Pro-Russian officials have sentenced to death two British men and a Moroccan national captured while fighting in the Ukrainian army in Mariupol, Russian state media has said. A court in Russian-controlled east Ukraine convicted Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Saaudun Brahim after a days-long process that observers have called a “show trial” on “trumped-up charges” meant to imitate war crimes trials against Russian soldiers in Kyiv. A spokesperson for the UK prime minister said Britain was “deeply concerned” by the death sentences passed down to Aslin and Pinner.
A Ukrainian commander has said that the battle in the key eastern frontline city of Sievierodonetsk is being fought house to house. Petro Kuzyk, commander of the Svoboda national guard battalion, said street fighting in the city in eastern Ukraine was taking place under heavy Russian artillery barrages that endangered troops on both sides. Earlier, the mayor of Sievierodonetsk, Oleksandr Stryuk, had described the situation as “difficult but manageable”.
Serhiy Haidai, Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk, said if the west could supply long-range weapons, Ukrainian forces would be able to “clean up Sievierodonetsk in two or three days”. Haidai’s remarks on Telegram came after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the battle for the eastern city would decide the fate of Donbas and was seeing probably the most difficult fighting since Russia’s invasion began.
The Ukrainian defence ministry has claimed that its forces have won back some territory from Russian forces in a counter-offensive in the Kherson area of southern Ukraine. It said Russian forces had “suffered losses in manpower and equipment”, mined territory as they were pushed back, and erected barricades for the Ukrainian troops. The claims have not been independently verified.
The Kremlin said no agreement had been reached with Turkey on exporting Ukrainian grain shipments across the Black Sea. Turkey has been pushing for an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to ease the global food crisis by negotiating safe passage for grain stuck in Black Sea ports, but its efforts have been met with resistance. Ukraine says Russia is imposing unreasonable conditions and the Kremlin says shipment is dependent on ending sanctions.
Nearly 5 million Ukrainians have been registered across Europe since the beginning of the war, according to figures by the UN’s refugee agency. Far more will have actually left the country, with UNHCR data showing that more than 7.3m border crossings out of Ukraine had been recorded by 7 June. Another 2.3m crossings had been registered back into the country. The war in Ukraine has “caused one of the largest human displacement crises in the world”, UNHCR said.
Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, has said the rising cost of living in the UK should not be a reason to abandon support for Ukraine. Some people will argue that the price of supporting Ukraine is too high, he said during a speech in Blackpool, but abandoning Ukraine would be “morally repugnant” and would encourage Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
A Russian-backed official in Ukraine’s partially occupied south-eastern region of Zaporizhzhia said Russia has begun to send grain from occupied areas to Turkey and the Middle East through Crimea. A Russian official in Crimea, Oleg Kryuchkov, said the first train carrying grain had arrived from Melitopol, a city in Zaporizhzhia. The Kremlin also claimed shipments of grain would restart in the coming days from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian port of Berdiansk after work to de-mine the area.
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “threatening to unleash an unprecedented wave of hunger and destitution, leaving social and economic chaos in its wake”. A new report by the UN said an estimated 94 countries, home to about 1.6 billion people, were “severely exposed to at least one dimension of the crisis and unable to cope with it”.
Russian-installed officials in the occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region reportedly plan to stage a referendum later this year on joining Russia. A Kremlin-backed official, Vladimir Rogov, was quoted by the Russian state-owned news agency Tass as saying: “The people will determine the future of the Zaporizhzhia region.” Ukraine says any referendums held under Russian occupation would be illegal and their results fraudulent.
More than 1,000 Ukrainian service personnel and foreign mercenaries who surrendered in Mariupol have been transferred to Russia for an investigation there, Russian state-owned news agency Tass reported. More Ukrainian prisoners of war would be taken to Russia “later on”, a Russian law enforcement source told the agency.
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