Ukraine Watch

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BRUSSELS: The European Union and Britain targeted Russia on Monday (Jul 13) with coordinated sanctions over cyber attacks in Europe, accusing Moscow’s FSB intelligence agency over involvement in digital strikes.

The move comes as Western officials warn Russia has stepped up its “hybrid” campaign to destabilise Europe over four years into the war on Ukraine.

Brussels said it was imposing sanctions on nine people and four entities, while London said it was adding 24 names to its blacklist.

The British government said the sanctions – the first joint cyber package with the EU – “target the Russian state’s persistent and increasingly reckless attempts to sow chaos and division across Europe”.

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Ukraine‘s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday he had ​proposed replacing Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko.

“I am grateful to Yuliia for her clear, steady, and effective work as Prime Minister, ​for ‌her years of productive service on Ukraine’s ⁠team, and I have offered her the opportunity to lead a new ‌and important area of relations with a key partner,” ⁠Zelensky said on X.

“I expect that, together with MPs, we will make the corresponding changes in ​the Government of Ukraine,” he added. Zelensky said ‌the government changes were needed to “ensure the implementation of an updated political strategy”, but gave no further details.

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Ukraine launched one of its biggest drone offensives against Russia overnight, sending more than 400 drones towards Moscow and carrying out missile strikes on the Belgorod region, Russian officials said on Tuesday.The attacks came just hours after a deadly Russian missile and drone barrage killed dozens in Ukraine and on the eve of a key Nato summit in Turkey.Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said more than 430 Ukrainian drones were launched towards the Moscow region between Sunday evening and early Tuesday morning.

“Most were neutralised by air defence forces at distant approaches. Thirty-six enemy UAVs were destroyed on approach to Moscow,” he wrote on the state-backed MAX platform, according to news agency AFP.Russian authorities later reported around 14 drones had been intercepted near the capital, with emergency crews deployed to sites where drone debris fell.No casualties or major damage were immediately reported in Moscow.

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Russia launched waves of missiles and drones at Kyiv early Monday, killing at least 12 people in an attack that exposed widening gaps in Ukraine’s air defences, authorities said.

The ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv’s shortage of Patriot interceptor missiles ahead of a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. The attack came hours after Ukraine’s president warned that a large-scale attack was imminent.

Another 60 were injured, according to local officials, as emergency workers combed through rubble looking for survivors at residential high-rise buildings in two locations that suffered direct hits.

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The Ukrainian military said Monday that its drones struck Russia’s largest oil refinery in the western Siberian region of Omsk, marking one of the deepest attacks on Russian territory since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Gazprom Neft-operated refinery is located on the northern outskirts of the city of Omsk, around 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) from the border with Ukraine. NASA satellites recorded multiple fire hotspots at the facility on Monday evening.

“An impact with subsequent fire was recorded on the territory [of the refinery]. The extent of the damage is being verified,” Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement on Facebook. “This is the last of the 11 largest gasoline producers in Russia that have been hit.”

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Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The perspectives gathered here are varied, candid, and often surprising, together forming a more complete picture of Ukraine as it really is.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pressuring the U.S. and Europe to provide more missiles to help Ukraine defend against Russian attacks.

“Last night, Kyiv came under a massive Russian attack. Russia launched 68 missiles and 351 attack drones,” Zelenskyy noted in part of a Monday post on X.

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Olesya, a resident of the Russian-annexed port city of Sevastopol, Crimea, has resorted to desperate measures to fill up her car’s gas tank. Recently, she and a group of friends spent hours trying to obtain a QR code that would allow her to buy just 20 liters (5.3 gallons) of gasoline.

“There were 10 of us sitting there, hoping one of us would get a code,” Olesya told The Moscow Times, withholding her last name for safety reasons.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks on supply routes and energy infrastructure serving Crimea in recent weeks in what it says is an effort to isolate the annexed peninsula and disrupt military supply lines for Russia’s full-scale invasion.

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More than 100 police and emergency personnel were deployed to the scene of the blast on Monday evening.

Harri Richie, who lives around 100m away from the targeted building, told the BBC she heard an “unbelievably loud explosion” at about 21:00 local time from the underground car park she was in.

She then went up to her 11th floor apartment, where she said she saw emergency services “dragging two people out [from the building] who looked badly injured”.

Emergency services arrived around five minutes after the explosion, she said, adding that there was a helicopter overhead throughout Monday night.

“This is the first time in history, to my knowledge, that such an act has taken place in the principality,” Mirmand, the head of Monaco’s government, said.

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Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine recently reached a major milestone in that it has now been going on for longer than World War 1. The war has taken a toll on both Ukraine and Russia with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead and billions of pounds worth of buildings destroyed.

However, after Donald Trump took a warmer approach to relations with Russia, it looked like Ukraine might be forced towards a humiliating peace deal.

That has not happened. While there is no sign as yet of Putin looking like he will sue for peace, there is another financial factor to consider. The financial cost to Putin of the soldiers who are dying fighting for Russia, something that is costing his economy billions of pounds.

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President Vladimir Putin has signaled Russia’s disinterest in new peace negotiations with Ukraine. Instead, he is recharacterizing his war on Ukraine as an imperial restoration project. While he has always viewed Ukraine as a Russian limb, Putin’s rhetoric reflects his need to consolidate Russians amid a failing war effort.

Putin’s latest comments came in an interview with Kremlin propagandist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday. While Putin admitted that escalating Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure were causing fuel shortages, he insisted that these problems were limited. More air defense systems were being rapidly produced to deal with this challenge, Putin said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is calling on Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to meet him America to come to a final peace agreement. Zelensky said, “Yesterday (Sunday), we discussed with President Trump that such a meeting could be organised in the US, in a format where Putin would find it much harder to refuse. We will see what comes of it. If Russia refuses this chance as well, additional pressure will be needed.”

Go Deeper

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Ukraine hit a major Moscow oil refinery for a second time in a week and disrupted commercial flights at the city’s airports in one of its biggest drone attacks since Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor more than four years ago, Russian officials said Thursday.

The attack came hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had held “an important coordination call” with the presidents of the United States and France, and had won key pledges of further support from the G7 summit this week.

Zelenskyy was expected in Brussels later Thursday for talks with NATO and European Union leaders, including discussions about the possible building of a continental system to protect against ballistic missiles. Russia has relentlessly struck Ukraine with those types of missiles, which air defenses struggle to counter.

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Oh, Trump is now speaking with reporters, sitting next to the Emir of Qatar.

As we suspected (9:43), he confirms he had a “very good” meeting with Zelenskyy this morning and will meet with him again later today.

“Look, Russia should make a deal. Russia’s lost tremendous amounts of people, and so has Ukraine. Last month, they lost 35,000 soldiers between the two; it’s on a monthly basis. They averaged 25,000 people, mostly soldiers, young,beautiful people, and it’s crazy what’s going on there.

But we had a meeting, and we’ll see… I spoke with President Putin on Sunday.”

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TOKYO, June 17. /TASS/. Japan purchased approximately 364,000 barrels of oil from Russia in May this year, according to TASS calculations based on statistical data published by Japan’s Finance Ministry.

According to the data, Japan imported 58,000 kiloliters of Russian oil last month, equivalent to approximately 364,800 barrels. The purchases concerned oil linked to gas supply contracts under the Sakhalin-2 project, which is exempt from anti-Russian sanctions. The oil is also exempt from the price cap introduced by the G7 countries. According to TASS calculations, the price of Russian oil purchased by Japan in May amounted to approximately $103 per barrel.

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President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Tuesday on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, as the leaders of the world’s largest economies renew their focus on the war in Ukraine amid hopes the Iran conflict is nearing a conclusion.

Mr. Trump told reporters after the sit-down that the two had a “very good meeting” and that he planned to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart again later in the day.

Asked about the war, Mr. Trump responded, “Russia should make a deal.”

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British forces on Sunday intercepted a sanctioned oil tanker belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet in the English Channel, the defense ministry said.

The six-hour operation in the early hours was supported by aircraft, including Chinook helicopters, and navy vessels such as the frigate HMS Sutherland.

“In the first U.K.-led operation of its kind, the vessel SMYRTOS was boarded by Royal Marine Commandos and specially trained law enforcement officers from the National Crime Agency, despite Russia’s best efforts to evade sanctions and continue fueling its barbaric war with Ukraine,” the ministry statement said.

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In 2022, Scott Sweetow wrote, “Of Roadside Bombs and Drones: Putin’s Looming Insurgency Problem,” where he argued Ukraine’s fight against Russia would rely on a combination of conventional and asymmetrical insurgent tactics. Four years of combat later, we asked Scott to revisit his arguments.Image: National Information Warfare Center PacificIn your 2022 article, you argued that Ukraine’s tech-driven resistance could rapidly evolve into an insurgency-style force.

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A senior Russian military colonel was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow after an explosive device planted under his BMW detonated near his home, according to local media reports.

Damir Davydov, described as the Kremlin’s top artillery chief, died after the blast erupted around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday near his home in Balashikha, a city just outside Moscow.

Surveillance footage shared by Russian media appeared to show the vehicle bursting into flames before slamming into a parked car.

Screenshot- X- Damir Davydov

Bystanders rushed to pull Davydov from the burning wreckage, but he later died from his injuries, Telegram channel Mash reported.

Russian Telegram channel 112 reported that the explosive device had been planted under the driver’s seat and detonated remotely.

The device reportedly had a yield equivalent to 300 to 400 grams of TNT.