Russia is raging after the airspace ban on Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. On Monday, Ukraine reported suspected cases of cholera in Mariupol, which had been bombed for weeks. In the evening, Kyiv announced that Russia had been expelled from the Black Sea coast. what happened today
Military situation:
According to the Ukrainian army, it has to drive the Russian Black Sea fleet more than 100 kilometers from the coast. The Russians had been “deprived of total control over the north-west of the Black Sea”. Kyiv announced the success via Telegram.
Civilian shipping will continue to be blocked, and the struggle for supremacy in the strategically important Black Sea will continue.
The village of Tjotkino, located near the border with Ukraine in the Kursk region in western Russia, has been fired upon again, according to the authorities. “There were no dead or injured,” said Governor Roman Starowoit on Monday on his account on the social network vkontakte car burned out.
Judging by the pictures, a railway bridge was destroyed by the impacts. The Russian military uses the railways in the border regions to resupply their own troops in Ukraine.
The degrading conditions in Mariupol, which has been bombed for weeks, could now have led to the spread of cholera in the city. This is reported by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health. Accordingly, the main reasons for the “critical situation” are the mass burials and the lack of access to clean water. The ministry has been observing the first suspected cases of cholera since the beginning of June.
Cholera is an infection of the gut caused by bacterially ingested water and food. It can cause severe diarrhea and vomiting and, if left untreated, can also be fatal.
The Ukrainian military has said it has killed another high-ranking Russian officer with the rank of general. The commander of the 1st army corps of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, Major General Roman Kutuzov, had been “officially denazified and demilitarized”, the administration for strategic communication of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Monday night, according to the online portal “Ukrainskaya Pravda”. A correspondent for Russian state television first reported on Kutuzov’s death.
Kutuzov is said to have fallen while leading a Russian attack on a town near Popasna in the Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian side had previously reported that the Russian attack had been repelled and that the enemy had been forced to withdraw with “significant casualties”.
Political development:
US judges have ordered the confiscation of two planes owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. The US Department of Justice justified the measure in court documents published on Monday by saying that the machines were used to violate the Russia sanctions imposed because of the Ukraine war. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner and the Gulfstream G650ER business jet flew to Russia in violation of the sanctions requirements.
The Justice Department estimates the combined value of the two planes at $400 million. However, the planes are apparently out of reach of the US authorities. According to media reports, the Gulfstream G650ER is said to be in Russia, the Boeing machine possibly in Dubai.
The US Department of Justice will take “active steps” to confiscate the two planes, Department Representative Andrew Adams said in New York. According to him, the measure aims to induce people with close ties to the Kremlin to “distance” from the Moscow power center and from the Russian state.
The Kremlin has criticized the blocking of European airspace for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after his failed trip to Serbia as a “hostile act”. “Undoubtedly, such hostile actions towards our country, towards high-ranking representatives of our country, can cause certain problems and lead to the schedule of these contacts being postponed for some time,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, according to the Interfax news agency.
Lavrov reacted with outrage on Monday and spoke of a “scandal”. Lavrov, like President Vladimir Putin, is subject to Western sanctions because of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. “The unthinkable happened,” Lavrov said at an online press conference. “A sovereign state has been deprived of the right to conduct foreign policy.”
Lavrov had to cancel his trip to Belgrade because Bulgaria, Montenegro and North Macedonia denied the minister’s government plane overflight rights. Lavrov is on the EU sanctions list because of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
During a visit to the embattled region of Zaporizhia on Sunday, Zelenskyi found out about the military situation. Almost 60 percent of the south-eastern Ukrainian region has been occupied by Moscow’s troops since the Russian invasion on February 24, said the region’s military governor, Olexander Staruch, during talks with the president in the city of Zaporizhia. “Many people are arriving from places temporarily occupied by the enemy,” Zelenskyy said. The refugees need housing and jobs.
A particularly large number of people from the embattled eastern Ukraine fled to Zaporizhia, including from the Donetsk region. There is also the port city of Mariupol, where pro-Russian separatists took control with the help of Moscow’s troops in May. Fighting in Donbass continues. One focus is the administrative center Sievjerodonetsk in the Luhansk region, where Ukrainian troops are successfully resisting Russian units, according to the authorities.
In a video released during the night, Zelenskyy said that he made a tour of the contested regions of Donetsk and Luhansk together with his chief of staff Andriy Yermak, visiting the front-line cities of Lysychansk and Soledar. Lysychansk is on the river opposite Sieverodonetsk. Selenskyj had recently repeatedly demanded heavy weapons from the West, not only to stop the Russian advance, but also to recapture occupied areas.
The Ukrainian military has said it has killed another high-ranking Russian officer with the rank of general. The commander of the 1st army corps of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, Major General Roman Kutuzov, had been “de-Nazified and demilitarized”, the administration for strategic communications of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Monday night, according to the online portal “Ukrainskaya Pravda”. A correspondent for Russian state television first reported on Kutuzov’s death.
Kutuzov is said to have fallen while leading a Russian attack on a town near Popasna in the Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian side had previously reported that the Russian attack had been repelled and that the enemy had been forced to withdraw with “significant casualties”.
According to a report in the newspaper “El País”, Spain wants to deliver German Leopard 2 A4 main battle tanks and anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. The newspaper wrote on Sunday, citing information from the Defense Ministry in Madrid, that these were decommissioned tanks that first had to be prepared for use. The training of Ukrainian soldiers on the tanks should first take place in Latvia and later in Spain. The German Press Agency asked the ministry for a statement on the report, but there was still no response.
It would be the first time that Ukraine would receive modern Western tanks in a fight against the Russian army. In Germany, politicians from the ruling SPD party have so far emphasized that there is an informal agreement between the NATO countries not to supply such weapons. According to the newspaper report, around 40 of the 108 Leopard tanks that Spain bought used in Germany in 1995 could be made operational again.
According to the report, Spain is also preparing to deliver a battery of surface-to-air missiles of the MBDA type “Shorad Aspide”. These have already been decommissioned by the Spanish armed forces and replaced by newer systems. So far, Spain has mainly supplied Ukraine with light weapons, ammunition and protective equipment.
The Russian military has repeatedly announced that it will target western arms supplies. Moscow repeatedly reports the destruction of heavy weapons and ammunition. President Vladimir Putin has threatened serious attacks on Ukraine if Western long-range missiles are delivered to Ukraine.
“If they deliver, then we will draw the appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, of which we have enough, to strike at those objects that we have not yet attacked,” Putin said in an interview published on Sunday State TV channel Rossiya 1. The aim of the western arms deliveries is to prolong the conflict in Ukraine as much as possible, he said.
Despite warnings from Russia’s head of state Vladimir Putin, Great Britain also wants to support Ukraine with the delivery of long-range missile systems. The Ministry of Defense in London announced on Monday that the delivery of the US-made multiple rocket launcher artillery system (MLRS) to Ukraine was closely coordinated with the government in Washington.
The British Ministry of Defense emphasized that the planned delivery of the M270 multiple rocket launchers means “a significant boost to the capabilities of the Ukrainian army”. The weapon system can hit targets up to 80 kilometers away with precision-guided missiles. Great Britain also wants to train Ukrainian soldiers in the use of the new weapon system.
The United States announced last week that it would deliver its Himar mobile artillery missile system to Ukraine, which can launch several precision-guided missiles at the same time and surpasses previous Ukrainian weapon systems in terms of range and precision. According to military experts, its range of up to 80 kilometers is slightly greater than that of similar Russian systems, allowing Kiev forces to hit enemy artillery without getting within range.
What will be important on Monday
At a press conference in front of international journalists, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wants to comment on the situation in the conflict with Ukraine from Moscow’s point of view. He should also talk about a failed trip to Serbia. A senior ministry official in Moscow confirmed to the Russian agency Interfax that Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro had not given permission for the Russian government plane to overfly. Lavrov is under sanctions for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. In addition, European airspace is closed to Russian aircraft.
You can read more updates on the Ukraine war on the following pages.
More on the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine:
Recently, more and more mega-yachts belonging to Russian oligarchs have simply disappeared from the world’s ocean positioning systems. Many of the luxury ships were last seen in the Maldives. According to research by the British “Observer”, owners are said to have switched off their “Automatic Identification System”.
Vladimir Putin only wanted to deliver gas for rubles. The EU has banned this with reference to the sanctions. In the meantime, both sides have agreed on a tricky system that, on the one hand, meets the mutual regulations and, on the other hand, ensures gas supplies.
