Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.
Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in
Swipe for next article
Zelensky’s warning comes as fuel crisis deepens in Russia and companies might have to sell lower quality gasoline and diesel
Removed from bookmarks
I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice
Volodymyr Zelensky has ridiculed Russia’s goal to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, saying that the attempt has been made by Russian forces 15 times and failed.
“Since the start of the full-scale war, the Russian army has been given as many as 15 deadlines for capturing our Donetsk region. Russia’s political leadership remains obsessed with Donbas. They have entertained this delusion – that they would fully capture Donbas – 15 times already,” Zelensky said in his nightly address.
He warned that Russian president Vladimir Putin will have to end the war or else watch the next deadline be moved once again.
“If Russia does not end its war, they will have to move this deadline again as well. If Putin wants to sacrifice another million of his soldiers to keep smashing against this wall, then the million Russians who have not yet been mobilised into the Russian army and are arguing in gas lines should think about what awaits them next,” Zelensky said.
In Russia, fuel crisis is deepening as officials may allow companies to temporarily produce gasoline and diesel with lower quality and allow lower quality imports amid Ukraine‘s attacks on its refineries.
As we earlier reported, an explosion at a residential building in Monaco has left three people injured, including Ukrainian oligarch Vadym Yermolaiev, in an incident that the authorities say was almost certainly an attack targeting the tycoon.
Mr Yermolaiev and his wife have been left fighting for their lives in critical condition after the explosion, according to reports, while a 13-year-old child was also badly injured.
Authorities said four other people were suffering from shock and cuts as a result of broken windows.
Two adults and a child were taken to hospitals in France with injuries, minister of state Christophe Mirmand said.
The blast happened shortly before 9pm local time after a bag was left outside the entryway of a residence on Rue Révérend Père Louis Frolla, near the border with France.
He said it was “very likely an attack”, adding that French and Monaco authorities are searching for the attacker, whose motive is under investigation.
Following the apparent attack, a suspect was seen crossing the border into France on foot, and identified via video surveillance in both Monaco and the neighbouring French town of Beausoleil, Mirmand said.
Monaco’s leader Prince Albert II called it “an odious act” and said all the country’s services were mobilised to ensure security.
Read more here.
Russia may allow companies to temporarily produce gasoline and diesel with lower quality and allow lower quality imports, Kommersant daily newspaper said on Monday, as the country tries to ease the fuel crisis amid Ukraine’s attacks on its refineries.
The newspaper, citing a draft governmental document, said Russia may allow production of gasoline and diesel of the Euro-2 standard with higher sulphur content and which has been banned since 2013, for a year until July 2027, as well as allowing it to be imported.
Ukraine has intensified strikes on Russian energy infrastructure in the fifth year of the war, triggering widespread fuel shortages and price spikes as Kyiv tries to push Moscow to the negotiation table.
President Vladimir Putin acknowledged on Sunday at a meeting with government ministers and other officials that Ukrainian drone strikes had triggered fuel shortages in some regions, but said Russia was dealing with them.
Volodymyr Zelensky has ridiculed Russia’s stated goal of capturing Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, saying that the attempt has been made 15 times and failed.
“Since the start of the full-scale war, the Russian army has been given as many as 15 deadlines for capturing our Donetsk region. Russia’s political leadership remains obsessed with Donbas. They have entertained this delusion – that they would fully capture Donbas – 15 times already,” Zelensky said in his nightly address.
He recounted multiple deadlines Putin set for his troops to capture the region but has instead faced a war of attrition.
“In 2022, the deadlines were 31 March, then 9 May, 1 June, 15 September, and 31 December. In 2023, Putin set two more deadlines for capturing Donbas: 1 March, and then, when that failed again, they moved it to 31 December. In 2024, there were again two such deadlines,” Zelensky said.
He added that last year when the Russians wanted to convince Trump that Ukraine would “supposedly fall”, they had set three final dates to completely capture the Donetsk region.
He has warned that the deadline will be moved again if the war does not end.
“If Russia does not end its war, they will have to move this deadline again as well. If Putin wants to sacrifice another million of his soldiers to keep smashing against this wall, then the million Russians who have not yet been mobilised into the Russian army and are arguing in gas lines should think about what awaits them next,” Zelensky said.
In the weeks following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces initially tried to advance on the capital Kyiv, but when they failed to complete that advance they withdrew and focused efforts on capturing Donbas.
Russia has captured all of the Luhansk region and large chunks of the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Although Moscow’s forces are slowly moving westward through Donetsk region, Ukrainian officials say the advance has slowed considerably while Ukraine steps up its campaign of medium and long-range drone strikes.
The Ukrainian military has said it carried out a series of strikes on Russia and damaged three bridges, a Russian military logistics warehouse, multiple drone command posts and military communications facilities, its General Staff said yesterday.
The strikes were carried out “to reduce the military and economic potential of the Russian aggressor,” it said.
It added that Ukrainian forces struck a road bridge near occupied Novoazovsk in Donetsk and two railway bridges in occupied Luhansk oblast.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Russian forces were using the bridges to transport personnel, weapons, ammunition, and other military supplies to the front.
A Russian logistics warehouse near occupied Novosvitlivka in Luhansk oblast was also hit in the strikes.
A Russian glide bomb has killed a 23-year-old woman and wounded 10 people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, according to Ukrainian officials.
The strike damaged a tram and more than 15 cars, mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
Reuters television footage showed police and forensic experts combing through debris at the scene.
Another glide bomb flew in less than an hour later but failed to detonate.
Kharkiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, three large industrial cities, have come under repeated Russian attacks during the war, now in its fifth year.
The strikes represent the first use of glide bombs by Russia in several months, with overnight aerial attacks typically relying on Moscow’s larger stockpiles of drones and missiles.
A glide bomb includes 675kg of explosives, can be fired from between 40km and 70km away from its target, and has a destruction radius of 200 metres.
It has been nicknamed the “building destroyer” by Russian war bloggers.
Russia has not changed its stance on the conditions needed for a peace deal in Ukraine stated by president Vladimir Putin in 2024, the Kremlin said yesterday.
Putin’s conditions from 2024 demand Kyiv’s forces to withdraw from four regions Moscow says are its own and publicly drop its plans to join Nato.
“Our position is well known. In fact, our position has not changed. It was set out two years ago by our Head of State in a speech at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is well known to the Kyiv regime, it is well known to the American negotiators, and it is entirely consistent,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
In a television interview over the weekend, Putin reiterated that Russia would press ahead with its battlefield aim of fully controlling the four regions, rejecting what he said was a new proposal by Ukraine to rein in hostilities in the more than four-year-old war.
Zelensky responded to Putin’s remarks and said the ultimatum from Russia has been made 15 times and the deadline has always been crossed.
Britain’s nine-month delay in setting out its defence spending plans to meet a rising threat from Russia has forced some small suppliers to collapse, others to hold off investments and many more to expand abroad instead.
Prime minister Keir Starmer is finally expected to publish the Defence Investment Plan today, one of his final acts before he steps down in July, after his defence and finance departments spent months arguing over how to fill an estimated £28bn shortfall.
Many companies in the sector say that delay has damaged the UK’s military supply base and potentially the government’s efforts to make its cash-strapped forces war-ready.
Dozens of smaller companies have gone out of business, or shut down their defence units to focus on other industries as a result, the defence lobby group ADS told Reuters.
The chief executive of UK defence company Cohort said that over the last 18 months demand from militaries in other countries where it works, such as Germany, Poland, the Nordics and Baltics, has been clearly ramping up, in contrast to Britain.
Russia’s air defence units have downed or destroyed at least 419 drones overnight, its defence ministry said this morning.
Russia typically reports only how many drones its air defences say they downed, not how many Ukraine launched, and rarely discloses the full extent of damage unless civilians are killed or civilian sites are hit.
Ukrainian construction tycoon Vadym Iermolaiev has been reportedly injured in a deliberate blast in Monaco.
Ukrainska Pravda said he was targeted by Ukrainian sanctions in 2023 for ties to Russia.
A blast from an explosive device has seriously injured three people at a residential building in Monaco, and the attacker fled to France, local authorities said.
French and Ukrainian media reported that a Ukrainian magnate and his family were those injured.
French and Monaco authorities are searching for the attacker, whose motive is under investigation, Monaco’s most senior government official, Minister of State Christophe Mirmand, told reporters.
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in
Leave a Reply