make, but the preparations are good,” she said, adding that she was “confident” of Ukrainian prospects.
Von der Leyen’s comments come after the EU Commission on Friday came out in favour of formally designating Ukraine and Moldova as candidates to join the European Union. The 27 EU member states are due to discuss the Commission’s recommendation at a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.
I was very moved by President @ZelenskyyUa's kind words over the phone today, following our recommendation to grant Ukraine the candidate status.
The Ukrainians can count on the @EU_Commission's constant support as they move along the path to the European Union. pic.twitter.com/ey8BVCLgzo
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) June 17, 2022
A residential area was damaged and smoke filled a local market after heavy shelling in the Kuibyshevskyi district of the Ukrainian town of Donetsk on Sunday – now held by Russian-backed separatists.
“You couldn’t say where they were shelling or what they were shelling, it was coming and coming down on us non-stop,” said Olga Karagodina, a local shop owner.
“We didn’t open the store today, it’s been impossible to go outside since eight in the morning,” she said.
Elsewhere in the Donetsk region – in the villages of Maksymilianivka and Zaitsevo – the regional governor said Russian forces killed two civilians Sunday and injured another 12.
Hollywood actor Ben Stiller was spotted walking and talking on his phone in the centre of Lviv in western Ukraine on Saturday, the Reuters news agency reports.
According to a social media post, he is working with the United Nations refugee agency in support of Ukrainian refugees.
Stiller, a Goodwill Ambassador to UNHCR, had gone to the Poland-Ukraine border to meet refugees forced to flee Ukraine “to share their stories and amplify calls for solidarity,” the UNHCR said on Twitter. He was later seen walking through Lviv’s central square.
The actor also announced on Twitter that he had “arrived in Poland, ahead of World Refugee Day, to meet people whose lives have been impacted by the war in Ukraine.”
At the Medyka border in Poland I met families who fled the war in Ukraine, leaving loved ones behind, with no idea when they will be able to return home. I’m so impressed w/@refugees representatives & how committed they are to supporting people on their journeys.#WithRefugees pic.twitter.com/buxUIIqilU
The United Kingdom must have a military capable of fighting in Europe and defeating Russia, the new head of the British army was quoted as telling troops by local media.
Patrick Sanders, who took command of the British army this month, told his troops, according to the ‘i newspaper’ on Sunday: “I am the first Chief of the General Staff since 1941 to take command of the Army in the shadow of a land war in Europe involving a continental power.”
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underlines our core purpose – to protect the UK by being ready to fight and win wars on land,” he said.
Russian forces several times shelled a town in Ukraine’s border region Sumy on Sunday, damaging at least 10 private buildings, the regional governor has said.
“They fired mortars at residential areas of the town of Seredyna Buda. At least 10 private houses of civilians and outbuildings were damaged. One house was destroyed by fire,” Dmytro Zhyvytskyi said on Telegram.
Later in the day, Zhyvytskyi said preliminary data suggested there had been no casualties but that this was still being clarified.
Russia has promised to continue gas shipments to Hungary and that Moscow’s state energy giant Gazprom would fulfil its contractual obligations to the country, Budapest’s foreign minister has said in an interview on public service radio.
Peter Szijjarto said on Sunday that Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller and Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak had both assured him of this in a phone call. The minister did not say when the phone call took place.
Under a deal with Gazprom signed last year, Hungary receives 3.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year via Bulgaria and Serbia under its long-term deal with Russia, and a further one bcm via a pipeline from Austria.
In response to Western sanctions imposed on Moscow since its invasion of Ukraine, Gazprom has cut supplies to Denmark’s Orsted and to Shell Energy for its contract to supply gas to Germany. It also cut supplies to Dutch gas trader GasTerra along with Bulgaria, Poland and Finland for refusing to make payments for Russian gas in roubles under a new rouble scheme.
A EU top human rights official has said that war crimes committed in Ukraine will be thoroughly investigated.
“When we talk about war crimes we talk not only about those who committed the crime […] They of course have responsibility. But we are also talking about those who are in the chain of command, if necessary right to the very top,” Eamon Gilmore, EU special human rights representative, said.
Gilmore spoke after walking around ruined buildings and wrecked cars in Irpin, a town near Kyiv which became the scene of heavy fighting early in the invasion.
The Irpin tour was designed to highlight what Ukraine and its backers say were large-scale atrocities committed by Russian troops, and what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described as the scene of “unimaginable cruelty” and “senseless violence”.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is considering a summit with leaders of South Korea, Australia and New Zealand on the sidelines of a June NATO meeting in a show of solidarity against a more assertive China, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper has reported.
Leaders of the four Asia-Pacific nations have been invited to the NATO meeting in Madrid, where members are aiming to deliver a message of international solidarity on the Ukraine crisis.
Ukrainian fighters who surrendered to Russian-backed troops in the settlement of Metolkine, which Moscow says its forces now control, are testifying against colleagues holed up in a chemical plant in the eastern city of Severodonetsk, Russia’s state news agency Tass has reported.
Fighters from the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) on Sunday said that soldiers from Ukraine’s Luhansk-based Aidar Battalion surrendered to the LPR on June 18, during Russia’s capture of Metolkine on the outskirts of Severodonetsk, according to Russia’s news agencies. The fighters did not say how many of Ukraine’s troops had surrendered but claimed the unit’s commander was among them.
Tass on Monday quoted a source close to the LPR saying that Russian-backed separatists are now using information given to them by the Aidar Battalion in negotiations with Ukraine’s soldiers at the Azot chemical plant.
Hundreds of civilians and some Ukrainian forces have been sheltering inside the Severodonetsk plant, which the Luhansk governor says is being pounded daily by Russian forces.
Gennady Burbulis, a top aide to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin who helped prepare and sign the 1991 pact that led to the formal breakup of the Soviet Union, has died. He was 76.
As secretary of state and first deputy chairman of the government from 1991 to 1992, Burbulis was instrumental in steering the new, post-Soviet Russian state.
With Yeltsin, he was a signatory for Russia to the agreement reached on December 8, 1991, with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus to disband the Soviet Union. The pact was signed in the Belovezha forest, in what is now Belarus.
Burbulis is the third key player to the agreement who has died in the past several weeks. Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and former Belarusian President Stanislav Shushkevich died in May.
Ukraine’s deputy prosecutor general has said Kyiv has launched 19 criminal proceedings against Russian soldiers for the rape of at least 14 women in the temporarily occupied territories.
“Every culprit must be punished,” Gyunduz Mamedov said in a tweet.
The United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine, Osnat Lubrani, on Saturday said that the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has verified cases of sexual violence against both women and men in Ukraine.
“Due to active hostilities, mass internal displacement, the stigma associated with sexual violence and the breakdown of the referral pathways, survivors are often unable or unwilling to report to law enforcement authorities or service providers,” Lubrani said.
1/2 Today’s the @UN International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. Sexual violence is still used as a method of warfare. 19 criminal proceedings have already been launched for the rape of at least 14 women in the 🇺🇦TOT which is the case due to 🇷🇺aggression.
EU foreign ministers will discuss ways to free millions of tonnes of grain stuck in Ukraine due to Russia’s Black Sea port blockade at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.
The EU supports United Nations efforts to broker a deal to resume Ukraine’s sea exports in return for facilitating Russian food and fertiliser exports, but that would need Moscow’s green light.
Turkey has good relations with both Kyiv and Moscow and has said it is ready to take up a role within an “observation mechanism” based in Istanbul if there is a deal. It is unclear if the EU would get involved in militarily securing such a deal.
“Whether there will be a need in the future for escorting these commercial ships, that’s a question mark and I don’t think we are there yet,” an EU official told the Reuters news agency.
Russia has said its forces seized a village near Ukraine’s industrial city of Severodonetsk, a prime target in Moscow’s campaign to control the country’s east.
The defence ministry said on Sunday it had won Metolkine, a settlement of fewer than 800 people before the war began. Russian state news agency TASS reported that many Ukrainian fighters had surrendered there.
Moscow said on Sunday its offensive to win Severdonetsk itself was proceeding successfully.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai told Ukrainian TV that fighting made evacuations from the city impossible, but that “all Russian claims that they control the town are a lie. They control the main part of the town, but not the whole town”.
Zelenskyy has said that he expects Russia to intensify attacks on Ukraine as Kyiv waits for the EU’s decision to grant it the status of a candidate state.
“Obviously, we should expect greater hostile activity from Russia. Purposefully – demonstratively. This week exactly,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
“And not only against Ukraine, but also against other European countries. We are preparing. We are ready.”
Read all updates for June 19 here.