Russia, Ukraine claim control of Lysychansk as fighting rages on | DW News / Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 131 of the invasion

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 131 of the invasion

 

Ukrainian forces retreat from Lysychansk as Zelenskiy vows to regain the key eastern city with the help of long-range western weapons

 

Samantha Lock

@Samantha__Lock

Mon 4 Jul 2022 07.07 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/04/russia-ukraine-war-what-we-know-on-day-131-of-the-invasion

 

• Ukrainian forces have retreated from Lysychansk as Russia claims it is now in control of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region. The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said Moscow’s forces had established “full control” over Lysychansk and several nearby settlements. Ukraine’s military command confirmed on Sunday evening that its troops had been forced to pull back from the city, saying there would otherwise be “fatal consequences”. Lysychansk was the last Ukrainian-controlled city in the Luhansk region.
• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, vowed to regain Lysychansk with the help of long-range western weapons. “We will return thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons. Ukraine does not give anything up,” he said in an evening address.
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• The eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region was hit by powerful shelling from multiple rocket launchers on Sunday, killing six people and injuring 20 others, the city’s mayor Vadim Lyakh said. In the post-2014 regional capital of Kramatorsk, a missile destroyed a hotel, according to its mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko. He said three rockets hit the town on Sunday and that there were no reported victims so far.
• At least three people were killed and dozens of residential buildings damaged in the Russian city of Belgorod near the Ukrainian border on Sunday, the region’s governor said. Vyacheslav Gladkov said at least 11 apartment buildings and 39 private residential houses were damaged, including five houses destroyed.
• Australia will send more than $100m in new aid to Ukraine including military equipment, as well as levelling sanctions on 16 new Russian officials, following prime minister Anthony Albanese’s secret trip to Kyiv. Albanese visited Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, three towns in the Kyiv region where evidence of mass killings and torture was uncovered after the withdrawal of Russian forces.
• Britain will host a 2023 recovery conference to help Ukraine rebuild from the damage caused by Russia’s invasion. The Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC2022) will begin on Monday in Lugano, Switzerland, to discuss how to rebuild Ukraine, bringing together a Ukrainian delegation with representatives of other countries, international organisations and civil society, the UK foreign office said.
• The UK may follow the example of Canada and seize the assets of Russians in Britain in order to give them to Ukraine. Foreign secretary, Liz Truss, told MPs she was supportive of the idea that the government could seize frozen Russian assets in the UK and redistribute them to victims of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
• A new New York Times investigation has revealed that Nazism references spiked to record-high levels the day Russia invaded Ukraine. The outlet surveyed eight million articles about Ukraine collected from over 8,000 Russian websites since 2014, and found that since 2014, references to Nazism were “relatively flat for eight years and then spiked to unprecedented levels on February 24” of this year.
• The president of Belarus and Vladimir Putin’s closest ally has said his ex-Soviet state stands fully behind Russia, adding that the country’s “have practically a unified army”. Alexander Lukashenko said he had thrown his weight behind Putin’s campaign against Ukraine “from the very first day” in late February. “We are being criticised for being the only country in the world to support Russia in its fight against Nazism,” a video on the state BelTA news agency showed Lukashenko telling a gathering. “We will remain together with fraternal Russia.”
• Turkish customs authorities have detained a Russian cargo ship carrying grain allegedly stolen from Ukraine, the Ukrainian ambassador to the country has said. “We have full co-operation. The ship is currently standing at the entrance to the port, it has been detained by the customs authorities of Turkey,” ambassador Vasyl Bodnar said on Ukrainian national television.