Key events
Wagner boss Yevgheny Prigozhin “appears to have again indirectly undermined Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authority and regime”, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has written in its latest analysis of the conflict.
The US-based think tank bases its assertion on the response given by Prigozhin to a journalist asking about Russian state media’s ban on any discussion of Wagner. Prigozhin said that officials could have benefited from their historic ability to censor information if Russia had not declared war on Ukraine. He then shifted to addressing a single, unnamed official:
If you are starting a war, please have character, will, and steel balls – and only then you will be able to achieve something.
Real achievements in building bridges, new buildings and metro stations would allow the official to stop lying, he said.
His comments were “likely targeted at Putin whom the Russian state media has routinely portrayed as a leader minutely involved with small infrastructure projects and the lives of ordinary Russian people,” the think tank said.
His criticism may have come because Putin has failed to give him a reward promised for the seizure of Bakhmut, the ISW suggested.
More than 40 missiles and drones were shot down over Kyiv early Monday, Serhii Popko, the head of the city’s military administration, has said on Telegram. Some damage was caused by falling debris but there were no casualties in what was Russia’s 15th assault on the city this month.
Russia was trying to exhaust the country’s air defences with the increased attacks, Popko said, adding: “the enemy is trying to keep the civilian population in deep psychological tension.”
Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko added: “Another difficult night for the capital. But, thanks to the professionalism of our defenders, as a result of the air attack of the barbarians in Kyiv, there was no damage or destruction of infrastructural and other objects, [or] multi-apartment residential buildings.”
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Livingstone.
The Ukrainian capital Kyiv has endured a second night of aerial assault, after suffering the largest drone attack since the beginning of the Russian invasion on Sunday. Two people died in that attack after which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked the country’s air defence forces, saying he was “grateful to each and every person”.
Air raid sirens sounded again in the early hours of Monday, with Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko reporting explosions in the Holosiiv, Podilsk, Sviatoshyn and Shevchenkivskyi districts. A house in Podilsk and a deserted building in Sviatoshyn caught fire but there were no injuries, according to Klitschko.
Rescuers also rushed to an apartment in Shevchenkivskyi after reports of smoke but it turned out to be a case of “badly burnt food on the stove,” he said. “This also happens…”
In other key developments:
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Zelenskiy has put forward a bill that would sanction Russian ally Iran for 50 years due to its role in supplying Moscow with weapons, including hundreds of drones. If passed by Ukraine‘s parliament, the bill would stop Iranian goods transiting through Ukraine and ban use of its airspace, as well as imposing trade, financial and technology sanctions against Iran and its citizens.
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The death toll from a Russian missile attack on a medical facility in Dnipro on Friday has risen from two to four people, according to the region’s governor.
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Russian attacks near the eastern city of Bakhmut, the scene of heavy fighting in recent months, have abated slightly over the weekend, according to a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military.
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Western countries left Belarus no choice but to deploy Russian tactical nuclear weapons and had better take heed not to “cross red lines” on key strategic issues, a senior Belarusian official was quoted as saying. Alexander Volfovich, state secretary of Belarus’ Security Council, said it was logical that the weapons were withdrawn after the 1991 Soviet collapse as the United States had provided security guarantees and imposed no sanctions. “Today, everything has been torn down. All the promises made are gone forever,” the Belta news agency quoted Volfovich as telling an interviewer on state television.
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The EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy, Nabila Massrali, has said Russia “will be held accountable” for attacks on civilian areas. “[Russian] leadership & perpetrators will be held accountable. We remain committed to help Ukraine defend itself,” she wrote on Twitter.
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The Russian ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin told the BBC that the west’s supplying of weapons to Ukraine risked escalating the conflict to levels not yet seen. Russia has “enormous resources and we haven’t just started yet to act very seriously”, he said.
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Russia said its air defence systems destroyed several drones as they approached the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region near the Black Sea on Sunday. “Several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) tried to approach the territory of the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar Krai,” the region’s emergency officials said on the Telegram messaging channel. “All of them were neutralized, the infrastructure of the plant was not damaged.” It was not possible to verify the report.
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South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has appointed a panel to investigate US allegations that a Russian ship collected weapons from a naval base near Cape Town last year, the presidency said in a statement. The allegations have caused a diplomatic row between the US, South Africa and Russia and called into question South Africa’s non-aligned position on the Ukraine conflict.
With Agence France-Presse and Reuters
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