🔴 Live: White House says Ukraine using US cluster munitions on battlefield

Issued on: 21/07/2023 – 07:28

3 min

8:15am: Russia is not ruling out quotas on fuel exports, deputy PM says

Russia is not ruling out introducing quotas on the export of oil products to stabilise gasoline prices, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday, according to state media. He added that other ideas were being considered, and that some refineries had postponed planned maintenance to a later date.

7:39am: Russia hits grain terminals of agricultural enterprise in Ukraine’s Odesa region

Russian missiles hit grain terminals of an agricultural enterprise in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, injuring two people, the regional governor said on Friday.

“Unfortunately, the grain terminals of an agricultural enterprise in Odesa region were hit. The enemy destroyed 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.

7:12am: Poland to move soldiers to east of country due to Wagner

Poland has decided to move military formations from the west to the east of the country due to possible threats related to the Wagner Group’s presence in Belarus, state-run news agency PAP quoted the secretary of the country’s security committee Zbigniew Hoffmann as saying on Friday.

6:47am: Russian navy carried out live-fire ‘exercise’ in Black Sea, says defence ministry

Russia’s navy carried out a live-fire “exercise” in the northwest Black Sea, Moscow’s defence ministry said Friday, days after the Kremlin said it would consider ships travelling to Ukraine through the waterway potential military targets.

The Black Sea Fleet “carried out live firing of anti-ship cruise missiles at the target ship in the combat training range in the northwestern part of the Black Sea … and also carried out a set of measures to detain the offending ship”, the defence ministry said in a statement.

5:30am: White House says Ukraine using US cluster munitions on battlefield

Ukrainian forces are using United States-supplied cluster munitions on the battlefield, the White House said, as Kyiv seeks momentum in its grinding counteroffensive.

Washington provided the weapons to Ukraine for the first time earlier this month. Kyiv is attempting to dislodge entrenched Russian forces and retake land lost in the early months of Moscow’s invasion last year.

The cluster munitions, which disperse up to several hundred small explosive charges that can remain unexploded in the ground, are banned by many countries because of the long-term risks they pose to civilians.

Ukraine’s forces started using the munitions “in the last week or so”, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Thursday.

“They’re using them appropriately, they’re using them effectively and they are actually having an impact on Russia’s defensive formations and Russia’s defensive manoeuvring,” he said.

3:22am: Ukraine’s culture minister resigns over funding woes

Ukraine’s minister for culture said Friday he had resigned after a”misunderstanding” about the mobilisation of funds for cultural projects as Kyiv battles a Russian invasion.

“I brought my resignation note to the Prime Minister tonight, due to a wave of misunderstanding about the importance of wartime culture,” Oleksandr Tkachenko wrote in a Facebook post.

“During the war both private and budget funds for culture are no less important than for drones, because culture is the shield of our identity and our borders.”

The announcement came hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal to consider replacing Tkachenko.

“People should feel that budget resources are used fairly and properly,” he said in his nightly address.

Key developments from Thursday, July 20:

Russian prosecutors on Thursday requested a jail term of 20 years for the imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who denounced Russia’s “senseless war” in his last statement to the court.

People living near Poland’s border with Belarus said on Thursday they could hear shooting and helicopters after fighters from Russia’s Wagner Group arrived to train Belarusian special forces just a few miles from the frontier, compounding their fears the Ukraine war would reach them.

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was shown in a video on Wednesday welcoming his fighters to Russia-ally Belarus.

Read yesterday’s liveblog to see how the day’s events unfolded. 

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)