Ukraine war live updates: Our troops are advancing steadily, Kyiv says; Russia claims it thwarted ‘Ukrainian terrorist plots’

While there are Russian troops in Ukraine, there will be no negotiations with Russia, a top
Ukrainian official reiterated Monday.

Andriy Yermak, the head of the President’s Office, said on Telegram that “there will be no negotiations with Russia while their troops are in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace formula provides for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the entire territory of Ukraine,” the head of the presidential administration said.

Both Zelenskyy and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have met with African leaders in the last few days, with the possibility of peace talks high on the agenda.

On Friday, Zelenskyy said at a press conference with leaders of a number of African countries that Russia is considering negotiations as a way to freeze the conflict and accumulate forces and expand its aggression, news agency Ukrinform reported.

Diplomatic negotiations, he said, are therefore impossible as long as Russians are on Ukrainian territory.

— Holly Ellyatt

Jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny appeared before a Russian court on Monday to face new charges of extremism that could extend his prison term by decades.

The hearing took place at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 235 km (145 miles) east of Moscow, where Navalny is already serving sentences totalling 11-1/2 years.

His supporters accuse Russian authorities of trying to break him in prison to silence his criticism of President Vladimir Putin, something the Kremlin denies.

An entry in the court record last month showed the new charges relate to six different articles of the Russian criminal code, including inciting and financing extremist activity and creating an extremist organisation.

Russia has outlawed Navalny’s campaign organisation as part of a crackdown on dissent that started well before the conflict in Ukraine and has intensified in the nearly 16 months since it started. Last week one of his regional campaign leaders was jailed for 7-1/2 years.

In a tweet posted on his account by his supporters last month, Navalny responded with typical irony to the new charges.

“Well, Alexei, you’re in some real trouble now … The Prosecutor General’s Office has officially provided me with 3,828 pages describing all the crimes I’ve committed while already imprisoned.”

He said he had not been allowed to read the material to find out what exactly he was accused of because he was once again in solitary confinement and allowed only a mug and one book.

Navalny, 46, earned admiration from the disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a Soviet-era nerve agent.

The Kremlin denied trying to kill him and said there was no evidence he had been poisoned with such a toxin.

It was not immediately clear which specific actions or incidents the new charges referred to. One relates to “rehabilitation of Nazism” – a possible reference to Navalny’s declarations of support for Ukraine, whose government Russia accuses of embodying Nazi ideology. Ukraine and its Western allies dismiss that charge as baseless.

— Reuters

Ukraine has liberated eight settlements in southern Ukraine over the past two weeks as its counteroffensive continues, the country’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Monday.

Maliar noted on Telegram that Ukrainian troops “were both on the offensive and on the defensive” last week.

“In the east, the enemy made a lot of efforts to stop the advance of our troops in the direction of Bakhmut. Transferred additional units there and increased the number of shelling,” she said, saying that while the overall intensity of fighting in this direction decreased, 41 clashes took place. Ukrainian troops “advanced deep into the enemy in several areas,” she said.

“Over the past week in the east, the enemy has fired more than 5,800 rounds and used 277,022 rounds of ammunition,” she added.

In southern Ukraine, meanwhile, there was an offensive in several directions in the past week, she said.

“Units of missile troops and artillery of the Defence Forces of the Tavria direction performed 10,125 fire missions during the week,” she said, with eight “settlements liberated by units of the “Tavria” OSUV [Tavria operational-strategic group]: Novodarivka, Levadne, Storozheve, Makarivka, Blagodatne, Lobkovo, Neskuchne, Pyatikhatky” the latter being the latest village to have been purportedly recaptured.

In general, the units in the Tavria direction (in southern Ukraine) advanced to the depth of the enemy up to 7 km (4.3 miles), she said, with the liberated area in the south amounting to 113 square km.

“Over the past week, the enemy suffered significant losses. In particular, last week the losses of the enemy in all directions amounted to more than 4,600 killed and wounded, in addition, our defenders captured more than 80 fighters of the aggressor,” Maliar said. CNBC was unable to immediately verify the information in the post.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia’s FSB security service said on Monday it had thwarted a series of Ukrainian “sabotage and terrorist plots” targeting Russian-backed officials on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine and had arrested one woman as part of its investigation.

The FSB said in a statement that the attacks had targeted Russian law enforcement officials and Russian-installed government officials in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, one of four areas in Ukraine that Moscow says it has annexed since the start of what it calls its “special military operation.”

Kyiv is currently mounting a counteroffensive to retake what it and the West say was illegally seized territory. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the Russian allegations.

The FSB said it had opened criminal cases against an unnamed woman it described as “an accomplice” on charges related to terrorism and the illegal possession of explosives.

— Reuters

Russia has highly likely started, over the last 10 days, to relocate elements of its Dnipro Group of Forces (DGF) from the eastern bank of the Dnipro River to reinforce the Zaporizhzhia and Bakhmut areas, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Monday.

“This potentially involves several thousand troops from the 49th Army, including its 34th Separate Motorised Brigade, as well as Airborne Forces (VDV) and Naval Infantry units,” the ministry said in its latest intelligence update on Twitter.

“The DGF redeployment likely reflects Russia’s perception that a major Ukrainian attack across the Dnipro is now less likely following the collapse of Kakhovka Dam and the resulting flooding,” the U.K. said.

Ukraine accused Russia of blowing up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam in early June, saying it did so to thwart Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the southern Kherson region. Russia denied any involvement in the incident, although preliminary evidence suggests it was involved in undermining the dam.

Floodwaters in the Kherson region are subsiding but thousands of people aren’t able to return to their homes yet, and those that are remain without power.

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country’s armed forces are making gains in their counteroffensive.

“Our troops are advancing, position by position, step by step, we are moving forward,” he said in his nightly address Sunday.

Zelenskyy’s comments come as Ukraine’s counteroffensive continues into its third week. Unlike several previous counteroffensives that saw Ukraine recapture an impressive amount of territory relatively quickly, this counteroffensive has been different, with Ukraine recapturing just a handful of settlements and progress expected to be limited by deep Russian defenses.

Ukraine met with its international allies last week to discuss Kyiv’s military progress and ongoing needs but Zelenskyy said Sunday that “the main thing is the speed of supply” of weaponry after a series of delays in decision-making over weapons, and their supply to Ukraine.

“Next week, we will have new important communications with our partners, for the sake of our movement, for the sake of weapons, for the sake of our warriors having everything they need,” he said Sunday.

— Holly Ellyatt