🔴 Live: Ukraine to reinforce northern front following Wagner Group’s arrival in Belarus

8:51pm: Russia bans Polish cargo transport trucks, some exceptions

The Russian government has introduced a ban on Polish trucks transporting cargo on its territory, with some exceptions, Russia’s TASS state news agency quoted the transport ministry as saying on Friday.

It quoted the ministry as saying its decree excluded critical goods including medicines and medical devices, and added that transportation to the Baltic Kaliningrad enclave was unaffected.

8:19pm: US considering providing cluster munitions to Ukraine, says top military officer

The United States is considering providing cluster munitions to Ukraine, the top American military officer said Friday.

Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US has been thinking about providing the munitions “for a long time”. He noted that Russian troops are using them on the battlefield in Ukraine and that Ukrainian forces have received cluster bombs from other allies and have deployed the arms.

Milley said at the National Press Club that discussions are continuing. “The Ukrainians have asked for it, other European countries have provided some of that, the Russians are using it,” Milley said. “There’s a decisionmaking process ongoing.”

Cluster bombs are weapons that open in the air, releasing submunitions, or “bomblets,” that are dispersed over a large area and are intended to wreak destruction on multiple targets at once. The bombs can be delivered by planes, artillery and missiles, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The “bomblets” have a high rate of failure to explode, up to 40% in some recent conflicts, according to the ICRC.

Proponents of banning cluster bombs say they kill indiscriminately and endanger civilians long after their use. Groups have raised alarms about Russia’s use of the munitions in Ukraine. 

7:42pm: Donetsk region school suffers direct hit, at least 2 killed, say Ukraine police

A Russian missile attack on Friday on a village school near the frontline in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region killed two women, including a teacher, and injured six, Ukrainian police said. The 56-year-old primary school teacher and a chief accountant, 44, died in the strike on the village of Serhiivka, Ukrainian police said. Twelve employees were the building’s only occupants, the prosecutor’s office said. Ukrainian schools were not in session for students on Friday.

“Russian troops, in a direct hit, destroyed a school where civilians were located,” Ukraine’s national police said in a statement. The Donetsk region prosecutor’s office said four men aged 54 to 69 and two women aged 24 and 34 were injured and taken to hospital, and that it had launched an investigation into the attack.

7:37pm: Russia’s top diplomat Lavrov sees no reason to extend Black Sea grain deal

Russia said on Friday it saw no reason to extend the Black Sea grain deal beyond July 17 because the West had acted in such an “outrageous” way over the agreement, but assured poor countries that Russian grain exports would continue.

The United Nations and Turkey brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative last July to help tackle a global food crisis worsened by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine – something it calls “a special military operation” – and its blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports.

7:23pm: Websites linked to Wagner boss Prigozhin blocked in Russia

Websites linked to the Patriot media group, close to the chief of the Wagner mercenary force Yevgeny Prigozhin, were blocked Friday by Russia’s telecoms watchdog following their brief rebellion.

Several websites covering Russian political and economic affairs, including Ria Fan, were inaccessible from Russia, AFP journalists noted.

Their online addresses feature in the “restricted access” register of Roskomnadzor, the state agency responsible for blocking illegal and extremist content and which also blocks content banned by the authorities.

Other media run by the Patriot group, including Nevskiye Novosti and Ekonomika Segodnya, have announced on their respective Telegram channels that they are shutting down.

Until May, Prigozhin headed up the Patriot media group, which was set up in 2019, before becoming vice president of its board, according to Russian media.

7:17pm: Ukrainian counteroffensive slower than predicted, but advancing, says US Army General Mark Milley

The Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces is “going slower than people had predicted,” but is making steady progress, US Army General Mark Milley said on Friday.

“It’s going slower than people had predicted. Doesn’t surprise me,” Miley told an audience at the National Press Club. “It is advancing steadily, deliberately, working its way through very difficult minefields, et cetera.”

6:52pm: UN concerned no new Black Sea grain deal ships since June 26

The United Nations said on Friday it is concerned that no new ships have been registered since June 26 under a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of grain from Ukraine.

“We call on the parties to commit to the continuation and effective implementation of the agreement without further delay,” UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters.

5:01pm: Russia confirms commitment to support Malian army

Russia plans to continue supporting Mali, including by improving the combat efficiency of its armed forces and training its military and law enforcement personnel, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his Malian counterpart in a phone call on Friday.

Russia’s foreign ministry reported the call, which came days after an abortive armed mutiny in Russia by the mercenary Wagner Group whose fighters also operate in Mali and several other African countries.

4:29pm: Russia to raise salaries for military by 10.5%

The Russian government will increase salaries for military servicemen by 10.5% from October 1, a government decree published on the official web portal showed on Friday.

The move comes days after an abortive armed mutiny by the mercenary Wagner Group, which briefly took control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and marched towards Moscow in what its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said was a protest against incompetence and corruption in Russia’s top brass.

4:16pm: EU eyes €3 billion a year for Ukraine from Russian asset tax

The European Union could raise three billion euros a year for Ukraine’s reconstruction by taxing the interest earned by Russian central bank assets frozen in the bloc, Belgium’s prime minister said Friday. “We are working on a windfall tax on profits,” Alexander De Croo said after a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels.

“The estimate is that €3 billion ($3.3 billion) per year could be used for the reconstruction of Ukraine,” he said. The EU has frozen some 200 billion euros of Russian central bank assets as punishment for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. De Croo said that about 90 percent of those funds are held in Belgium, which hosts the headquarters of the international deposit organisation Euroclear.

2:58pm: Putin and Modi discuss Ukraine, armed rebellion on phone call

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation around Ukraine and how Moscow had resolved an armed mercenary rebellion in a telephone call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, the Kremlin said.

It said that Modi had expressed support for what the Kremlin called the Russian leadership’s decisive actions in handling the rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group last Saturday.

Read moreOpen rebellion against Russia may be Wagner chief Prigozhin’s last stand

1:52pm: Zelensky orders moves to strengthen Ukraine’s northern military sector

President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered top military commanders on Friday to strengthen Ukraine’s northern military sector following the arrival of Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in Belarus.

He said government and military leaders had also heard a report from Ukrainian intelligence and security forces on the situation in Belarus, Ukraine’s northern neighbour.

1:47pm: Russia invites Bogota’s envoy to discuss Colombians hurt in Kramatorsk strike

Russia’s foreign ministry said on Friday that it had invited the Colombian ambassador to Moscow to a meeting over Bogota’s statements that three Colombians had been wounded in a Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday.

One of the three was FRANCE 24 journalist Catalina Gómez Ángel, who was dining in the pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk that was hit by the strike. She was not injured in the attack.

1:35pm: Pope warns Ukraine war seems to have ‘no end’ as envoy returns from Moscow

Pope Francis said on Friday there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine as his peace envoy wrapped up three days of talks in Moscow.

“The tragic reality of this war that seems to have no end demands of everyone a common creative effort to imagine and forge paths of peace,” the pope told a religious delegation from the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The Vatican said in a subsequent statement that the pope’s envoy, Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, had finished his consultations in Moscow, where he had met one of President Vladimir Putin’s advisers, Yuri Ushakov, and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill.

“(The visit was) aimed at identifying humanitarian initiatives, which could open roads to peace,” the statement said. It added that further steps would be taken, but gave no details.

12:50am: Kazakhstan warns of efforts to recruit citizens for Ukraine fight

Kazakhstan has announced it had uncovered online efforts to recruit its citizens in the Kremlin-friendly Central Asian country to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.

“On the territory of our region, attempts were made to recruit the local population to the territory of the Russian Federation in order to participate in the armed conflict in Ukraine,” the region’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

The warning from regional officials late Thursday comes on the back of reports in local media that Kazakhstan citizens have been killed in Ukraine.

Both the Russian military and the Wagner mercenary group, which recently led a short-lived insurrection in Russia, have targeted citizens of the ex-Soviet region to join their ranks.

Prosecutors in the northern Kostanay region, which borders Russia and is home to a large Russian minority, warned residents not to “succumb” to attempts on social media to enlist men into Moscow’s forces.

12:48pm: Moscow ‘strongly’ protests arrests of Russians in Poland, demands explanations from Warsaw

Russia announced Friday that it had issued a “strong protest” to Poland over its arrests of Russian citizens, after Warsaw said it had detained a Russian hockey player on spying charges.

“We express our strong protest to Warsaw,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, according to Russian news agencies. “We demand that the Russian side be immediately provided with comprehensive explanations.”

11:06am: Ukraine says its forces advance in all directions of counteroffensive

Ukrainian troops are advancing in all directions of their counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces, a senior defence official said on Friday.

Since the start of the counteroffensive this month, Ukraine says it has reasserted control over clusters of villages in the southeast although Russia still holds swathes of territory in the east, south and southeast.

“If we talk about the entire front line, both east and south, we have seized the strategic initiative and are advancing in all directions,” Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar told Ukrainian television.

Maliar said Ukrainian troops were moving “confidently” on the flanks around the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which is held by Russian forces, and the main fighting was going on around the city.

In the south, Kyiv’s forces were moving with mixed success and mainly levelling the front line, she said.

11:00am: Russia will be ‘stronger’ in wake of Wagner insurrection, says Lavrov

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday that Moscow will emerge from the aftermath of the Wagner mercenary group’s aborted insurrection “stronger” than before.

“Russia has always overcome all its problems … it comes out stronger and stronger. It will be the same this time, too. This process has already begun,” Lavrov told journalists during a briefing in Moscow, after Wagner fighters marched on the capital last week to oust the country’s military leadership. 

10:49am: Russia has evacuated orphanages from Ukraine war zones, says Lavrov

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Russia had evacuated children from orphanages in war zones in Ukraine.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in March issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children, accusing them of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.

Lavrov, speaking at a news conference, accused the West of hypocrisy for attacking Russia over its alleged human rights abuses in Ukraine while, in his view, ignoring “racist” statements by Ukrainian authorities about killing Russians.

10:36am: Russia’s Lavrov calls for UN Security Council membership to be expanded

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Friday for a widening of the UN Security Council to give more representation to Asian, African and Latin American countries in order to break what he called Western domination of the world.

“A majority of the world does not want to live according to Western rules,” Lavrov told a news briefing.

He also reiterated Moscow’s accusation that the West, especially the United States, was trying to prevent Russia and China from acting independently in a multipolar world.

9:49am: Russia reducing personnel at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, says Ukrainian intelligence

Russia is gradually reducing the number of personnel at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in southern Ukraine, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said on Friday.

Russia, which has occupied the plant since March 2022, did not immediately comment on the assertion.

“According to the latest data, the occupation contingent is gradually leaving the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” the Main Directorate of Intelligence at the ministry of defence (GUR) said on the Telegram messaging app.

GUR said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”.

It said the number of military patrols was also gradually decreasing on the plant’s vast territory and in the nearby city of Enerhodar, and personnel remaining at the plant had been told to blame Ukraine “in case of any emergency situations”.

GUR said Ukrainian employees who have signed a contract with Rosatom had also been advised to depart.

9:27am: Ukraine to receive $1.5 billion from World Bank to support reconstruction

Ukraine will receive $1.5 billion from the World Bank to support reconstruction and recovery, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Friday.

The funds will be provided with guarantees from the Japanese government and channelled to support social security and economic development, Shmyhal said on the Telegram messaging app.

6:00am: Human Rights Watch reports new evidence of Ukrainian use of banned landmines

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Friday that it uncovered new evidence of the indiscriminate use by Ukrainian forces of banned anti-personnel landmines against Russian troops who invaded in 2022.

The group called on Ukraine’s government to follow through with a commitment made earlier this month not to employ such weapons, investigate their suspected use and hold accountable those responsible.

“The Ukrainian government’s pledge to investigate its military’s apparent use of banned anti-personnel mines is an important recognition of its duty to protect civilians,” Steve Goose, Human Rights Watch’s arms director, said in a statement.

HRW said it shared its findings with the Ukrainian government in a May letter to which it received no response.

5:30am: Spain’s Prime Minister Sanchez to visit Kyiv on Saturday

Spain will take on the EU’s rotating presidency this weekend with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visiting Kyiv to show steadfast European support for Ukraine as it battles Russian forces, officials said Thursday.

Sanchez “will kick off the EU presidency on Saturday, July 1, in Ukraine … to demonstrate with his presence the unfaltering European Union support” to the country, said a statement from his office.

The announcement was made as Sanchez attended an EU summit in Brussels, in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, participating via videolink, confirmed the visit.

From July to the end of December, Spain will hold the EU presidency which rotates among the bloc’s 27 member nations, taking over from Sweden.

1:16am: Trump, longtime admirer of Putin, says aborted rebellion ‘somewhat weakened’ Russian leader

Former US president Donald Trump, a longtime admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Thursday that Putin has been “somewhat weakened” by the Wagner Group’s aborted rebellion and that now is the time for the United States to try to broker a negotiated peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine.

“I want people to stop dying over this ridiculous war,” Trump told Reuters in a telephone interview.

12:50am: EU leaders back security commitments for Ukraine

European Union leaders declared on Thursday they would make long-term commitments to bolster Ukraine’s security as President Volodymyr Zelensky urged them to start work on a new round of sanctions against Russia.

At a summit in Brussels, the leaders restated their condemnation of Russia’s war against Ukraine and said the EU and its member countries “stand ready” to contribute to commitments that would help Ukraine defend itself in the long term.

In a text summarising the conclusions of the summit, the leaders said they would swiftly consider the form these commitments would take.

Josep Borrell, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, suggested they could build on existing EU support, such as the European Peace Facility fund that has financed billions of euros in arms for Ukraine and a training mission for Ukrainian troops.

“The military support to Ukraine has to (be for the) long haul,” Borrell told reporters, suggesting the EU could establish a Ukrainian Defence Fund, modelled on the Peace Facility.

“The training has to continue, the modernisation of the army has to continue. Ukraine needs our commitment to continue ensuring their security during the war and after the war,” he added.

Key developments from Thursday, June 29:

The EU’s top diplomat warned Thursday that a “weaker” Russian President Vladimir Putin would pose a “greater danger” after the Wagner Group’s aborted rebellion sparked the largest political crisis in decades in the nuclear-armed country.

“A weaker Putin is a greater danger. So we have to be very much aware of the consequences,” Josep Borrell said ahead of a gathering of EU leaders in Brussels. “Until now we were looking at Russia as a threat because it was a lot of force and force has been used in Ukraine. Now we have to look at Russia as a risk because of internal instability,” Borrell told reporters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and prominent European figures who are forming a working group to address ecological damage from the 16-month-old Russian invasion.

“Ecocide and environmental destruction is a form of warfare … as Ukrainians by this point know all too well – and so does Russia,” said Thunberg, during a visit to Kyiv.

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

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)