Russia-Ukraine war live: Ukraine makes advances in south and east, top general says; Putin greets crowds in rare walkabout | Ukraine

Ukrainian forces are advancing “slowly but surely” on the front lines in the east and southeast of the country as well as around the longstanding flashpoint of Bakhmut, senior military officials have said, according to Reuters.

The news wire reported:

Ukrainian commander-in-chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi told chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley that the that his forces had “succeeded in seizing the strategic initiative.”

“Ukraine‘s defence forces are proceeding with their offensive action and we have made advances. The enemy is offering strong resistance, while sustaining considerable losses,” Zaluzhnyi wrote on Telegram.

He told Milley about weapons needed by Ukrainian forces as well as demining equipment – Ukrainian officials have cited large tracts of mined territory as an impediment to any advance.

Reuters also reported that deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar, speaking on national television, had noted advances in sectors in the south designated by two occupied towns – Berdiansk and Mariupol.

“Every day, there is an advance,” Maliar said. “Yes, the advances are slow, but they are sure.”

She cited the recapture this week of the village of Rivnopol in the southeast, saying “mopping up operations were complete” and that the army was now well dug in.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleksander Musiyenko said Ukrainian gains on the fringes of Bakhmut were probably a prelude for plans to recapture other areas, including the long-contested towns of Aviivka and Maryinka.

“It makes no sense to enter Bakhmut itself now. The risk is too great,” he told Ukrainian NV Radio “But in the east, Ukraine has gradually taken over the initiative. Ukraine has improved its tactical positions without sending in significant reserves.”

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Livingstone.

Ukrainian forces are making progress in the south and southeast of the country, military officials have said. “Ukraine’s defence forces are proceeding with their offensive action and we have made advances,” the country’s commander-in-chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi wrote on Telegram. “The enemy is offering strong resistance, while sustaining considerable losses.”

Deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said Ukraine had made advances in sectors in the south designated by two occupied towns – Berdiansk and Mariupol. “Every day, there is an advance,” Maliar said on national televsion. “Yes, the advances are slow, but they are sure.”

In Russia meanwhile, president Vladimir Putin went on a rare public walkabout in Dagestan, shaking hands and posing for selfies in an apparent attempt to counter the damage to his image wreaked by the weekend’s Wagner rebellion.

It was an unusual move for a secretive president whom one senior security official once described as “pathologically afraid for his life”, requiring his staff to undergo a two-week quarantine during the pandemic.

In other developments:

• A Russian general who previously led the invasion force in Ukraine has not been seen in public since Saturday. The New York Times, citing anonymous US intelligence sources, reported that General Sergei Surovikin had prior knowledge of the uprising led by the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, with whom he had well publicised links. Surovikin is the head of the Russian aerospace forces and was formerly Moscow’s supreme commander in Ukraine.

• The death toll in a Russian rocket attack on a packed pizza restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk has risen to 11, including four children. Ukraine’s state emergency service said at least 56 people were injured, some critically, when two Iskander missiles slammed into the restaurant in the city centre on Tuesday evening.

• Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency has arrested a local man it accused of helping the Russians carry out the attack on Kramatorsk. The SBU said it had arrested an employee of a gas transportation company who helped coordinate the strike and allegedly sent video footage of the cafe to the Russian military. It provided no evidence for the claims.

• Putin has said that he “didn’t doubt” that he had the support of Russians during the mutiny. In a meeting with the head of the southern Russian province of Dagestan, parts of which were aired on state television, he said: “I did not doubt the reaction in Dagestan and in all of the country.”

• US president Joe Biden said Putin “was clearly losing the war” but that it was too early to tell whether he had been weakened by the Wagner rebellion. “He’s losing the war at home, and he has become a bit of a pariah around the world,” he added.

• German chancellor Olaf Scholz said the failed mutiny had weakened Putin but the implications for his invasion of Ukraine remained unclear. “I do believe he is weakened as this shows that the autocratic power structures have cracks in them and he is not as firmly in the saddle as he always asserts,” Scholz said in an interview with broadcaster ARD.

• Ukraine’s defence minister says he expects a guarantee that his country will be invited to join Nato at the conclusion of the war with Russia, describing membership as non-negotiable. Before a meeting of Nato leaders in Vilnius next month, Oleksii Reznikov said Kyiv recognised that accession to the military alliance was not possible while the conflict continued, but insisted hard pledges for the future would need to be made.

• The presidents of Lithuania and Poland, Gitanas Nausėda and Andrzej Duda, visited Kyiv, with Nausėda confirming that his country will supply Ukraine with two Nasams launchers within three months. The visit comes ahead of an EU leaders summit which begins on Thursday.

• Duda warned the presence of Wagner troops in Belarus could pose a potential threat to the region. “It is difficult for us to exclude today that the presence of the Wagner group in Belarus could pose a potential threat to Poland, which shares a border with Belarus, a threat to Lithuania … as well as potentially to Latvia,” Duda said.

• UK officials are coordinating with the EU over plans to seize the interest on billions of frozen Russian assets and send the proceeds to Ukraine, the UK’s Europe minister, Leo Docherty, has said. The transfer of the interest on frozen Russian assets is seen as one of the most legally viable routes to use Russian assets to help the recovery of Ukraine.

• Kyiv has appointed Herman Smetanin as the new head of state-owned weapons producer Ukroboronprom. “The newly appointed general director faces three main tasks: to increase the production of ammunition and military equipment, build an effective anti-corruption infrastructure in the company, and transform Ukroboronprom,” said Oleksander Kamyshyn, the minister for Ukraine’s strategic industries.