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A key bridge linking southern Russia to Crimea has been damaged again, with Moscow blaming Ukraine. The attack could be part of Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive to reclaim occupied territory.
Meanwhile, Russia has terminated a July 2022 deal for the safe export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.
Read our in-depth coverage. For all our coverage, visit our Ukraine war page.
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Note: Nikkei Asia decided in March 2022 to suspend its reporting from Russia until further information becomes available regarding the scope of the revised criminal code. Entries include material from wire services and other sources.
Here are the latest developments:
Monday, July 24 (Tokyo time)
5:40 a.m. A previously announced meeting of a new NATO-Ukraine Council, expected to address Black Sea security, has been scheduled for Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says in his nightly video address on Sunday.
NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu says on Saturday that the meeting, requested by Zelenskyy in a telephone conversation with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, would discuss the situation following Russia’s withdrawal from a year-old deal overseeing grain exports from Ukrainian ports.
Sunday, July 23
11:30 p.m. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that while Ukraine has reconquered half the territory that Russia initially seized in its invasion, Kyiv faces a “a very hard fight” to win back more.
“It’s already taken back about 50% of what was initially seized,” Blinken says in an interview to CNN on Sunday. “These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough,” he said, adding: “It will not play out over the next week or two. We’re still looking I think at several months.”
5:30 pm. Russian air attacks on Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa kills one, injures nearly 20 and badly damages an Orthodox cathedral.
“Odesa: another night attack of the monsters,” Oleh Kiper, governor of the Odesa region, said on the Telegram messaging app.
The Spaso-Preobrazhenskyi Cathedral, or the Transfiguration Cathedral, was severely damaged, Odesa’s military administration said. Odesa’s largest church building, it is located in the historic city center, which is a UNESCO world heritage site.
Saturday, July 22
5:40 p.m. Road traffic on the bridge linking Russia to the Crimean peninsula has resumed after being briefly suspended on Saturday, an official Telegram channel said. It did not state the reason for the road closure. On Monday, the road was put out of service after an attack that killed two people. The bridge had only recently returned to full operation after being damaged in a bomb blast last October.
3:10 p.m. Prominent Russian nationalist and former military commander Igor Girkin, who had publicly accused President Vladimir Putin and the army top brass of not pursuing the war in Ukraine harshly or effectively enough, was remanded in custody on Friday on charges of inciting extremism. His arrest earlier in the day by his ex-employer, the FSB state security service, suggests authorities have wearied of his criticism of the war in Ukraine, following an abortive mutiny last month led by another outspoken critic, Yevgeny Prigozhin, boss of the Wagner mercenary force, who is still free but has sharply curtailed his own verbal attacks.
Britain’s defense ministry, in a regular intelligence update on Saturday, said the arrest was “likely to infuriate fellow members of the military blogger community, who largely see Girkin as an astute military analyst and patriot.”
8:00 a.m. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula to Russia, which was built by Moscow and brought into service in 2018, is a military target as it is “not just a logistical road” and brings “war, not peace.” Speaking by video link to the Aspen security conference in the United States, he said, “For us, this is understandably an enemy facility built outside international laws and all applicable norms. So, understandably, this is a target for us. And a target that is bringing war, not peace, has to be neutralized.” Ukraine welcomed Monday’s attack on the bridge, which killed two civilians, but officials did not directly claim responsibility, while Moscow blamed Ukraine.
7:30 a.m. French President Emmanuel Macron’s top diplomatic adviser says China is delivering items that could be used as military equipment to Russia, according to Reuters. Asked at the Aspen Security Forum late on Thursday if the West had seen any evidence that China has armed Russia in any way in the war in Ukraine, Emmanuel Bonne, the head of Macron’s diplomatic team at the Elysee Palace, told the moderator: “Yes, there are indications that they are doing things we would prefer them not to do.” When pressed on whether China is delivering weapons, Bonne said: “Well, kind of military equipment … as far as we know they are not delivering massively military capacities to Russia but [we need that to be] no delivery.”
Friday, July 21
11:30 p.m. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dismissed Kyiv’s ambassador to the U.K. and the International Maritime Organization, Vadym Prystaiko, under a presidential decree that does not state a reason.
Prystaiko had given Zelenskyy an apparent rebuke last week for the president’s “sarcastic” response to British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s comment that the U.K. is not an “Amazon” delivery service for weapons for Ukraine.
The dismissal comes the day after Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address that the state budget should prioritize defense and that he had asked the prime minister to consider replacing the culture minister. “Paving stones, city decorations and fountains can wait till after the victory,” the president said. The culture minister in question, Oleksandr Tkachenko, says he submitted his resignation before Zelenskyy’s address.
2:40 p.m. Poland’s security committee decided in a meeting on Wednesday to move military units to the country’s east due to the Wagner Group’s presence in Belarus, state-run news agency PAP quotes its secretary as saying on Friday. On Thursday, the Belarusian defense ministry said Wagner mercenaries had started to train Belarusian special forces at a military range just a few miles from the border with NATO-member Poland. “Training or joint exercises of the Belarusian army and the Wagner Group is undoubtedly a provocation,” Zbigniew Hoffmann told PAP. “The Committee analyzed possible threats, such as the dislocation of Wagner Group units. Therefore, the Minister of National Defense, chairman of the Committee, Mariusz Blaszczak, decided to move our military formations from the west to the east of Poland.”
1:57 a.m. Russia is not preparing to attack civilian ships in the Black Sea, contrary to American claims, says Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., in comments posted on social media by his embassy.
1:34 a.m. The U.S. announces sanctions on a total of 120-plus individuals and entities, including 14 vessels, to “constrain Russia’s military capabilities, its access to battlefield supplies, and its economic bottom line.” The Russian Embassy in Washington does not immediately respond to Reuters for comment.
Thursday, July 20
11:00 p.m. Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari endorses calls by Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba that the Black Sea grain initiative be restored. Kuleba, who is visiting Islamabad, says Russia has undermined world food security. Bhutto Zardari says he plans to raise the issue with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“It is not only in our interest but in the world’s interest that this grain initiative is restored,” Bhutto Zardari says.
9:54 p.m. Starting Friday, Kyiv time, all vessels in Black Sea waters en route to Russian ports and Russian-occupied Ukrainian seaports “may be considered for risk assessment” as carrying military cargo, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense says.
7:00 p.m. A building at the Chinese consulate in Odesa was damaged in a Russian missile and drone attack on the southern Ukrainian port city, regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Thursday. The damage appeared to be minor. Kiper posted a photograph online showing the building with broken windows. Russia, which is an ally of China, attacked the port cities of Odesa and Mykolaiv overnight for the third successive night.
3:45 p.m. Russia is responsible for a major global food supply crisis, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on Thursday, days after the Kremlin announced it would suspend an agreement for Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea. “What we already know is that this is going to create a big and huge food crisis in the world,” Borrell told journalists before heading into a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
Borrell also accused Russia of deliberately attacking grain storage facilities in the southern port city of Odesa, which he said would further deepen the food crisis.
3:40 p.m. Belarus’ Defense Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that the country’s military was continuing exercises with fighters from Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary force at a military base near the city of Brest, on the border with Poland.
2:00 p.m. China’s imports of crude oil from Russia hit an all-time high in June, Chinese government data released on Thursday shows, with refiners continuing to gulp oil from the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline even as discounts against international benchmarks narrow. Arrivals from Russia totaled 10.5 million metric tonnes in June, or 2.56 million barrels per day. Shipments were up 44.1% from 1.77 million bpd in the same month last year, according to data from the General Administration of Customs. Russian arrivals for the first half totaled 52.61 million metric tonnes, up 21.6% from the year-earlier period.
8:00 a.m. The White House warned on Wednesday that Russia may expand its targeting of Ukrainian grain facilities to include attacks against civilian shipping in the Black Sea. Adam Hodge, White House National Security Council spokesperson, said U.S. officials have information indicating Russia laid additional sea mines in the approaches to Ukrainian ports. “We believe that this is a coordinated effort to justify any attacks against civilian ships in the Black Sea and lay blame on Ukraine for these attacks,” he said.
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12:27 a.m. Russia’s Defense Ministry says it would consider all ships traveling to Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea as potential carriers of military cargoes from midnight on Thursday morning Moscow time, following the end of the Black Sea grain deal, reports Reuters.
In a statement posted on the Telegram messenger app, the ministry said that it was declaring southeastern and northwestern parts of the Black Sea’s international waters as unsafe for navigation, and that the flag states of ships traveling to Ukrainian ports would be considered parties to the conflict on the Ukrainian side.
For earlier updates, click here.
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