EU agrees new package of sanctions against Russia over invasion of Ukraine
The EU on Wednesday agreed an 11th package of sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, AFP reports.
Sweden, which holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, said the new measures were approved at a meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels.
As part of the package, the bloc has put three Hong Kong-based companies on a list of firms to which the EU restricts exports of sensitive technologies, a document seen by AFP showed.
Five companies from mainland China included in an earlier proposal were dropped from the list, a diplomat said, after Beijing pushed Brussels to take them off.
The time in Kyiv is just coming up to 9pm. Here is a roundup of the day’s main news:
The chief of mercenary group Wagner has reportedly accused Moscow’s top brass of deceiving Russians about the course of Ukraine’s offensive and pointed to Kyiv’s progress on the battlefield.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, accused opponents of waging a campaign to discredit him and force him out of office on Wednesday after a rift with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Reuters reported.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy accepted in a BBC interview that progress in the country’s current counteroffensive against Russian forces had been “slower than desired”. Zelenskiy told the Ukraine Recovery conference that Ukraine had made the west, including the EU, more united than ever before and could become an engine for green world growth and security for decades.
Rishi Sunak outlined how Ukraine must be supported to fast-track recovery and support this “help Ukraine unleash its potential”. “It’s clear Russia must pay for the destruction that they’ve inflicted. So we’re working with allies to explore lawful routes to use Russian assets,” the prime minister said at the conference, held in London.
Russian air defences downed three drones in the Moscow region on Wednesday, the defence ministry said, in what it called an attempted Ukrainian attack, Reuters reported.
Wagner chief accuses Moscow of 'misleading Russians' over Ukraine offensive
The chief of mercenary group Wagner accused Moscow of deceiving Russians about the course of Ukraine’s offensive and pointed to Kyiv’s progress on the battlefield, AFP reports.
Early this month Kyiv’s military launched its counteroffensive in the east and south of the country in an effort to claw back territory lost since last year. Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Ukraine’s offensive is failing.
But the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose forces had for months led an assault for towns in eastern Ukraine including Bakhmut, accused the defence ministry of not telling the truth and losing territory to Ukrainian troops.
“They are misleading the Russian people,” he said in an audio message released by his spokespeople.
The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine plans to resume pumping water from what remains of the massive reservoir behind a nearby dam that burst two weeks ago, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday.
Reuters reports:
The International Atomic Energy Agency said last week it was unclear whether it would be possible to pump water from the reservoir to cool reactors and spent fuel at Europe’s biggest nuclear plant given how much the reservoir’s level has fallen.
While the plant can fall back on other water sources, including a cooling pond with what the IAEA says is months’ worth of water in it, whatever can be pumped from the reservoir should buy more time before stocks have to be replenished.
“Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is planning to resume pumping water that still remains accessible despite a major loss of water in the Kakhovka reservoir caused by the destruction of the downstream dam earlier this month,” the IAEA said in a statement.
For the past two weeks, Zaporizhzhia has received its cooling water from the reserves of a water outlet from a nearby thermal power plant. That so-called discharge channel has also been used to replace water in the cooling pond that evaporated, the IAEA said
Kyiv is “not optimistic” about the renewal of an agreement allowing grain from Ukraine to reach the global market, a senior Ukrainian government official has said.
“We are not optimistic at this time,” deputy prime minister for the restoration of Ukraine, Oleksandr Kubrakov, told reporters on Wednesday, according to AFP.
“Since the beginning of May, the corridor efficiency has decreased,” he said, adding that Ukraine recently exported more agricultural products via other routes than through the corridors under the agreement.
The deal that grants safe passage for Ukrainian grain to be exported via the Black Sea was signed by Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN in July 2022. It was renewed again in May but for only two months, until 17 July.
Speaker after speaker at the conference drew applause by saying that Russia will have to contribute to the cost of Ukraine’s recovery - put at $400bn by the World Bank in May.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said: “Let’s be clear: Russia is behind the destruction of Ukraine. And Russia will end up bearing the cost of rebuilding Ukraine.”
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the aggressor must be held responsible.
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said: “It is clear that Russia must pay for the destruction it has inflicted. This is why we are working with our allies to explore legal avenues for the use of Russian assets.”
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said his country was preparing “a fair mechanism that will allow us to confiscate up to $500bn of Russian assets frozen in the west”.
But a preliminary paper prepared by the European Commission suggests no legal avenue has been found to seize frozen Russian sovereign assets that does not risk legal challenge. The commission, according to a paper seen by Bloomberg, is proposing a windfall tax could be imposed on Russian companies, but that it is not likely to raise much money.
The UK this week proposed that sanctions can be kept in place until Russia has agreed to pay reparations, a route that might lead Russian businesses to put pressure on the Russian government to offer reparations.
In the immediate future, Shmyhal said his country needed $14.1bn for 2023 alone and faced a shortfall of $6.5bn that he hoped would be overcome at the conference.
Denys Shmyhal speaks during the Ukraine Recovery Conference in London. Photograph: Hannah McKay/Reuters
Despite it not being a pledging conference, Washington announced an additional $1.3bn directed mainly towards its essential infrastructure and a green power industry.
The US promised credit guarantees from the World Bank reaching $3bn over three years to finance Ukrainian public services and £240m of bilateral aid, intended in particular for mine clearance and humanitarian projects.
Germany announced an additional €381m of humanitarian aid in 2023, and Paris, €40m, for emergency reconstruction and medical equipment in particular. On Tuesday, the European Commission had proposed an aid package of €50bn until 2027.
But the thrust of the conference was to convince sceptical if well disposed private investors that Ukraine is a politically and militarily safe country in which to invest, and a vibrant civil society, and a reformed judiciary, will block the return of corrupt oligarchs once peace returns.
In a show of support, thousands of businesses with a capitalisation of $1trillion signed a “Ukraine business compact”, an initiative inviting companies from all over the world to commit to supporting the reconstruction of Ukraine.
Zelenskiy has enlisted BlackRock and JPMorgan to advise on the Ukraine Development Fund, a vehicle that seeks to mobilise capital from private and public sector investors toward rebuilding the Ukrainian economy.
Clearing the landmines in Ukraine will require an operation comparable to clearing Europe of explosive hazards after the second world war, the UN said on Wednesday.
The task will need up to $300m a year over the next five years to clear those landmines causing the biggest drag on Ukraine’s economy, Paul Heslop, the head of UN mine action for the UN Development Programme in Ukraine, was quoted by AFP as saying.
“What we’re facing in Ukraine is very much what was faced in Europe at the end of world war two,” he told a news conference in Geneva.
He said Europe solved its explosive hazard problem within 15 years of the end of the war.
Kyiv mayor says political foes trying to discredit and oust him
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, accused opponents of waging a campaign to discredit him and force him out of office on Wednesday after a rift with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Reuters reports.
An audit ordered by Zelenskiy found only 15% of Kyiv’s 4,655 bomb shelters were suitable and only 44% were freely accessible, and prosecutors on Tuesday served a formal “notice of suspicion” to a senior Kyiv security official accused of mismanagement.
Klitschko posted a video message on Telegram in which he appeared to criticise investigations over the situation with the shelters, decrying “endless searches” that were making it hard to run the capital efficiently.
He said:
Today there is a heavy campaign to discredit the capital authorities and personally me. In wartime, they bring chaos to the management of the capital.
My colleague Patrick Wintour has more on the UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, indicating that Nato allies back fast-track membership for Ukraine of the kind offered to Sweden and Finland earlier this year (See post at 15:00).
Speaking on the margins of the two-day Ukraine Recovery conference in London, Cleverly said the UK was “very, very supportive” of Ukraine being able to join the alliance without the usual need for it to meet the conditions set out in a Nato membership action plan (Map), he reports.
The French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, was more cautious but said circumstances had changed since 2008 when Ukraine was last offered Nato membership on the condition it met the terms set out in an action plan.
Ukraine expects to be invited to join Nato with an open date at the alliance’s summit in Vilnius next month, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff said on Wednesday.
“We expect that Ukraine will be invited to Nato with an open date,” Andre Yermak told a webinar held by the Atlantic Council thinktank, according to Reuters.
However, on Monday, Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, said Nato leaders would not issue an invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance at the summit in Vilnius in mid-July.
Yermak said that consultations were ongoing between the US and Ukraine on measures that Nato leaders would approve in Vilnius to bolster Ukraine’s security until it receives the alliance’s collective security guarantee.
US bomber jets land in Sweden for first time in modern history for training exercises
US bomber jets have landed in Sweden for the first time in modern history for training exercises with the Nato invitee, the military said Wednesday.
AFP reports:
Sweden, which abandoned two centuries of military non-alignment to seek Nato membership last year, announced earlier this month that it was ready to host Nato troops and material on its soil even before it becomes a member of the alliance.
Two American B-1B Lancers landed at Lulea-Kallax airport in northern Sweden on Monday 19 June, the military said.
“We are carrying out a joint exercise, both the air force and the army, with the Bomber Task Force,” air force spokeswoman Louise Levin told AFP. She did not say how long the exercises would last…
Sweden has been a Nato “invitee” since June 2022, but its membership bid, which must be ratified by all 31 member states, has been blocked by Turkey and Hungary.
A special Swedish parliamentary defence committee said on Monday the country’s defence must adapt to focus on the threat posed by Russia and a military attack could not be ruled out.
Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, has tweeted to say his team are coordinating efforts to document and investigate alleged Russian war crimes.
He said:
We must modernise our approaches, practices, and techniques. I told colleagues about the ‘Standards for War Crimes Investigation’ developed by the prosecutor general’s office of Ukraine with the support of our international partners.
I emphasised the importance of using modern IT solutions to collect and store evidence and organise the work of prosecutors and investigators.
We are coordinating efforts to document and investigate #RussianWarCrimes. Discussed means to increase the work efficiency of law enforcement agencies and other state institutions involved in these processes at the Coordination Headquarters meeting.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires of the war:
Ukrainian marines of the 35th Brigade take a break at a position in the recently liberated village of Storozheve in the Donetsk region. Photograph: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images
A Ukrainian marine of the 35th Brigade prepares 120mm mortar ammunition in the village of Storozheve in the Donetsk region. Photograph: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images
Ukrainian marines of the 35th Brigade fire a 120mm mortar towards Russian positions in the village of Storozheve in the Donetsk region. Photograph: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images
Kyiv said the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine earlier this month caused an estimated $1.5bn in damages to the environment, AFP reports.
The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said the “preliminary estimates” of $1.5bn in environmental damages following the dam breach do not include “losses to agriculture, infrastructure, housing, and the cost of rebuilding the plant itself”.
