Here is how things stand on Friday, June 27:
Fighting
- Russian air strikes killed one person and wounded two others in Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram.
- Russian troops have taken control of the village of Shevchenko in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which is close to a lithium deposit, after fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces, a Russian-backed official in the occupied region said.
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Russian troops also took control of the settlement of Novoserhiivka also in Donetsk, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence.
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Ukraine’s forces stopped Russian advances in the border area of Ukraine’s northern region of Sumy this week, the country’s top general, Oleksandr Syrskii, said in a statement.
- Syrskii has also ordered defensive lines to be built more quickly in the Sumy region, as Russian forces gain ground towards the industrial Dnipropetrovsk region.
Military
- North Korea will send more troops to Russia to assist in its war against Ukraine, possibly as early as July, a South Korean lawmaker said, citing information from Seoul’s spy agency.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukraine and Russia exchanged a new group of captured soldiers, the latest in a series of prisoner swaps agreed at peace talks in Istanbul earlier this month. Neither side said how many prisoners were released, but they had pledged to swap at least 1,000 soldiers each during their direct meeting in Istanbul on June 2.
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Russia said there was no progress yet towards setting a date for the next round of peace talks with Ukraine, Interfax news agency reported. Another state news agency, TASS, quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Russia was in favour of continued United States efforts to mediate talks.
- The European Union’s 27 leaders have agreed to extend sanctions on Russia for another six months, resolving fears that Kremlin-friendly Hungary would let the measures lapse, officials said. The sanctions include the continued freezing of more than $234bn in Russian central bank assets until at least early 2026.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged the European Council to send “a clear political message” that Brussels backs Kyiv in its effort to join the EU.
- Earlier, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that a state-organised consultation gave him a “strong mandate” to oppose neighbouring Ukraine’s EU accession at the EU summit in Brussels.
- The international chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said that it had found a banned tear gas in seven samples submitted by Ukraine, which has accused Russia of using the riot control agent on the front line. It was the third time the OPCW confirmed the use of CS gas in areas where fighting is taking place in Ukraine.
- Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said a new arms race could lead to the fall of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “regime”, just like it toppled the Soviet Union.
Press freedom
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A Russian court said it had found a photographer, Grigory Skvortsov, guilty of treason and jailed him for 16 years after he allegedly admitted passing detailed information about once-secret Soviet-era bunkers to a US journalist.
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Moscow will summon the German ambassador soon to inform him of retaliatory measures in response to what it sees as the harassment of Russian journalists based in Germany, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
