Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin forces suffer 250 casualties in a day

Close to 250 of Vladimir Putin’s soldiers have been killed or injured in southern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, a Ukrainian military commander said.

Ukraine’s authorities said the casualties occurred on Saturday in Tavria, a village in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia, just 23km from the major town of Tokmak, where Ukrainian forces are looking to advance for a strategic territorial advantage.

“Over the last day, the enemy lost 248 people (84 dead, 163 wounded and one captured),” Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, who is in-charge of the strategic and operational group of forces in Tavriia, said in his Telegram channel on Sunday.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested British soldiers training Ukrainian troops in Ukraine would be legitimate targets for Russian forces, as would German factories producing Taurus missiles should they supply Kyiv.

In a post on Telegram, Mr Medvedev first directed his ire towards recently appointed British Defence Minister Grant Shapps, who said London wants to deploy military instructors to Ukraine, in addition to training Ukrainian armed forces in Britain or other Western countries as at present.

“This will turn their instructors into a legal target for our armed forces. Understanding perfectly well that they will be ruthlessly destroyed. And not as mercenaries, but namely as British NATO specialists,” Mr Medvedev wrote on Telegram.

Russia is preparing for “multiple further years” of fighting in Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said.

The MoD said leaked documents show Russia’s defence spending is set to increase to 30 per cent of overall expenditure in 2024.

“These figures suggest that Russia is preparing for multiple further years of fighting in Ukraine”, it said.

A 61-year-old man was killed by Russian shelling last night in Malaya Tokmachka, Zaporizhzhia, according to officials.

Yuriy Malashko, head of the region’s military administration, said a 66-year-old woman was also injured in the shelling.

There were also 16 reports of residential buildings and infrastructure facilities being destroyed, the administration said.

Ukraine’s air defence systems shot down 16 out of around 30 drones that Russia launched on Ukraine’s territory overnight, Ukrainian Air Forces said on Sunday.

It said on Telegram messaging app that drones were launched from the southern, southeastern and northern directions.

Authorities said the central Ukrainian Cherkasy region was under the attack.

“At night, the enemy massively attacked our Cherkasy region with attack drones. Unfortunately, there were hits on industrial infrastructure in (the city of) Uman,” Cherkasy Governor Ihor Taburets said on Telegram.

“As a result, fires broke out in warehouses. In particular, where grain was stored,” he said, adding that one person was injured.

The Ukrainian presidential office said in a statement that civilian infrastructure and warehouses were also damaged in the southern Mykolaiv region and eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.

The reports could not be independently verified.

Voters in Slovakia cast ballots Saturday in an early parliamentary election that pits a populist former prime minister who campaigned on a pro-Russia and anti-American message against a liberal, pro-West newcomer.

Depending on which of them prevails, the election could reverse the small eastern European country’s support for neighboring Ukraine in the war with Russia, threatening to break a fragile unity in the European Union and NATO.

Former Prime MInister Robert Fico, 59, and his leftist Smer, or Direction, party have vowed to withdraw Slovakia’s military support for Ukraine in Russia’s war, if his attempt to return to power is successful.

Poland will find ways to address disagreements with Ukraine without the recent differences impacting its military support, said Nato’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg.

The two neighbouring nations have encountered friction in their ties after Poland – that has been one of Ukraine’s fiercest allies through the course of Russian invasion – decided to extend a ban on Ukrainian grain imports.

Last week, Poland said it would only carry out previously agreed arms deliveries to Ukraine and choose to focus on rebuilding its own weapons arsenal.

“I’m expecting and I’m confident that Ukraine and Poland will find a way to address those issues without that impacting in a negative way the military support to Ukraine,” Mr Stoltenberg said in an interview in Copenhagen on Friday.

The announcement coincided with tensions peaking between the two neighbours after Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said some countries were “feigning solidarity by indirectly supporting Russia” with a ban on grain imports.

The Russian president met Andrei Troshev, who is known by his nom de guerre “Sedoi” or “grey hair“, along with deputy defence minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov on Thursday night, the Kremlin said in a statement.

“At the last meeting, we talked about you overseeing the formation of volunteer units that can carry out various tasks, first and foremost, of course, in the zone of the special military operation,” Mr Putin was quoted as saying to Mr Troshev. Special military operation is what Russia calls its invasion of Ukraine.

“You yourself have been fighting in such a unit for more than a year,” the president said.

“You know what it is, how it is done, you know about the issues that need to be resolved in advance so that the combat work goes in the best and most successful way.”

The football association of Ukraine has written to Uefa’s member nations urging them to boycott matches against junior Russian teams.

England’s Football Association (the FA) had been among the national bodies that had said that they would not allow their sides to play Russia despite Uefa’s decision.

And the Ukrainian footballing body has now urged all members to do the same.