(Reuters) – Russian forces attacked northern and southern stretches of the front in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on Friday, pressing on with their offensive despite assertions from Kyiv that Moscow’s assault was flagging near the city of Bakhmut.
WAR ZONE
* Some 10,000 Ukrainian civilians, many elderly and with disabilities, are clinging on to existence in horrific circumstances in and around the besieged city of Bakhmut, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
* Russian missile strikes and shelling killed at least seven civilians in northern and eastern Ukraine, regional officials said, including at least three women at a civilian refuge.
* Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had destroyed a hangar housing drones belonging to Ukraine’s armed forces in the southwestern Odesa region of the country.
* Russia wants to create demilitarised buffer zones inside Ukraine around areas it has annexed, an ally of President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, saying it might be necessary to push deeper into Ukraine if such zones cannot be set up.
* Reuters could not immediately verify battlefield reports.
RUSSIA
* Estonia’s foreign ministry said on Friday it had decided to expel a Russian diplomat working at Moscow’s embassy in Tallinn for “causing divisions in Estonian society”.
* Russia’s middle class will shrink as social inequality grows over coming years, an economic study conducted by Russian experts suggested, as sanctions against Moscow and limited growth potential scupper development prospects.
* A Russian security officer who fled the country because he objected to the invasion of Ukraine has been sentenced to six-and-a-half years in high-security prison, the Taiga.info news website reported on Friday.
DIPLOMACY
* Air force commanders from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark said on Friday they have signed a letter of intent to create a unified Nordic air defence aimed at countering the rising threat from Russia.
* China’s partnership with Russia has limits, despite rhetoric to the contrary, and Europe should welcome any attempts by Beijing to distance itself from Moscow’s war in Ukraine, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.
QUOTE
“All you see is people pushed to the very limits of their existence and survival and resilience,” the ICRC said of the civilians in Bakhmut.
“Drones are potentially a game-changer on the battlefield in the same way that precise Western MLRS became last year,” Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told Reuters, referring to Multiple Launch Rocket System weapons.
(Compiled by Reuters editors)
