Russian army chief thanks forces for capturing another key eastern village

The chief of Russia’s general staff General Valery Gerasimov has thanked Russian forces for recapturing the village of Urozhaine in Ukraine’s battered east.

The alleged victory, if confirmed, would be the latest in a series of costly gains made by Moscow’s troops in the Donetsk region following the fall of the strategic hilltop city of Chasiv Yar earlier this month after a months-long bombardment.

General Gerasimov, who visited the warzone on Tuesday to hand out medals, then set new targets for his troops in the region, Russia’s defence ministry said without providing further details.

Moscow had claimed on Sunday its troops had seized control of Urozhaine, which had been liberated by Ukraine last July in its summer counteroffensive. Ukrainian bloggers reported that Kyiv’s forces had relinquished control of the village, but heavy fighting was ongoing in the area.

Ukraine is yet to officially comment on Russia’s claims, but on Sunday reported 18 different attacks on Urozhaine and nearby settlements.

It comes as Ukraine’s navy said that Russia has withdrawn its last naval patrol ship from occupied Crimea, a major victory for Kyiv in its sustained military campaign against the Black Sea peninsula.

“The last patrol ship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation is bolting from our Crimea just now. Remember this day,” Ukrainian navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said.

Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his calls for more F-16s and Patriot missile systems to defend Ukraine’s skies, while the Pentagon issued a fresh warning against Kyiv using US-supplied Atacms long-range missiles to launch strikes inside Russia.

03:38 PM BST

Today’s live coverage has ended. Here’s a roundup of the day’s events:

• Ukraine says last Russian naval patrol ship has left Crimea

• Pentagon warns Ukraine not to use Atacms against Russia

• Trump’s pick for vice president is ‘disaster’ for Ukraine, says EU official

• Jailed US reporter Evan Gershkovich’s trial to resume on July 18

• Russian state TV threatens UK with missile attack

• Kremlin questions Kyiv’s offer to attend ‘peace summit’

• Orban says Trump ready to act ‘imminently’ as Ukrainian peacemaker

• Russia won’t broadcast the Olympics - report

• Kyiv and Prague signed agreement to produce weapons in Ukraine

• Ukrainian drone strike sets Russian electrical factory ablaze

• Zelensky pleads for more F-16s and Patriots

03:25 PM BST

Kyiv and Prague agree to produce rifles and ammo in Ukraine

Kyiv and Prague have agreed to launch joint production of assault rifles and ammunition components inside Ukraine.

Ukraine has been working to develop its own fledgling arms industry to reduce its dependence on Western military aid since Russian forces invaded in 2022.

“Today we have signed two important agreements, among others, in the defence industry. A new cartridge factory will be built in Ukraine,” Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmygal said on Tuesday during a visit to the Czech Republic.”

He added: “Ukraine has the intention and potential to become an armoury for the free world, and we are grateful to the Czech Republic for its support of our aspiration.”

The Czech Republicm a staunch ally of Ukraine within the EU and Nato, has spearheaded an international fundraising drive to buy ammunition for the Ukrainian army.

03:14 PM BST

Ukraine’s spy agency and hackers ‘attack 100 Russian websites’

Ukrainian military spies, helped by volunteer hackers, claimed to have launched a major cyber attack on over 100 Russian websites.

“The attack was aimed at destroying the internal information of companies that serve Russian public sector clients involved in the war against Ukraine,” Ukraine’s defence intelligence agency (GUR) said on Tuesday.

GUR added that the hack caused a pig’s head and the error code “404” to appear on the sites instead of the usual content.

The companies affected included the MIT Group (a group of companies that develop corporate websites),  Rumos-Lada (a Lada car dealer), United Crane Technologies and Perm Industrial Equipment Plant, the agency said.

02:33 PM BST

Pentagon issues Ukraine warning against using Atacms

The Pentagon has said its is firmly against the Ukraine war spilling beyond its borders after Kyiv renewed calls to be allowed to use American-suppled long-range weapons to strike within Russia.

“We do not want to see unintended consequences, an escalation that can turn this conflict into a wider one that will go beyond the borders of Ukraine,” Pentagon spokesman, Major General Pat Ryder, told Voice of America on Monday.

Responding to a question of the use of the Atacms missiles, which the US began supplying to Ukraine in April, Maj-Gen Ryder said: “I think this is something that we all need to consider and take very seriously.

“Our long-distance policy has not changed.”

01:45 PM BST

Jailed WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich’s trial to resume July 18

Jailed US journalist Evan Gershkovich is scheduled to appear in court in Russia on Thursday for the second hearing in his trial on espionage charges that he, his employer and Washington vehemently deny.

The trial is taking place behind closed doors in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains where the 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter was arrested while on a reporting trip in March 2023.

At the first hearing last month the court had adjourned until mid-August. But Mr Gershkovich’s lawyers petitioned the court to hold the second hearing earlier, according to court documents.

The Wall Street Journal and US officials have denounced the trial as sham and illegitimate.

01:12 PM BST

Ukraine says last Russian naval patrol ship has left Crimea

Ukraine’s navy said that Russia has withdrawn its last naval patrol ship from occupied Crimea, a major victory for Kyiv in its sustained military campaign against the Black Sea peninsula.

“The last patrol ship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation is bolting from our Crimea just now. Remember this day,” Ukrainian navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said.

With no warships at its disposal, Ukraine has used missiles and naval drone attacks to force Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet to abandon its headquarters at Sevastopol and retreat to the Russian port city of Novorossiysk.

Vice-Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa, Ukraine’s navy chief, said earlier this month that Russia had been forced to rebase nearly all its combat-ready warships from the annexed peninsula.

01:00 PM BST

Malta’s Metsola wins second term as EU parliament chief

Roberta Metsola, a Maltese lawmaker from the centre-right European People’s Party, easily won a second term on Tuesday as president of the European Parliament.

Metsola, who in 2022 became the first woman in 20 years to head the European Union assembly, has emerged as a strong supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia and its bid to join the EU.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has sent his congratulations.

Some 562 EU lawmakers out of the 623 who took part in Tuesday’s vote backed her reappointment to the mainly ceremonial role for a further two and a half years, the largest margin of victory ever for a president of the European Parliament.

“Polarisation in our societies has led to more confrontational politics, even political violence,” Metsola, 45, told the assembly. “We need to move beyond this zero-sum thinking that has excluded people, that turns people away,” she said.

12:29 PM BST

Baltic countries to leave joint power grid with Russia and Belarus

The power grid operators of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have signed an agreement to decouple from the Soviet-era joint Brell power grid with Russia and Belarus in February 2025, Lithuania’s energy minister said on Tuesday.

“We have always strongly known that, like we’ve become part of the European Union and Nato, so we will become part of the European power system”, Energy Minister Dainius Kreivys wrote in a statement.

The three Baltic countries, as part of the Brell circuit, are currently having to rely on Russian operators to control frequencies and balance the grid.

12:07 PM BST

Pictured: Ukrainians head to beach in record heatwave

Residents of Kyiv have flocked to the beach amid a record heat wave in the country where temperatures in the capital reached 34.5C and are expected to rise to 40C.

Millions of Ukrainians are struggling amid the extreme heat which is compounded by regular power cuts that make household appliances like air conditioning units and refrigerators useless.

Regular Russian air strikes have ravaged the country’s energy system, leading to hours-long rolling blackouts that have forced residents and businesses to adapt in the extreme heat.

11:49 AM BST

Trump’s VP pick ‘disaster’ for Ukraine

Donald Trump’s chosen running mate Ohio senator JD Vance is a “disaster” for Ukraine, a senior EU official has said.

Speaking to Politico, the unnamed official, said the Republican candidate for vice president will be not only a challenge for the war-weary nation but for the EU as it continues to help Kyiv defend itself from the Russian invasion.

JD Vance, 39, has aggressively opposed sending more military aid to Kyiv in the past and his appointment has amplified fears that US support for Ukraine will dry out if Trump is granted the keys to the White House.

11:26 AM BST

Watch: Russian factory ablaze after Ukrainian drone strike

Footage has shown the huge blaze that engulfed a factory producing electrical devices in Russia’s border region of Kursk after an overnight Ukrainian drone attack.

Local authorities said no workers were injured in the fire as they claimed to have downed the drones responsible for the attack.

11:14 AM BST

Ukrainian army deserter shot dead

A Ukrainian army deserter has been shot dead, and a military recruitment centre has been bombed as tensions rise over the country’s aggressive mobilisation drive.

As pressure on the front line mounts, with Russia sending waves of soldiers to overwhelm Ukraine, Kyiv has launched a forceful recruitment campaign.

It has led to reports of Ukrainian men fleeing over borders to avoid service, while The Telegraph has been told that medically unfit men are being mobilised.

On Monday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said the deserter who was killed was one of four servicemen held as they tried to cross the Moldovan border on foot in the southern Ukrainian region of Odessa.

Read the full story here.

10:55 AM BST

European lawmakers ask EU to withdraw Hungary’s voting rights

A group of 63 European Parliament lawmakers has asked the EU to withdraw Hungary’s voting rights in the bloc, in response to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s recent visits to Moscow and Beijing.

Mr Orban met US presidential candidate Donald Trump last week and earlier travelled to Ukraine, then Russia to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow and onto Beijing to meet Xi Jinping on a self-styled “peace mission” to end the war in Ukraine.

Hungary took over the rotating EU presidency this month, and is responsible for organising meetings of EU countries - collectively known to as the “council” of the EU - until December 31.

The lawmakers said Mr Orban had deliberately implied he was acting on behalf of the entire EU, despite not having the authority to do this.

10:27 AM BST

Trump ready to act ‘imminently’ as Ukraine peacemaker, says Orban

Donald Trump is ready to act “immediately” as a peace broker in the Russia-Ukraine war if he is elected in November, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said in a letter to EU leaders.

The letter, addressed to European Council President Charles Michel and shared with all EU leaders, was drafted after Mr Orban held talks with Trump as well as with the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and China.

“I can... surely state that shortly after his election victory, he will not wait until his inauguration, [Trump] will be ready to act as a peace broker immediately. He has detailed and well-founded plans for this,” Mr Orban wrote.

10:01 AM BST

Russian court orders house arrest for top general in custody

A Russian military court on Monday granted house arrest of a general and former commander in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Major-General Ivan Popov was released from behind bars on Monday after being arrested two months ago on suspicion of large-scale fraud, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Popov, who had commanded the 58th Army, was relieved of duty last year after complaining about the problems faced by his troops.

He was later arrested in May along with top military officials accused of fraud and bribe-taking including deputy defence minister Timur Ivanov, a close associate of former defence minister Sergei Shoigu.

09:37 AM BST

Russian state TV threatens UK with missile attack

Russia’s top state news broadcaster Rossiya-1 ran a segment dedicating to threatening European capitals with missile strikes on Sunday evening, calling Britain the “most vulnerable”.

“Almost all European capitals will be under threat if our missiles are stationed in Kaliningrad: Berlin, Warsaw, all the Baltic states, Paris, Bucharest, Prague, and of course, the American bases in Germany,” Russian lawmaker and TV host Yevgeny Popov said during the primetime broadcast.

“Special attention to Britain, our traditional enemy…Britain is in the most vulnerable position - basically, three missiles are enough and this civilization will collapse,” Mr Popov said.

The threats comes in the wake of Kremlin’s warnings that any deployment of US long-range missiles in Germany would make European cities targets of Russian missiles.

09:18 AM BST

Kremlin: Russia needs to know what ‘peace summit’ means

Russia first needs to understand what Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky means when he says “peace summit” before accepting any invitation to talks, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

Mr Zelensky said on Monday that Russia should be represented at a second international summit on his vision for peace for Ukraine, following high-level talks last month in Switzerland that Moscow did not attend.

“The first peace summit was not a peace summit at all. So perhaps it is necessary to first understand what he means,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Zvezda news outlet.

Mr Zelensky’s apparent welcoming of Russia to talks marks a major change of tone from his Switzerland summit, where he categorically ruled out inviting Moscow.

08:53 AM BST

Russia won’t broadcast Olympics - report

For the first time since the Cold War, Russia will not broadcast this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris due to a near-total absence of its athletes, according to Russian news outlet sports.ru.

Russian and Belarusian athletes are only allowed to take part as neutral competitors, without sporting their country’s colours, due to Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

“A political decision has long been made that it’s impossible to show the Olympics without a flag and anthem on Channel One and Rossiya 1 in the current realities,” sports.ru reported, referring to Russia’s top broadcasters.

Only 16 Russians and 17 Belarusians have agreed to compete under a neutral banner at the games that kicks off on July 26, compared to 330 Russians and 104 Belarusians who competed at Tokyo 2020.

08:40 AM BST

Zelensky: Ukrainian mobilisation ‘going to plan’

Mobilisation in Ukraine is going “according to plan”, but there are not enough training facilities for new troops, Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday.

“Considering training facilities, there are not enough of them. They are already being expanded,” the Ukrainian leader explained.

Struggling with issues of manpower, Ukraine lowered the draft age to 25 from 27 in April and signed off on an overhaul of the mobilisation process that entered force in May, obliging men under 60 to renew their personal data at draft offices or online.

08:19 AM BST

Ukrainian drone strike hits Russian electrical factory

A Ukrainian drone strike sparked a major fire at a electrical equipment factory in the town of Korenevo in Russia’s Kursk region.

Footage showed a huge blaze engulfing the site, just 15 miles from the border of Ukraine, with reports that it was burning over an area of 400 square metres.

“None of the workers were injured,” regional governor Alexei Smirnov said on Telegram. Russia’s defence ministry said its air defence systems destroyed 13 Ukrainian drones launched overnight.

There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian authorities, who do not often claim such attacks on Russia.

08:02 AM BST

Zelensky pleads for more F-16s and Patriots

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded for his Western allies to send more F-16 warplanes than those already pledged and 25 Patriot air defense systems to fully defend its airspace against Russian missile attacks.

The first batch of long awaited F-16s will reach Ukraine this summer and the second by the end of the year, Mr Zelensky confirmed in his first news conference since returning from a trip to the US.

He acknowledged the deliveries won’t, on their own, be a game-changer in the war, given that the Russian air force is far larger. “There will not be enough. They will certainly strengthen us, but will there be enough of them to fight at a level with the Russian air force?” he said.

Roughly 85 of the combat aircraft have been committed to Kyiv, however Ukraine has suggested it needs at least 128 F-16s to challenge the air superiority of Moscow.

07:49 AM BST

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