Russian troops have taken control of one-third of the city of Severodonetsk, the leader of the Moscow-backed Luhansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, has said.
As Kremlin forces advance towards to city centre, Sergiy Gaidai, the governor of Luhansk region, told Ukrainian state television that there were some 15,000 civilians left in Severodonetsk, as most of the city’s 120,000 people had fled the brutal bombardment by Russian artillery.
Preparing for the worst, Mr Gadai said Ukrainian troops defending the city could retreat across the Siverskyi Donets river to the city of Lysychansk to escape encirclement.
Russia has been seeking to seize the entire Donbas, consisting of Luhansk and Donetsk which Moscow claims on behalf of separatist proxies.
Capturing the twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk would give Moscow effective control of Luhansk and allow the Kremlin to declare some form of victory after more than three months of war.
Follow the latest updates below.
08:20 AM
Ukraine today, in pictures
08:01 AM
Austria against gas embargo in next EU sanctions
The European Union would not discuss a gas embargo as part of a next round of sanctions against Russia for waging a war against Ukraine, Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer has said.
“The gas embargo will not be a topic, (German Chancellor) Olaf Scholz has made this clear as well,” he told reporters on a second day of talks at a summit in Brussels of the 27 national EU leaders.
“Russian oil is much easier to compensate … gas is completely different, which is why a gas embargo will not be an issue in the next sanctions package,” he added after the leaders agreed to cut most Russian oil imports to the bloc.
07:45 AM
Evacuations from Severodonetsk ‘not possible’ at present
Ukraine is still in control of Severodonetsk city and its soldiers are fighting slowly advancing Russian troops but evacuations of civilians are not currently possible, the head of the city’s administration has said.
“The city is still in Ukrainian hands and it’s putting up a fight… (but) evacuations are not possible due to the fighting,” Oleksandr Stryuk told Ukrainian television.
07:25 AM
Gazprom suspends gas supplies to Netherlands
Russia’s Gazprom has said it has halted gas supplies to the Netherlands after Dutch energy firm GasTerra refused to pay in roubles following the Russian military offensive in Ukraine.
“Gazprom has completely stopped gas supplies to GasTerra due to non-payment in rubles,” the Russian gas giant said in a statement.
Gazprom said that as of May 30 it had received no payments for Dutch gas supplies in April, despite notifying GasTerra that payments for gas supplied from April 1 needed to be made in rubles.
Partly state-owned GasTerra on Monday said it expected to be cut off after it “decided not to comply with Gazprom’s unilateral payment requirements” as they would breach EU sanctions.
The cutoff means that two billion cubic metres of gas will not be supplied to the Netherlands between now and October, GasTerra said, adding that it “has anticipated this by purchasing gas elsewhere.”
07:01 AM
Latest MoD update
06:35 AM
First ship leaves Mariupol since Russia took the city
A ship has left the Ukrainian port of Mariupol for the first time since Russia took the city and is headed east to Russia, Interfax has quoted the Russian-backed separatist leader of the Ukrainian breakaway region of Donetsk as saying.
A spokesperson for the port said last week that the ship would be loading 2,700 tonnes of metal in Mariupol before travelling east to the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
Ukraine said the shipment of metal to Russia from Mariupol amounted to looting.
06:18 AM
Viktor Orban hails exemption in EU Russian oil ban
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has hailed the exemption in an EU Russian oil ban that allowed his country to keep receiving cheap crude from Moscow.
After weeks of negotiations between EU and Budapest, bloc leaders late Monday struck a compromise deal that banned Russian oil imports delivered by tankers, but left in place those received via pipelines – which is how landlocked Hungary gets the Russian crude key to its economy.
“Families can sleep peacefully tonight, we kept out the most hair-raising idea,” Mr Orban said in a video message posted on his Facebook page.
“We have reached an agreement that states that countries that receive oil through pipelines can continue to operate their economies under the previous conditions,” he said.
Mr Orban had threatened to veto the deal and warned that halting supplies would wreck his country’s economy.
A blanket import ban “would have been unbearable for us…like an atomic bomb, but we managed to avoid this,” said Mr Orban.
05:47 AM
Germany agrees 100bn euros fund to modernise army amid Russia threat
Germany’s government and conservative opposition have agreed a deal that will release 100 billion euros to modernise the army in the face of the Russian threat.
An agreement was reached late Sunday to create a special fund for military procurement that will also allow Berlin to achieve Nato’s target of spending two percent of GDP on defence.
The deal, which involves amending budgetary rules in the national constitution, was struck after weeks of difficult negotiations between the parties in the governing coalition and the conservatives of former chancellor Angela Merkel, representatives of these groups told AFP.
Three days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged a special budget of 100 billion euros to rearm the German military and modernise its outdated equipment over the next few years.
05:28 AM
Denmark votes on scrapping EU defence opt-out
After staying out of the European Union’s common defence policy for 30 years, Denmark votes on Wednesday in a referendum on whether to overturn its opt-out after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
More than 65 per cent of the country’s 4.3 million eligible voters are expected to vote in favour of dropping the exemption, the latest opinion poll published on Sunday suggested.
Analysts’ predictions have however been cautious, given the low voter turnout expected in a country that has often said “no” to further EU integration, most recently in 2015.
“We must always cast our ballots when there is a vote”, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen urged Danes in the final televised debate of the campaign on Sunday.
“I believe with all my heart that we have to vote yes. At a time when we need to fight for security in Europe, we need to be more united with our neighbours”, she said.
05:07 AM
Pictured: Latest scenes from the fighting in the Donbas
04:59 AM
Donbas in ‘extremely difficult’ situation
Ukraine’s Donbas is in an “extremely difficult” situation, President Volodymyr Zelensky said as Russian forces advance in the eastern region that has been under relentless bombardment.
“The situation in Donbas remains extremely difficult. The Russian army is trying to gather overwhelming forces in certain areas to put more and more pressure on our defenders. There, in Donbas, the maximum combat power of the Russian army is now gathered,” Mr Zelensky says in his nightly address.
04:40 AM
‘Assault on Severodonetsk taking longer than Russian forces hoped’
Russian forces have seized control of about a third of the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk, but their assault was taking longer than they had hoped, according to a Moscow-backed separatist leader quoted in a TASS news agency report.
Russian shelling has reduced much of Severodonetsk to ruins and Russian troops have entered the city’s southeastern and northeastern fringes, but the Ukrainian defence has slowed the wider Russian campaign across the Donbas region.
“We can say already that a third of Severodonetsk is already under our control,” TASS quoted Leonid Pasechnik, the leader of the Luhansk People’s Republic, as saying in a report on Tuesday morning.
Mr Pasechnik told the Russian state news agency that fighting was raging in the city, but Russian forces were not advancing as rapidly as might have been hoped.
