Washington and its partners are considering additional sanctions if the parties do not observe a ceasefire, with political and technical negotiations between Europe and the U.S. intensifying since last week, Reuters' source said.
The Kyiv Independent’s contributor Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke spent a day with a mobile team from the State Emergency Service in Nikopol in the south of Ukraine as they responded to relentless drone, artillery, and mortar strikes from Russian forces just across the Dnipro River. Nikopol is located across from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodar.
Peter Szijjarto's announcement came after Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) allegedly dismantled a Hungarian military intelligence network operating in Zakarpattia Oblast.
Moscow and Washington discuss the potential resumption of Russian gas supplies to Europe, among other issues related to the peaceful settlement of Russia's war in Ukraine, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov confirmed to the Russian state-run Interfax news agency.
"This is a historic decision, as weapons for Ukraine will be purchased at the expense of the proceeds from frozen Russian assets through the European Peace Fund," Denys Shmyhal said.
Soldiers raise the Ukrainian flag over the liberated settlement of Blahodatne in Donetsk Oblast. (Screenshot from the video)
Ukrainian forces have liberated Blahodatne, a village in Donetsk Oblast, the 68th separate Jaeger brigade reported on June 11.
The military did not specify the location of the liberated settlement, and there are several of them under the same name in Donetsk Oblast. However, multiple Ukrainian media outlets, along with the Deep State volunteer group that crowd-sources an online map of the front line, reported that the liberated Blahodatne is the village located near the town of Velyka Novosilka, west of Vuhledar.
The video posted online by the brigade shows its soldiers raising the Ukrainian flag over a partially destroyed building, looking like a school or a village council.
The brigade also reported capturing Russian soldiers, saying that "the information received from them would assist in the further liberation of the occupied Ukrainian territories."
The announcement comes a day after President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the long-awaited counteroffensive against Russian forces is already ongoing in Ukraine.
"From my point of view, counteroffensive defensive actions are taking place in Ukraine," Zelensky said.
He said that he is constantly in touch with Ukrainian military commanders, including Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi and Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, and that all of them are "feeling positive" about the ongoing operation.
On June 9, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Ukrainian forces have made further gains around Bakhmut, which has been the epicenter of fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces for months, and continued counteroffensive operations in at least four areas of the front.
A day before that, ABC News reported, citing unnamed Ukrainian officials, one of them supposedly close to Zelensky, that Ukraine launched its long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia on June 8.
According to the sources, the hostilities were taking place in southeastern Ukraine, south of the city of Zaporizhzhia.
Russia claimed that the counteroffensive began on June 5, adding that its forces had successfully repelled it without providing evidence.
Ukraine's Defense Ministry refuted Russia's claim, calling it a diversion effort. At the same time, the military reported advances in the Bakhmut direction and "other areas" on June 6.
Daria Shulzhenko is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent. She has been a lifestyle reporter at the Kyiv Post until November 2021. She graduated from Kyiv International University with a bachelor’s in linguistics, specializing in translation from English and German languages. She has previously worked as a freelance writer and researcher.
