Russia-Ukraine war: major shake-up in Russian high command, says UK; missile strike near Lviv injures four

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Russian missiles have hit military infrastructure in northern Ukraine, local officials have said.

Reuters reports that Vitaliy Bunechko, governor of the Zhytomyr region in the north of the country, said strikes on a military target killed at least one soldier.

“Nearly 30 missiles were launched at one military infrastructure facility very near to the city of Zhytomyr,” said Bunechko, adding that nearly 10 missiles had been intercepted and destroyed.

In the northern Chernihiv region, governor Vyacheslav Chaus said the small town of Desna came under “massed” rocket strikes on Saturday morning. There were no casualties and he did not specify what had been hit, adding only that there had been “infrastructure damage.”

The missile strikes in northern Ukraine come as in the country’s west, Lviv governor Maxim Kozitsky said that four were wounded in an attack on the Yavoriv military facility.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said that he fears the economic consequences of war could pressure Ukraine to agree a peace deal with Russia that was not in its interests.

“Too many countries are saying this is a European war that is unnecessary … and so the pressure will grow to encourage – coerce, maybe – the Ukrainians to a bad peace,” he told broadcasters in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, where he is attending a Commonwealth summit.

He said the consequences of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, winning the war would be dangerous to international security and “a long-term economic disaster”.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said that he would resign if he had to abandon Ukraine because it became too difficult or expensive.

Asked by the BBC if he thinks leadership is about morality and if there are any circumstances in which he would resign, he pointed to supporting Ukraine as one issue over which he would step down.

Johnson said: “Of course I think it is [about morality]. If it was put to me we had to abandon the Ukrainian cause because it was getting too difficult and the cost of supporting that people was too great in terms of inflation, economic damage, I would accept I had lost a very important argument and I would go. But I don’t see that.”

Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security claims that Russia has lost 34,700 troops since it began its invasion in February.

The body estimates that 1,511 tanks have also been lost and 217 aircraft.

I’m Clea Skopeliti, taking over the blog from my colleague Martin Farrer. I’ll be bringing you the latest news from Ukraine for the next few hours. It’s 10.25am in Kyiv.

Our correspondent Daniel Boffey has been to the eastern edge of the EU’s border with Russia to talk to local people who fear that Russian troops could cross into their lands.

The Suwalki gap is a 60-mile strip on the edge of Poland and Lithuania and is seen as vulnerable due to its position between Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus.

Read his full report here:

Poles and Ukrainians will walk for peace and demand an end to discrimination against the LGBT+ community on Saturday, Reuters reports, in a joint Pride march in Warsaw that organisers say aims to defend freedom and equality as war casts a shadow over eastern Europe.

The annual Pride march in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was cancelled due to Russia’s invasion, leading the LGBT+ community in Warsaw to team up with their counterparts in Ukraine to organise the event in the Polish capital.

“Russia denied us the right that we were fighting for for years, Russia denied us the Pride, our march of equality that we are holding every year since 2012 in Kyiv. … That is why we are marching in Warsaw,” said Lenny Emson, executive director of KyivPride, who came to Poland for the march.

“We are marching for peace, we are marching for Ukraine, we are marching for victory.”

A Russian strike on the Yavoriv military facility in western Ukraine wounded four people, Lviv governor Maxim Kozitsky said in a video post on Saturday.

Kozitsky said six missiles were fired from the Black Sea, with four hitting the base and two being intercepted and destroyed before hitting the target, Reuters reports.

A strike on the military training facility near Yavoriv in March killed 35 people and wounded at least 130, according to Ukrainian officials.

The MoD also claims that there has been a major shake-up in the Russian army’s high command since the start of June leading to the removal of the commander of airborne forces (VDV), Gen-Col Andrei Serdyukov, and commander the southern army group (SGF), Gen Alexandr Dvornikov.

These includes the commander of Airborne Forces (VDV) General-Colonel Andrei Serdyukov; and commander Southern Group of Forces (SGF) General of the Army Alexandr Dvornikov.

The MoD says the latter was probably at some point overall operational commander of the invading forces.

And finally it says that command of the SGF is likely to transfer to Col-Gen Sergei Surovikin, as SGF continues to perform a central part in Russia’s offensive in the Donbas. For over thirty years, Surovikin’s career has been dogged with allegations of corruption and brutality, the MoD claims.

Ukraine is likely re-configuring its defence of the Sievierodonetsk-Lysychansk sector, as Russian armoured units continue to make creeping gains on the southern edge of the build up area, according to the UK Ministry of Defence, in its regular morning update on the conflict.

Welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Martin Farrer and these are the latest developments you need to know about:

Ukraine is likely re-configuring its defence of the Sievierodonetsk-Lysychansk sector, as Russian armoured units continue to make creeping gains on the southern edge of the build up area, according to UK military intelligence. It follows an announcement that Ukrainian forces are preparing to retreat from Sievierodonetsk after weeks of fierce fighting.
The nearby city of Lysychansk appears likely to become the next main focus of fighting. A pro-Russian leader says it would take another week and a half to secure full control of Sievierodonetsk’s twin. Ukrainian soldiers have also retreated from the towns of Hirske and Zolote in the face of overwhelming Russian forces, said Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

German consumers could face a tripling of gas prices in the coming months after Russia’s throttling of deliveries to Europe, a senior energy official has said. Moscow reduced the flow of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline by 40% last week, citing technical reasons that Berlin dismisses as a pretext, prompting a four- to sixfold rise in market prices, said the head of Germany’s federal network agency, Klaus M?ller.
The European Council has approved EUR9bn of financial aid to Ukraine. In a statement made by the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki,at the European Council summit in Brussels on Friday, he said: “There is a war in Ukraine and there is nothing to pay nurses, teachers, police, border guards or many other public services.”
Russia has condemned the European Union’s decision to accept Ukraine and Moldova as membership candidates. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry,said the EU had confirmed that it continued to “actively exploit the CIS on a geopolitical level”, referring to Russia’s sphere of influence within former Soviet countries.
Canada will be able to seize and dispose of assets sanctioned as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, following the Canadian Senate’s passage of the budget of the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, on Thursday. The government will then be able to use the funds from seized assets to support Ukraine.
Ukraine’s main domestic security agency said on Friday it had uncovered a Russian spy network involving Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach, who was previously accused by the US of being a Russian agent.The state security service said Derkach, whose whereabouts were not made clear, set up a network of private security firms to use them to ease and support the entry of Russian units into cities during Moscow’s 24 February invasion.
More than 3,000 dolphins in the Black Sea have died as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Ukrainian scientists working in the “Tuzlovsky Lymans” reserve, a national nature park.Nexta reports that the “work of sonar and explosions prevent them from finding food” and that dead dolphins have been increasingly found on the coasts of Bulgaria and Romania, in addition to Ukraine
Mass kidnappings have been occurring in Melitopol, the mayor of the south-eastern Ukrainian city said.”More than 500 people have been abducted in the last four months,” Ivan Fedrov said, adding that mass kidnappings resumed in the Russian-occupied territory last week.
Russia has launched 70 missiles at Odesa since February 24, the south-western city’s regional prosecution has said.According to the prosecution, the majority of the missiles have targeted residential areas and public utilities.