On Friday, June 27, 2018, this is how things are going.
Fighting
- One person was killed and two others were hurt in Russian airstrikes in Kherson, in the south of Ukraine, according to regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin.
- After fierce opposition from Ukrainian forces, Russian troops took control of the village of Shevchenko in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk region, which is close to a lithium deposit, according to a Russian-backed official in the occupied area.
- As Russian forces advance closer to the industrialized Dnipropetrovsk region, Syrskii has also mandated that defensive lines be constructed more quickly in the Sumy region.
Military
- According to a South Korean lawmaker, North Korea will send more troops to Russia as soon as July in order to support its conflict with Ukraine, citing information from Seoul’s spy agency.
diplomacy and politics
- In the most recent of a series of prisoner swaps agreed at peace talks in Istanbul earlier this month, Ukraine and Russia exchanged a new group of captured soldiers. At least 1, 000 soldiers would be exchanged between them during their direct meeting in Istanbul on June 2, but neither side disclosed how many prisoners would be released.
- According to officials, the leaders of the 27 European Union countries have agreed to extend sanctions against Russia for another six months, easing fears that Hungary, a Kremlin-friendly nation, will veto them. The sanctions include the continued freezing of Russian central bank assets, which will be available until at least until 2026.
- Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, has urged Brussels to send “a clear political message” that it supports Kyiv’s efforts to join the EU.
- At the EU summit in Brussels, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban earlier claimed a state-organized consultation had given him a “strong mandate” to oppose the EU’s accession of neighboring Ukraine.
- The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an international body that monitors chemical weapons, reported discovering a prohibited tear gas in seven samples of samples from Ukraine, which has accused Russia of using the riot control agent on the front lines. The OPCW has third time confirmed that CS gas is being used in Ukraine’s fighting-torn areas.
- Radoslaw Sikorski, the country’s foreign minister, predicted that Vladimir Putin’s “regime” would fall as it did when the Soviet Union was toppled.
Press freedom
Source: Aljazeera
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