Russian Ukraine war latest: Putin unleashes aerial strikes, killing at least 6

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov denied reports of the killing of one of his senior commanders in fighting in Ukraine, who he said was found alive and well.

Delimkhanov was “alive and well and not even wounded”, Kadyrov said on Telegram. He has led Chechnya since 2007 and is a close ally of Vladimir Putin.

Initial reports by Russia’s Zvezda television channel cited the parliamentary press service as saying Delimkhanov had been wounded in Ukraine. It followed rumours on Ukrainian social media channels that the Chechen commander had been killed in an artillery strike in southern Ukraine.

The commander, Adam Delimkhanov, heads the Chechen division of the Russian national guard and is also a member of Russia’s parliament. He is widely seen as the Caucasian region’s second most senior official after Kadyrov himself.

Kadyrov added that he had known Delimkhanov was uninjured from the start of what he called “a fake information attack”, but had remained silent in order to embarrass Ukrainian media outlets that reported on the commander’s alleged injury.

In a later posting on Telegram, Kadyrov mocked the Ukrainian media reports about Delimkhanov for “brazen lies about his elimination”.

Kadyrov said he had been “temporarily” unable to communicate with Delimkhanov while he was in Ukraine.
Delimkhanov, who has an active social media presence with over half a million followers on Telegram, has not commented so far.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told President Joe Biden at an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday that Ukrainians are “making progress” with their counteroffensive, which could bolster their position when there’s an opportunity to reach a diplomatic end to the war with Russia.

“The support that we are providing together for Ukraine is now making a difference on the battlefield as we speak,” Stoltenberg said. “Because the offensive has launched, and the Ukrainians are making progress, making advances.”

He added, “It’s still early days, but what we do know is that the more land that Ukrainians are able to liberate, the stronger hand they will have at the negotiating table.”

Some 110 million people have had to flee their homes because of conflict, persecution, or human rights violations, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says. The war in Sudan, which has displaced nearly 2 million people since April, is but the latest in a long list of crises that has led to the record-breaking figure.

“It’s quite an indictment on the state of our world,” Filippo Grandi, who leads the U.N. refugee agency, told reporters in Geneva ahead of the publication Wednesday of UNHCR‘s Global Trends Report for 2022.

Last year alone, an additional 19 million people were forcibly displaced including more than 11 million who fled Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in what became the fastest and largest displacement of people since World War II.

Watch as the International Committee of the Red Cross holds a briefing on the Ukraine dam situation and the organisation’s visits to prisoners of war.

The Nova Kakhova dam, which was under Russian control, was breached on the morning of 6 June, with water surging through it and causing extensive flooding in Kherson – prompting the evacuation of thousands of people.

Damage to the area can be seen from space, with huge areas of land submerged in water.

As of Tuesday, 13 June, the death toll from flooding in two Russian-controlled towns in southern Ukraine has risen to 17 in the wake of the dam’s collapse, a Russian-installed official in Kherson said.

A court in Russia on Wednesday convicted an associate of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny on extremism charges and sentenced her to 7 1/2 years in prison, the latest step in a yearslong crackdown by the Kremlin on opposition activists.

Lilia Chanysheva, who used to head Navalny’s office in the Russian region of Bashkortostan, was found guilty of calling for extremism, forming an extremist group and founding an organization that violates rights. The charges against Chanysheva, who was arrested in November 2021, stem from a court ruling earlier that year that designated Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his regional offices as extremist organizations.

In addition to the prison sentence, Chanysheva was fined 400,000 rubles (about $4,700). Her trial was conducted behind closed doors and she has maintained her innocence, rejecting the charges as politically motivated.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that NATO should not bet on his country approving Sweden‘s application to join the Western military alliance before a July summit because the Nordic nation has not fully addressed his security concerns.

Sweden and Finland applied for membership together following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Finland became NATO’s 31st member in April after the Turkish parliament ratified its request, but Turkey has held off approving Sweden’s bid.

NATO wants to bring Sweden into the fold by the time the leaders of member nations meet for a summit in Lithuania‘s capital on July 11-12. Speaking to journalists on his way back from a state visit to Azerbaijan on Tuesday, Erdogan said Turkey’s attitude to the accession was not “positive.”