Russia Ukraine war latest: Kyiv says gains made against Putin’s forces in ‘fruitful’ days of counteroffensive

Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar has said the country’s forces were making gains every day in areas outside Bakhmut.

“We are advancing on the southern flank of Bakhmut. To the north, to be honest, there is heavy fighting and so far no advance,” Maliar told national television in the latest assessment of the battlefield situation.

“… Our forces are encountering serious resistance. The enemy is pouring in all its forces to stop in the south and in the east.”

She added that Russian forces were also making advances further north, near Lyman and in Svatove, where Russian troops have recently been particularly active.

Ukraine’s military reported success in repelling Russian attacks in Kupiansk in the north, Bakhmut and near the contested towns of Avdiivka and Maryinka to the south.

It’s General Staff also claimed to have destroyed a formation of Russian forces in Makiivka, a town in the Russian-controlled part of Donetsk region.

Russia-installed officials said one civilian died and 36 were injured in the attack.

While both sides continue to claim that the other is suffering heavy losses, no detailed statistics have been presented by either Kyiv or Moscow.

In the Russian defence ministry’s accounts of frontline fighting, it claimed its forces foiled Ukraine’s in five areas of the eastern Donetsk region.

It also reported repelling attacks near Lyman and disrupting enemy operations in the Zaporizhzhia region, where Ukraine says its forces have captured a cluster of villages.

The continuing Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces has been “particularly fruitful” in the past few days, a senior security official has said.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council said that Ukrainian troops are fulfilling their main tasks.

“At this stage of active hostilities, Ukraine’s defence forces are fulfilling the number one task – the maximum destruction of manpower, equipment, fuel depots, military vehicles, command posts, artillery and air defense forces of the Russian army,” Mr Danilov said on Twitter.

“The last few days have been particularly fruitful,” he said, without providing any details from the battlefield.

The Kremlin on Tuesday held the door open for contacts with the U.S. regarding a possible prisoner exchange that could potentially involve jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, but reaffirmed that such talks must be held out of the public eye.

Asked whether Monday’s consular visits to Gershkovich, who has been held behind bars in Moscow since March on charges of espionage, and Vladimir Dunaev, a Russian citizen in U.S. custody on cybercrime charges, could potentially herald a prisoner swap, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow and Washington have touched on the issue.

“We have said that there have been certain contacts on the subject, but we don’t want them to be discussed in public,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters. “They must be carried out and continue in complete silence.”

The Russian economy, expected to bleed from hundreds of sanctions from the West, was performing better than expected, Vladimir Putin claimed.

He has been briefed by his prime minister Mikhail Mishustin on the “surprisingly positive” gross domestic product growth and inflation in a meeting at the Kremlin.

Mr Putin has been told the GDP growth may exceed 2 per cent this year and consumer price inflation may not rise above 5 per cent in annual terms.

According to the International Monetary Fund, the Russian economy is expected to grow 0.7 per cent this year.

“Our results, at least for the time being, let’s say, cautiously, are better than previously expected, better than predicted,” Putin said, according to a transcript on the Kremlin’s website.

After contracting 2.1 per cent in 2022, the Russian economy was under particular pressure in spring last year when Kyiv’s allies imposed sweeping sanctions against Moscow over its military campaign in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin claimed that Russians were more united than ever after responding to the short-lived but dramatic mutiny by his private mercenary Wagner group and its march on Moscow.

The Russian president was speaking alongside Asian leaders such as his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi at the virtual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on Tuesday. He was delivering his first remarks outside of Moscow acknowledging June’s aborted coup – the biggest challenge to the Russian leader’s rule in decades.

“The Russian people are consolidated as never before,” he said.

Dozens of people with flowers, many unable to hold back tears, bid farewell Tuesday to an award-winning Ukrainian writer who was among those killed by a Russian missile attack on a popular restaurant in eastern Ukraine.

The memorial service for Victoria Amelina, 37, was held in the crowded main hall of Saint-Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv, where ceremonies are usually held for soldiers who were killed on the battlefield.

Amelina died in a hospital from injuries sustained in the June 27 strike on a popular restaurant frequently visited by journalists and aid workers in the city of Kramatorsk. Twelve other people also lost their lives in the attack.

Georgia’s Foreign Ministry criticized Ukraine on Tuesday for urging the Georgian ambassador to return to Tbilisi for consultations over the poor health of imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili, who is also a Ukrainian citizen.

The Foreign Ministry called Ukraine’s action “an extreme form of escalation.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry had summoned Georgian Ambassador George Zakarashvili to express its protest over the apparent significant deterioration in the health of Saakashvili, who was convicted of abuse of power while he was president in 2004-2013.

Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday accused each other of plotting to stage an attack on the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, long the subject of mutual recriminations and suspicions.

Russian troops seized the station, Europe’s largest nuclear facility with six reactors, in the days following the Kremlin’s invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.

Each side has since regularly accused the other of shelling around the plant, situated in Ukraine’s south, and risking a major nuclear mishap.

Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the head of Rosenergoatom, which operates Russia’s nuclear network, said Ukraine planned to drop on the plant ammunition laced with nuclear waste transported from another of the country’s five nuclear stations.

“Under cover of darkness overnight on 5th July, the Ukrainian military will try to attack the Zaporizhzhia station using long-range precision equipment and kamikaze attack drones,” Russian news agencies quoted Karchaa as telling Russian television. He offered no evidence in support of his allegation.

A statement issued by the Ukrainian armed forces quoted “operational data” as saying that “explosive devices” had been placed on the roof of the station’s third and fourth reactors on Tuesday. An attack was possible “in the near future”.

“If detonated, they would not damage the reactors but would create an image of shelling from the Ukrainian side,” the statement on Telegram said. It said the Ukrainian army stood “ready to act under any circumstances”.

The military also provided no evidence for its assertions.

None of the reactors at the plant is producing electricity.

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been trying for more than a year to clinch a deal to ensure the plant is demilitarised and reduce the risks of any possible nuclear accident.

The leaders of the Netherlands and Luxembourg on Tuesday said that normalizing ties between Kosovo and Serbia would serve not only regional peace and stability but also their prospects of future integration into the European Union.

Prime ministers Mark Rutte of the Netherlands and Xavier Bettel of Luxembourg were on a trip to Pristina after a visit to Belgrade on Monday

They both called on Kosovo and Serbia to deescalate recent tensions that have threatened to push the Balkan region into instability as Europe faces Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

“We are here to listen. And we are here to try to build these bridges which are sometimes between neighbors. Not that easy to build,” said Bettel, adding “so we have to avoid every new crisis.”