Key events
A local Ukrainian official on Monday denied a claim by the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region that Russian forces led by a Chechen-based special forces unit had seized control of a border village in northeast Ukraine.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Sunday the Akhmat-Chechnya unit spearheaded Russian troops in taking control of Ryzhivka in Sumy region, Reuters reports. The “large-scale planned advance” inflicted “significant losses on the Ukrainian side, which was forced to retreat,” Kadyrov said.
However, Yuriy Zarko, a local official in Sumy, denied the presence of Russian troops in Ryzhivka on Monday in a comment to Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne.
Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Ukrainian government’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, said on Telegram that Russian forces had tried to test Ukraine’s defences on the Ryzhivka front. Ukrainian forces are in control of the situation but the threat of Russian actions in the border area remains, he added.
Russia’s Defence Ministry issued no statement on the action.
Ukraine’s military has warned in recent weeks of a buildup of Russian forces around Sumy region in preparation for military action. A big Russian push in the northern region would stretch Ukraine’s troops and open a new front in the war.
Charlotte Higgins
In case you missed it, here’s Charlotte Higgins’ interview with Ukrainian author turned soldier Oleksandr Mykhed on his powerful account of the past two years
Before 24 February 2022, writer Oleksandr Mykhed, then 33, and his wife, Olena, had an enviable life. In 2018 they’d bought a three-storey townhouse in Hostomel, a suburb of Kyiv. On Saturdays, they’d go out for brunch – poached eggs for him, cottage cheese pancakes for her – and walk their dog, Lisa, in the forest. Their weekend ritual involved cleaning the house, and for Mykhed, that often meant being pleasurably distracted by one of their many books. Life was full of things to look forward to: tickets for a Nick Cave concert; his new book, on classic Ukrainian authors, nearly finished. On weekend evenings they’d cook something delicious. Olena was perfecting her shrimp curry.
Just over two years later, I meet Mykhed at a Georgian cafe near Kyiv’s central railway station. He’s late because of an air raid alert: when the siren’s sour notes rise through the rush-hour bustle, Kyvians, as usual, look at their phones, discover it’s just planes loaded with ballistic missiles taking off in Russia, and by and large decide to get on with life. When Mykhed arrives, wearing a hoodie and cargo pants, he looks pale and tired, his once floppy blond hair shaved to a scalp-revealing military buzzcut. He volunteered for the armed forces as soon as the full-scale invasion started. He’s not allowed to tell me anything about his service, except that he’s just back after an exhausting 40-day training exercise. What he can tell me is that his old life is irretrievably lost. “I live with the feeling that I don’t have a past. I live with the feeling that I don’t have a future. I feel like my memories don’t belong to me,” he says. He doesn’t even know how old he is, he says – 36, officially. The war has made him feel both way older than that, and way younger.
Opening Summary
It has gone 10.30am in Kyiv and in Moscow. This is our latest Guardian blog covering all the latest developments over the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Ninety states and organisations have so far registered to take part in a summit aiming to pave the way for peace in Ukraine that Switzerland will host from June 15-16, the Swiss government said on Monday.
Russia has not been invited to the summit, but the government said in a statement that the gathering will aim to “jointly define a roadmap” on how to involve both it and Ukraine in a future peace process.
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Ukraine’s forces have hit an advanced Su-57 warplane on an airbase in Russia nearly 600km from the frontlines, according to Ukrainian military intelligence. The GUR shared satellite photos appearing to show an aircraft among scorch marks and craters. “The pictures show that on June 7th, the Su-57 was standing intact, and on the eighth, there were ruptures from the explosion and characteristic spots of fire caused by fire damage near it,” the GUR said.
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The strike took place on Saturday at the Akhtubinsk base in southern Russia, the GUR said. The plane, capable of carrying stealth missiles, was among “a countable few” of its type in service. Russia’s Su-57 fleet has been largely absent from the skies over Ukraine, and has instead been used to fire long-range missiles from across the border.
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The UK Ministry of Defence has said Russia is likely trying to avoid “reputational damage, reduced export prospects, and the compromise of sensitive technology” that would come from losing any Su-57 jets in enemy territory. For its part, the Russian defence ministry said its forces downed three Ukrainian drones in the Astrakhan region, home to the Akhtubinsk airstrip. Russian officials routinely say all enemy threats were shot down, regardless of the actual outcome.
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Russian forces appeared to be making headway in their assault on the strategic Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar, according to reports on Sunday from both sides.
Chasiv Yar stands on high ground about 20km (12 miles) to the west of Bakhmut, a town Russian forces seized a year ago, and is seen as a potential staging point for Russia to advance on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. -
Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda quoted a military source and a blogger as saying that Russian forces had begun occupying a district of Chasiv Yar alongside a canal. The source said Russian troops were using guided aerial bombs to clear areas along a major road and had begun to move forward and build up their forces.
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Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address on Sunday made no mention of Chasiv Yar, but said the area around the town of Pokrovsk, to the south-west, remained the most difficult sector and “the one where pressure from the occupiers is the greatest”.
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Ukraine’s electricity grid operator, Ukrenergo, said it would impose hour-long cuts on Monday from 4pm to 10pm. The restrictions would not apply to “critical infrastructure” sites providing vital services. Ukraine’s government ordered all ministries and regional authorities last Friday to stop using air conditioning and switch off external lighting.