Ukraine war: Kyiv ‘gains foothold’ in Zaporizhzhia as Putin snubs Prigozhin funeral

Russia’s defence ministry claims its forces brought down a second Ukrainian drone over the Black Sea at around 1pm on Tuesday, according to state news outlets.

The ministry claimed earlier that a drone had been shot down by a military jet.

Prominent Russian nationalist Igor Girkin has lost an appeal against his pre-trial detention on charges of inciting extremism, a Moscow court said.

Girkin, a former commander of separatist-backed forces in 2014 who goes by the nom de guerre Igor Strelkov, has fiercely criticised the way that Russia has conducted the war in Ukraine.

He is best known in the West for having been convicted by a Dutch court over the shooting down of a Malaysian passenger plane with the loss of 298 lives over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

In the 40-second clip, the Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin compared Russia’s trajectory in the war to a plane that will “fall apart in the air”.

Russian shelling killed a 45-year-old man and wounded at least one other person in the northeastern Ukrainian town of Kupiansk on Tuesday morning, Ukrainian officials said.

The town in the Kharkiv region was seized by Moscow soon after Russia‘s invasion 18 months ago, recaptured by Kyiv last September, and under frequent fire again as Moscow tries to hit back in the northeast.

Some residents remain in the town, but regional authorities have ordered a mandatory evacuation of civilians from near the Kupiansk front because of the difficult situation.

Regional governor Oleh Synehubov said the man killed on Tuesday was a guard at a meat processing plant that was hit in the latest shelling. The prosecutor general’s office said a 67-year-old man had also been hurt during the shelling.

Reuters could not verify the situation in the town, or reports from the battlefield.

Funerals are expected to take place soon for Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and other members of his Wagner group who died in a plane crash last week.

Here are some key facts about them:

Germany’s prosecutor general said on Tuesday it has issued an arrest warrant for a German-Russian national suspected of exporting components used by Russia in the production of military hardware including drones.

The defendant, named only as Waldemar W, is accused of violating sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, the prosecutor said in a statement.

W has been in pre-trial detention since 9 March.

Between January 2020 and March 2023, he allegedly exported electronic components on 26 occasions to a Russian company involved in the production of military hardware including the Orlan-10 reconnaissance drone.

The prosecutor general stepped in “because of the special importance of the case”, it said in a statement. Its arrest warrant supercedes another issued by a Mannheim regional court on 8 March.

German authorities have been increasingly cracking down on those suspected of circumventing sanctions.

Earlier this month, a businessman was arrested on suspicion of providing machine tools used by the Russian company in the production of sniper rifles.

Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida said he told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday that Japan planned to keep on supporting Ukraine.

Mr Kishida told reporters he had also condemned Russia‘s continued attacks on Ukraine during his phone call with Mr Zelensky.

Pope Francis did not intend to glorify Russian imperialism when he extolled tsars that expanded the Russian empire, the Vatican said on Tuesday, after his remarks in a speech last week were criticised by Ukraine.

Francis had told Russian youths in unscripted remarks following a speech on Friday to remember that they are the heirs of past tsars such as Peter I and Catherine II.

The two monarchs expanded Russia‘s empire in the 17th and 18th centuries, including conquering parts of Ukraine, and President Vladimir Putin has referred to their legacies in justifying his invasion and annexation of territory last year.

“The pope intended to encourage young people to preserve and promote all that is positive in the great Russian cultural and spiritual heritage, and certainly not to exalt imperialist logic and government personalities, (which he) mentioned to indicate some historical periods of reference,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.

Kyiv called the remarks “deeply regrettable” while the Kremlin said they had been “very gratifying”.

Persistent wartime attacks on schools in Ukraine mean that only about a third of school-age children there are attending classes fully in person and many are falling behind, the UN children’s fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.

Beyond Ukraine, more than half of the children whose families have fled the conflict to seven countries are not enrolled in national education systems, UNICEF said, citing language barriers and overstretched education systems.

Some schools have suffered direct hits and others have closed down as a precaution since Russia‘s invasion 18 months ago, which has involved missile and artillery attacks on residential areas across the country.

“Inside Ukraine, attacks on schools have continued unabated, leaving children deeply distressed and without safe spaces to learn,” it said.

The war followed earlier Covid disruptions, meaning some Ukrainian children were facing a fourth consecutive school year of disruptions as they return to classes this week after the summer break, UNICEF said.

“Not only has this left Ukraine‘s children struggling to progress in their education, but they are also struggling to retain what they learnt when their schools were fully functioning,” said Regina De Dominicis, UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia.

Around half of Ukraine‘s teachers have reported a deterioration in students’ abilities in language, reading and mathematics, it said.

A Russian military jet destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday, Russia‘s defence ministry said without providing any other details.