Russia-Ukraine war live: Bakhmut remains ‘epicentre’ of combat, Ukraine says; Brazil’s Lula ‘upset’ not to meet Zelenskiy at G7 | Ukraine

More on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, with Ukraine’s state-owned power generating company Energoatom confirming that it has experienced a power outage.

“Yes, we have the seventh blackout since the start of the [Russian] occupation,” Energoatom told Reuters.

Yuriy Malashko, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region in Ukraine, said there was a fire at one of the facilities in Zaporizhzhia city due to an overload in the power system.

“Problems with electricity supply that arose in the city of Zaporizhzhia are not related to shelling,” Malashko said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia’s ambassador to the US appears to have warned Washington that any strike on Crimea could be considered a strike on Russian territory by Nato after US president Joe Biden said he would support training for Ukrainian pilots on US F-16 fighter jets.

In remarks published on the embassy’s Telegram channel, Anatoly Antonov wrote:

So far Washington is opposing us … by proxy. However, every specialist knows that there is no infrastructure for the use of F-16s in Ukraine, and the required number of pilots and maintenance personnel is not there either.

What would happen if American fighters take off from Nato airfields, operated by foreign ‘volunteers’?

I would like to warn representatives of the administration against thoughtless judgments on Crimea, especially in terms of “blessing” the Kiev regime for air attacks on the peninsula.

Let me remind you that strikes on this territory are considered by us as an attack on any other region of the Russian Federation. It is important that the United States is fully aware of the Russian response.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy stole the show at the G7 summit, Patrick Wintour writes in his analysis of the weekend, with Zelenskiy’s whirlwind round of diplomacy the culmination of a Ukrainian realisation that for months they have been talking to wrong people.

Yes, it is essential to keep lines constantly open to Ukraine’s invested allies in the west, reaping the rewards such as Joe Biden’s decision finally to lift his veto on Ukrainian pilots training to fly US-made F-16 fighter aircraft, but the identification of the west with Ukraine’s cause is almost complete. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, ended her remarks by saying “Slava Ukrajni – Glory to Europe”.

But Ukraine for months has known it is not telling its story clearly enough to the phalanx of 40 or so nonaligned states that have abstained at successive UN general assembly votes on the war. India, Brazil, China and as many as 20 African states have sat on the sidelines in the key votes.

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant put on emergency power supply generators

Explosions were heard in the city of Dnipro overnight as well as in Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv, with a nationwide air raid alert activated at 3.48am, according to the Kyiv Independent. The city of Odesa was also reportedly hit by Russian combat drones late on Sunday.

In a Telegram post, the governor of Dnipro, Serhiy Lysak, said: “Thanks to the defence forces, we withstood the attack.”

He later said 15 drones and four cruise missiles had been shot down over the region, while eight people had been injured, including three taken to hospital. Dozens of vehicles were destroyed or damaged as well as nine apartment buildings, several private homes, shops, a kindergarten and administrative buildings, he said.

Ukraine’s armed forces have sent a series of photos from Bakhmut, which show some of the extent of the city’s destruction.

At the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, “I’ll tell you openly: photographs of ruined Hiroshima absolutely remind me of Bakhmut and other similar settlements. Nothing left alive, all the buildings ruined.”

Bakhmut remains ‘epicentre’ of combat, Ukraine’s armed forces say

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said he is “upset” that he and Volodymyr Zelenskiy did not meet at the G7 summit, adding his Ukrainian counterpart seemed uninterested in negotiating peace with Russia.

AFP reports:

Zelenskiy, who emerged from the summit in Hiroshima with fresh diplomatic support and pledges of more military aid, had sought a one-on-one meeting with Lula, who has faced accusations of being soft on Russia over its invasion.

Both leaders said scheduling conflicts had prevented them from meeting – which Zelenskiy quipped had likely left his Brazilian counterpart “disappointed”.

“I wasn’t disappointed. I was upset, because I’d like to meet him and discuss the matter,” Lula told a news conference before heading home from Japan.

But “Zelenskiy is a grown-up. He knows what he’s doing,” he added.

Lula said his team had scheduled a meeting with Zelenskiy for Sunday afternoon. But the Ukrainian leader ran late, and his own agenda was full after that, he said.

Lula said he did not see a point in meeting Zelenskiy now, saying neither he nor Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to want peace.

“For now, they’re both convinced they’re going to win the war,” he said.

Lula is pushing for peace talks and has proposed Brazil as a mediator, along with other “neutral” countries, including China and Indonesia.

But the veteran leftist faced criticism last month when he accused the United States of “encouraging” the war.

After the White House accused him of “parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda”, Lula toned down his rhetoric, saying Brazil condemned Russia’s invasion.

But he renewed his criticism Monday.

US president Joe Biden, he said, is sending the message that “Putin has to surrender and pay for everything he wrecked”.

“That message isn’t helping,” he said.

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