Russia-Ukraine war: only 500 of 70,000 residents left in Bakhmut, mayor says – as it happened
The west may at some stage have to negotiate with Vladimir Putin or the existing Russian leadership even as it pursues international justice against them, Emmanuel Macron has said.
In a speech in Moldova, he said: “The timing issue – and this is where I want to be very transparent and honest with you. The question is if in a few months to come, you have a window for negotiation with the existing Russian political power, the question will be an arbitrage between a trial and a negotiation, I will be very frank with you. And you will have to negotiate with the leaders you have, de facto, even if the day after you will have to judge them in front of them of the international justice. So this is a question of articulation. Because otherwise you can put yourselves just in an impossible situation where you say: ‘I want you to go to jail, but you are the only one I can negotiate with.’”
Macron also said that Ukraine needed security assurances. Leaders will meet in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in July to discuss Nato membership for Ukraine.
Russia does not plan to declare martial law after Tuesday’s large-scale drone strike on Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has said.
Figures from Russia, including the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said Putin should declare martial law nationwide to “sweep away that terrorist gang”.
Only 500 people are left in Bakhmut, the city in the east of Ukraine which has been subject to heavy fighting in the last year, according to the city’s mayor. The figure from Oleksii Reva, reported by the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, is a tiny fraction of its prewar population of 70,000.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, has said he has asked prosecutors to investigate “crimes” committed by senior Russian defence officials before and during the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has claimed it destroyed the last major warship of the Ukrainian naval forces, the Yuri Olefirenko, which it said was stationed in the southern port of Odesa. The Russian air force said it attacked the ship on 29 May. Ukraine has not commented.
Russia has said it will evacuate children from villages near its border with Ukraine, after several days of shelling of the Belgorod region. “The situation in [the border village of] Shebekino is worsening,” the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Telegram.
Analysis from the Kyiv Post has claimed that about 90% of the 500 missiles and drones launched by Russia in May in attacks on Ukraine failed, to the cost of $1.7bn. It said that 533 of them were destroyed by the Ukrainian air force. It includes 401 Shahed-136 drones, which cost about $20,000 each.
The Russian security council deputy chair, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Wednesday that Britain was Moscow’s “eternal enemy” and that any British officials who facilitated the war in Ukraine could be considered legitimate military targets.
A 60-year-old man has been killed in the shelling of Vovchansk in Kharkiv.
Germany’s government spokesperson has said Ukraine has the right to attack Russian territory as it qualifies as self-defence. In an interview with German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Steffen Hebestreit said: “International law allows Ukraine to carry out strikes on the territory of Russia for the purpose of self-defence.”
The UN has proposed that Kyiv, Moscow and Ankara start preparatory work for the transit of Russian ammonia through Ukraine as it tries to salvage a deal allowing safe Black Sea grain exports, a source close to the talks has told Reuters.