On Tuesday, July 1, 2018, this is how things are going.
Fighting
- Leonid Pasechnik, the newly elected governor of the occupied Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, claimed that Russian forces are now in complete control of the area.
- If confirmed, Luhansk would become the first region in Ukraine to have been completely occupied by Russia after more than three years of conflict. One of Russia’s four regions, Luhansk, is currently regarded as its own.
- Russian state media and bloggers also reported that Dnipropetrovsk, a first village in central Ukraine, has been under Russian control.
- According to Moscow-appointed officials, Ukrainian forces attacked the Russian-occupied Donetsk region’s Donetsk city, killing at least one person, inflicting several property damage, and igniging a market.
- According to Roman Pohorilyi, the creator of the open-source mapping project Deep State Map, Russian forces have occupied one of Ukraine’s most valuable lithium deposits close to the village of Shevchenko, according to The Kyiv Independent.
- The Ukrainian Air Force, however, reported that overnight, it had discovered 107 Russian Shahed and decoy drones in its airspace, marking the first major aerial assault by Russian forces since 2022.
- Two civilians were killed and eight were hurt in the northeast of Kharkiv, according to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov, who was wounded in addition to a 6-year-old child.
- In the most recent unexplained explosion on a ship that had previously visited Russian ports, Bloomberg reported an explosion on an oil tanker close to Libya.
diplomacy and politics
- After a top Republican senator claimed he had received US President Donald Trump’s consent to proceed with a bill introducing punitive measures against Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged the US to consider whether new sanctions on Russia would aid the Ukraine peace effort.
- Peskov’s comments were criticized by US envoy Keith Kellogg, who described them as “Orwellian.” In a post on X, Kellogg wrote, “Russia cannot continue to stutter for time while bombing civilian targets in Ukraine.”
- Johann Wadephul, the German minister for foreign affairs, claimed that Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, “made pure mockery” of peace talks while traveling to the Ukrainian capital.
- According to Wadephul, “His apparent readiness to negotiate is only a facade right now,” adding that Germany was attempting to persuade Ukraine to “negotiate more strongly.”
- In response to the most recent round of EU sanctions against Russia, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Moscow was taking “reciprocal measures” to encroach on 15 media outlets.
- According to the Reuters news agency, images of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on state television showed him draping coffins with the nation’s national flag in an apparent repatriation of soldiers killed fighting for Russia against Ukraine.
- A day after Warsaw scrambled aircraft in response to Russian airstrikes on western Ukraine, close to the border, Norway announced it would send F-35 fighter jets to Poland to guard its important logistical hub for aid to Ukraine.
Economy
- After conducting a routine review of its $15.5 billion four-year support program, the International Monetary Fund announced it would give Ukraine $500 million.
Source: Aljazeera
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