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A Russian hypersonic missile struck the area of Ukraine’s major Starokostiantyniv airbase on Monday morning, Kyiv said. The latest strike on Starokostiantyniv in the western Khmelnytskyi region came a day after the Dutch defence minister said the Netherlands would supply Ukraine with more F-16 jets in the coming months. There were no civilian casualties and no damage to critical infrastructure, said Serhiy Tyurin, governor of Khmelnytskyi.
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Two Kinzhal missiles were shot down in the Kyiv region overnight into Monday, the air force said. Debris came down in three Kyiv districts, but no major damage or casualties were reported after air defences engaged incoming targets, city authorities said. Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian air force spokesperson, said: “Despite the fact that it’s getting harder, despite [Russia’s] improvements and the use of new tactics, today we have two shoot-downs … They are learning from their mistakes and from our mistakes. They are improving their technology so that we are able to shoot down fewer of them.” Ukrainian air defences also shot down 32 Russian drones and a further 37 were lost on military radars, suggesting they had been disabled by electronic warfare, the air force said.
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Kyiv said Russian attacks had killed three civilians overnight into Monday: two brothers aged 35 and 38 in the eastern region of Sumy and a 61-year-old woman in the southern Kherson region. In the city of Kherson, the governor said a Russian strike had wounded 19 people and damaged an educational facility and various residential buildings. Ukraine also said a Russian attack had killed one person and wounded seven – including children aged two and 13 – in the city of Sloviansk in Donetsk oblast.
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Russian forces have entered the outskirts of the eastern Ukraine frontline city of Toretsk, Ukraine’s military said late on Monday, less than a week after the fall of the bastion town of Vuhledar. “The situation is unstable, fighting is taking place literally at every entrance [to the city],” Anastasiia Bobovnikova, spokesperson of the Operational Tactical Group Luhansk, told Ukraine’s national broadcaster. “The Russians have entered the eastern outskirts of the city.” There was no immediate comment from the Russian defence ministry, which said earlier on Monday that its forces inflicted damage to manpower and equipment near several settlements in the area, including near Toretsk.
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A Russian ballistic missile hit a Palauan-flagged civilian cargo ship in the port of Odesa on Monday, killing one person, said Oleg Kiper, the head of the Odesa region, in the second such attack in recent days. “A 60-year-old Ukrainian, an employee of a private cargo handling company, was killed. Five other foreign nationals were injured.” A Russian missile strike also damaged a civilian Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged vessel loaded with corn in the Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi on Sunday, Ukraine’s restoration ministry said.
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the war was in “a very important phase” as the Ukrainian army works hard to hold the bigger Russian forces at bay in the east while also holding ground in Russia’s Kursk border region, which it captured two months ago. Ukraine needs to “put pressure on Russia in the way that’s necessary for Russia to realise that the war will gain them nothing,” Ukraine’s president said. “We will continue to apply even greater pressure on Russia – because only through strength can we bring peace closer.”
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Russia’s defence ministry claimed the capture of Grodivka, a settlement in the Donetsk region close to the strategically important city of Pokrovsk. There was no independent confirmation. Last week, Ukraine’s army said that it had withdrawn from the mining town of Vuhledar also in the Donetsk region, handing Russia one of its most significant territorial advances in weeks.
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A Russian court has sentenced a 72-year-old American citizen, Stephen James Hubbard, to six years and 10 months in prison after convicting him in a closed-door trial of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine. Investigators said Hubbard, a native of Michigan, served in a Ukrainian territorial defence unit in the eastern city of Izium, where he had been living since 2014. He was captured by Russian soldiers on 2 April 2022, and pleaded guilty, said the Ria news agency, quoting the Russian prosecutor.
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In interviews last month, Hubbard’s sister Patricia Hubbard Fox cast doubt on his reported confession, telling Reuters he held pro-Russian views and was unlikely to have taken up arms at his age. He moved to Ukraine in 2014 and lived there for a time with a Ukrainian woman, surviving off a small pension of about $300 a month. He never learned Russian or Ukrainian, and had few connections to local people, she said. The US embassy in Moscow said it was aware of the detention of an American citizen, but declined further comment on Monday.
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More details emerged after Ukraine confirmed attacking the Feodosia oil terminal in occupied Crimea over Sunday night, causing a huge fire that burned into Monday. Russia’s defence ministry claimed 12 Ukrainian attack drones had been downed over the peninsula overnight, out of a total of 21 deployed by Kyiv against Russian targets including six over Kursk region, and others over Belgorod, Bryansk and Voronezh.
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A Ukrainian sabotage operation damaged a Russian minesweeping vessel in Russia’s Kaliningrad region and put it out of action, Ukraine’s military spy agency, the GUR, said on Monday. Water had entered the engine of the Alexander Obukhov Alexandrit-class minesweeper through “a mysterious hole” in a gas pipe, the GUR said. “The ship, which was based in the city of Baltiysk and was supposed to go on combat duty, was seriously damaged.” There was no immediate comment from Russia. The GUR and a pro-Kyiv Russian military group claimed responsibility earlier this year for an arson attack on a Russian warship in the Baltic Sea in April.
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Ukraine will not extend its gas transit agreement with Russia after it expires at the end of 2024, the Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has told his pro-Russian Slovakian counterpart, Robert Fico, during talks in Ukraine. Shmyhal said that Kyiv understands the “acute dependence” of some states including Slovakia on the Russian gas supply but “Ukraine’s strategic goal is to deprive the Kremlin of profits from the sale of hydrocarbons which the aggressor uses to finance the war”. Shmyhal said Ukraine and Slovakia had agreed on the creation of an eastern European energy hub aiming to utilise large Ukrainian gas storage facilities. Fico said Ukraine’s government had confirmed it remained interested in using its gas and oil transit systems after the deal with Russia expires. Fico opposes Ukraine joining Nato but has said he supports it becoming an EU member.
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Russian state media company VGTRK, which owns and operates the country’s main national TV stations, came under a cyber-attack on Monday that a Ukrainian government source said Kyiv’s hackers had caused coinciding with Vladimir Putin’s 72nd birthday. The website of VGTRK, the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, was not loading early on Monday and its Rossiya-24 news channel was not available online. A Ukrainian government source said: “Ukrainian hackers ‘congratulated’ Putin on his birthday by carrying out a large-scale attack on the all-Russian state television and radio broadcasting company.” The Kremlin confirmed the attack.
