By Martin Belam, Helen Livingstone, Guardian staff  29 May 2023

At least one person was hospitalised after a daytime missile attack on Kyiv; Ukraine claims to have shot down 37 missiles and 29 drones overnight.

• At least one person has been hospitalised after a wave of explosions was heard in Kyiv on Monday morning. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that the person had been in the Podilskyi district in the north of the city. The local authority reported that the roof of a two-story building caught fire in the district as a result of falling debris, but that the fire was contained. “The enemy used missiles of a ballistic trajectory – preliminarily Iskanders. There is a possibility that S-300 and S-400 missiles were also used,” air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat told Ukrainian TV.
• Ukraine reported that Russia launched up to 40 cruise missiles and about 35 drones overnight: air defence claimed to have shot down 37 missiles and 29 “Shahid” drones.
• An unspecified military target in the western Khmelnytskyi region was struck, with the regional governor reporting that “five aircraft were disabled” and that a fire had broken out in a fuel warehouse.
• In Odesa, fragments of a downed kamikaze drone hit the port infrastructure causing a fire, and rockets and drones were shot down over Lviv, Kirovohrad, Poltava and Mykolaiv regions.
• Serhii Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration said Russia was trying to exhaust the country’s air defences with the increased attacks, adding “The enemy is trying to keep the civilian population in deep psychological tension”. Mayor Klitschko added: “Another difficult night for the capital. But, thanks to the professionalism of our defenders, as a result of the air attack of the barbarians in Kyiv, there was no damage or destruction of infrastructural and other objects.
• The Kyiv city administration has posted to Telegram to state that “during the daytime shelling of the capital, more than 41,000 people were in the underground” today, and that overnight “more than 9,000 citizens took refuge in subway stations, including 1,120 children”. It claimed, “This is the largest number of people who stayed at the stations at night during the current month”.
• Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin “appears to have again indirectly undermined Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authority and regime”, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has written in its latest analysis of the conflict. The US-based think tank bases its assertion on the response given by Prigozhin to a journalist asking about Russian state media’s ban on any discussion of Wagner. Prigozhin said that officials could have benefited from their historic ability to censor information if Russia had not declared war on Ukraine. He then shifted to addressing a single, unnamed official: “If you are starting a war, please have character, will, and steel balls - and only then you will be able to achieve something.”
• The adviser to the head of the office of Ukraine’s president, Mykhailo Podolyak, has suggested that any peace settlement acceptable to Ukraine would include not only a restoration of the country’s sovereign borders but a demilitarised zone extending between 100km and 120km into Russia.
• The foreign ministers of Sweden and Turkey will meet “soon” to discuss Stockholm’s delayed bid to join Nato, the Swedish foreign ministry said on Monday.
• Foreign investors who left Russia after selling their businesses there between March 2022 and March 2023 withdrew about $36 billion from the country, the state RIA news agency, citing an analysis of data from the Central Bank.
• The death toll from a Russian missile attack on a medical facility in Dnipro on Friday has risen from two to four people, according to the region’s governor.
• Russian attacks near the eastern city of Bakhmut, the scene of heavy fighting in recent months, abated slightly over the weekend, according to a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military.
• Thousands of children have been kidnapped and taken to Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year. According to the Ukrainian government, 16,226 children have been deported to Russia, of whom 10,513 have been located, and more than 300 have returned. Some fear the number of missing could be an underestimate.

• Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has said that if any other country wants to join a Russia-Belarus union there could be “nuclear weapons for everyone”. Russia moved ahead last week with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, in the Kremlin’s first deployment of such warheads outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
• Russia’s interior ministry has put US senator Lindsey Graham on a wanted list, Russian news agency Tass has reported.
• The Russian ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, told the BBC that the West’s supplying of weapons to Ukraine risked escalating the conflict to levels not yet seen. Russia had “enormous resources and we haven’t just started yet to act very seriously”, he said.
• Russia said its air defence systems destroyed several drones as they approached the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region near the Black Sea on Sunday. “Several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) tried to approach the territory of the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar Krai,” the region’s emergency officials said on the Telegram messaging channel. “All of them were neutralized, and the infrastructure of the plant was not damaged.” It was not possible to verify the report.
• South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has appointed a panel to investigate US allegations that a Russian ship collected weapons from a naval base near Cape Town last year, the presidency said in a statement. The allegations have caused a diplomatic row between the US, South Africa and Russia and called into question South Africa’s non-aligned position on the Ukraine conflict.
  

Thank you for joining us today. I’m writing from Kyiv, on the eve of a Ukrainian counter-offensive. The outcome is uncertain. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers equipped with battle tanks supplied by the West are massing, ready to advance. The Russians have dug in. Vladimir Putin still believes he can win.

Guardian reporters were in Kyiv at the outbreak of Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945. We will continue to report from Ukraine for as long as it takes - a group of dedicated reporters, working in difficult conditions, often on the frontline.

Luke Harding

Foreign Correspondent

Military operation in Ukraine. Online - Tass.ru - 29 May 2023

By © TASS - 29 May 2023

The troops of the Russian Federation destroyed objects at the airfields of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a strike of high-precision weapons, command posts, aircraft and storage facilities with weapons and ammunition were hit.

Russian air defense systems intercepted three Storm Shadow missiles in a day.

Ukrainian units have again used chemical munitions in the shelling of Russian positions in the Zaporizhzhia direction, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Tsarskie Wolves Scientific and technical center, said.

The main events of May 29 are in the TASS online broadcast.

Top new11:31

On June 13, the Duma will discuss a project to block websites that raise funds for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a source in the chamber's apparatus said.11:07

The Verkhovna Rada adopted bills to support the production of UAVs in Ukraine.11:07

The Governor of the Lipetsk Region, Igor Artamonov, highly appreciated the contribution of citizens to helping the participants of the NWO.10:57

Rogov announced the shelling of the Ukrainian Armed Forces of the village of Mikhailovka in the Zaporizhzhia region. According to preliminary information, the blows were inflicted on the center of the village. Information about the victims and destruction is being specified, he said.10:27

The representative of the Air Force of Ukraine, Yuriy Ignat,  confirmed the defeat of the airfield in the Khmelnytsky region.10:26

Two people were injured as a result of attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Mikhailovka in the Zaporizhzhia region, the operational services of the region informed.09:52

The Armed Forces of Ukraine fired 20 rockets from the MLRS at Ozeryanovka.09:36

Yan Taksyur, a Kyiv journalist, writer, and active supporter of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, who was deported to Russia, said that the SBU officers imitated the execution of him and Russian military prisoners in order to "joke", and also threatened to torture his wife.09:19

The DPR reported the second Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk.08:53

A man in Horlivka died due to shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.08:49

Ukrainian units have again used chemical munitions in the shelling of Russian positions in the Zaporizhzhia direction, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Tsarskie Wolves Scientific and technical center, said.08:44

Rogov announced a change in the tactics of reconnaissance in combat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Zaporizhzhia direction to the actions of the DRG.08:35

The head of the Conference of Italian Bishops, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, who was instructed by Pope Francis to lead a peace mission in Ukraine, said that he believes in dialogue between Moscow and Kyiv and prays for it.08:24

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation announced the defeat of the hangar with the weapons of the armored brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kherson region.08:23

Over the past day, the armed forces of the Russian Federation have stopped the actions of two Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups in the Kharkiv region and the LPR.08:22

Russian air defense systems intercepted three Storm Shadow missiles in a day.08:21

The armed forces of the Russian Federation in the Avdiivka region in the DPR hit the command and observation post of the unit and the warehouse of rocket and artillery weapons of the 110th mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.08:19

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation announced the destruction of up to 55 military personnel in the Krasnoliman direction. at 08:18

During the day, Russian troops destroyed up to 140 soldiers in the Yuzhno-Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia directions, as well as an ammunition depot of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the DPR.08:17

The troops of the Russian Federation destroyed objects at the airfields of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a strike of high-precision weapons, command posts, aircraft, and storage facilities with weapons and ammunition were hit.08:16

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced the destruction of up to 145 military units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donetsk direction in a day.08:14

The DNR reported about the shelling of Horlivka from the MLRS by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.08:08

More than 300 arrivals from the Armed Forces of Ukraine were recorded in the Belgorod region per day.08:06

Sixteen American military veterans have died in Ukraine since the start of the special military operation on February 24, 2022, according to an article in The Washington Post.08:02

The prosecutor's office of the DPR sent to court a case on charges of a soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the murder of residents of Mariupol.07:32

Ukrainian troops fired almost 20 shells at the DPR in 15 minutes, the republic reported.07:25

The air alert announced in some regions of Ukraine was canceled.07:21

New deliveries of Western long-range weapons to Kyiv will force Russian troops to move even further, said State Duma Vice Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy.07:21

The court postponed until June 14 the consideration of the case of five Ukrainians who were preparing explosions in Melitopol.07:17

A court in the DPR will consider the case of Azov militants about the attempted murder of residents of Mariupol.07:15

Lavrov said that the West's adherence to the Zelensky formula indicates a willingness to support the genocide.07:11

The commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Alexander Syrsky, said that the time for a counteroffensive would soon come.07:10

An air alert was announced in the Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Sumy, and Kharkiv regions, as well as in the Kyiv-controlled areas of the Zaporizhzhia region and the DPR  .07:08

In Horlivka, a meat processing plant was damaged due to the shelling of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.07:06

Lavrov noted that Kenya has an understanding of the situation in Ukraine.07:02

Read also the "Inanimate"  CFE Treaty, contacts with Erdogan, and the annexation of Kharkiv.  Peskov's briefing topics.

06:49

Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov did not comment on the words of the governor of the Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov about the need to join Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region to the region in order to solve the problem of shelling of the region's territories.06:43

Over the past week, the Russian Guard seized a large number of weapons of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including MANPADS, in the DPR.06:33

The air alert announced in most regions of Ukraine was canceled.06:12

There were explosions in another district of Kyiv.06:01

Four people were injured during shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine of an enterprise in Shebekino, Belgorod Region.