UKRAINE WRAP | Russia's Putin to make first foreign trip since launching Ukraine war

June 25 2022 — 20:15

Hundreds protest for climate justice as G7 leaders meet in Bavaria

Hundreds of protesters marched in the southern German town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Sunday, near where leaders of the Group of Seven countries are meeting, demanding action on climate change.

Leaders of the G7 - the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan - started a three-day summit on Sunday at Schloss Elmau in the Bavarian mountains, set to be dominated by the war in Ukraine.

Under a banner reading "Global Justice, Saving Climate Instead of Arming" several speakers addressed a crowd of protesters, calling for more action to fight climate change.

"I'm protesting here today for climate justice and for the right decisions to be made so that I have a future," said Theresa Stoeckl, one of the protesters.

Seven of the protesters, holding an Oxfam banner which said "Stop Burning Our Planet", were wearing traditional Bavarian costumes and masks depicting the G7 leaders. They clutched beer mugs while holding a model of the earth over a barbecue grill.

Benedikt Doennwagen said: "Seven heads of government from different countries negotiate about the entire world. And we have already seen before that what they negotiate is not always to the benefit of the entire world."

Another protester Erich Utz said the G7 leaders should include young people in the summit and its decisions.

"I'm 17 years old - there are people sitting there who are four times my age, discussing my future without asking any young people what we want even once," Utz said.

Around 1,000 people were expected to take part in the protest but police said there were 250 people at Sunday's demonstration.

"We assume that there will probably be more. But we'll just have to wait and see," police spokesperson Carolin Englert told Reuters.

A group of women protesters, wearing rose garlands and waving Ukrainian flags, held a pro-Ukraine rally on the sidelines of the G7 protests calling for a complete embargo against Russia.

"We are here to remind the public and somehow the heads of state of the G7 states meeting here that the war in Ukraine is still ongoing," said Ilya Bakhovskyy.

Some 4,000 people marched in Munich on Saturday calling on G7 leaders to take action to fight poverty, climate change and world hunger.

Greenpeace activists projected a giant peace symbol on top of Waxenstein mountain near to Schloss Elmau late on Saturday to send a pro-peace and anti-fossil fuel message to the G7 summit.

On Monday a small group of protesters will be allowed to hold a rally 500 metres from the castle where the G7 summit is taking place.

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 18:52

Ukraine attacks Crimean oil-drilling platform for second time in a week - Tass

Ukrainian forces have attacked a drilling platform in the Black Sea owned by a Crimean oil and gas company, Tass news agency cited local officials as saying on Sunday, the second strike in a week.

The platform is operated by Chernomorneftegaz, which Russian-backed officials seized from Ukraine's national gas operator Naftogaz as part of Moscow's annexation of the peninsula in 2014.

"It's shelling by the armed forces of Ukraine, there are no casualties," Tass cited a member of Crimea's emergency services as saying. It gave no further details.

Last Monday Crimean officials said three people were wounded with seven missing after a Ukrainian strike that forced the suspension of work on three platforms.

Chernomorneftegaz is under U.S. and European Union sanctions.

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 17:07

G7 nations are worried about global economic crisis - Scholz

All leaders of the Group of Seven rich democracies are concerned about a looming economic crisis as growth slows and inflation soars, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after a working session on the global economy at this year's annual G7 summit."

All members are concerned about the crisis we are confronting – falling growth rates in some countries, rising inflation, raw materials shortages, disrupted supply changes – these aren't small challenges," Scholz said in a televised statement. 

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 16:00

Russia's Putin to make first foreign trip since launching Ukraine war

 Vladimir Putin will visit two small former Soviet states in central Asia this week, Russian state television reported on Sunday, in what would be the Russian leader's first known trip abroad since ordering the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's Feb. 24 invasion has killed thousands of people, displaced millions more and led to severe financial sanctions from the West, which Putin says are a reason to build stronger trade ties with other powers such as China, India and Iran.

Pavel Zarubin, the Kremlin correspondent of the Rossiya 1 state television station, said Putin would visit Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and then meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo for talks in Moscow.

In Dushanbe, Putin will meet Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon, a close Russian ally and the longest-serving ruler of a former Soviet state. In Ashgabat, he will attend a summit of Caspian nations including the leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan, Zarubin said.

Putin's last known trip outside Russia was a visit to the Beijing in early February, where he and Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled a "no limits" friendship treaty hours before both attended the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games.

Russia says it sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 to degrade its neighbour's military capabilities, keep it from being used by the West to threaten Russia, root out nationalists and defend Russian-speakers in eastern regions. Ukraine calls the invasion an imperial-style land grab.

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 14:00

Russia slides towards default as payment deadline expires

Russia edged closer to default on Sunday amid little sign that investors holding its international bonds had received payment, heralding what would be the nation's first default in decades.

Russia has struggled to keep up payments on $40 billion of outstanding bonds since its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, which provoked sweeping sanctions that have effectively cut the country out of the global financial system and rendered its assets untouchable to many investors.

The Kremlin has repeatedly said there are no grounds for Russia to default but is unable to send money to bondholders because of sanctions, accusing the West of trying to drive it into an artificial default.

The country's efforts to swerve what would be its first major default on international bonds since the Bolshevik revolution more than a century ago hit an insurmountable roadblock when the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) effectively blocked Moscow from making payments in late May.

"Since March we thought that a Russian default is probably inevitable, and the question was just when," Dennis Hranitzky, head of sovereign litigation at law firm Quinn Emanuel, told Reuters.

"OFAC has intervened to answer that question for us, and the default is now upon us."

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 13:30

GALLERY | Inside Kyiv missile strike rescue operations

Russian missiles struck a residential building and the compound of a kindergarten in central Kyiv on Sunday, killing one person and wounding five more, officials said, as Moscow stepped up its air strikes on Ukraine for a second day.

Firefighters put out a fire in a badly damaged nine-storey residential building in the central Shevchenkivskiy district, the emergency services said. Debris was strewn over parked cars outside a smouldering building with a crater in its roof."They (rescuers) have pulled out a seven-year-old girl. She is alive. Now they're trying to rescue her mother," Kyiv's mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

"There are people under the rubble," Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app. He added that several people had already been hospitalised.

At another site about 400 metres away, a Reuters photographer saw a large blast crater by a playground in a private kindergarten that had smashed windows. Some privately-held storage garages in the area were completely destroyed.

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 13:00

UK and France agree to give more support for Ukraine, UK says

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to provide more support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, Johnson's office said on Sunday as the leaders met on the sidelines of a Group of Seven summit.

"They agreed this is a critical moment for the course of the conflict, and there is an opportunity to turn the tide in the war," a Downing Street spokesperson said in a statement.

Both men "stressed the need to support Ukraine to strengthen their hand in both the war and any future negotiations.

President Macron praised the Prime Minister's ongoing military support to Ukraine and the leaders agreed to step up this work," the spokesperson said.

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 12:30

WATCH | Russia seizes all of Severodonetsk in Eastern Ukraine

June 25 2022 — 12:00

Russia strikes training centres in three Ukrainian regions - agencies

Russia's defence ministry said on Sunday it had used high-precision weapons to strike Ukrainian army training centres in the Chernihiv, Zhytomyr and Lviv regions of Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported.

Earlier on Sunday Ukraine had said that Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 11:00

Explosions heard in central Ukrainian city and outskirts of Kyiv

Explosions were heard in the central Ukrainian city of Cherkasy on Sunday, regional governor Oleksandr Skichko said on the Telegram app.

He did not give further details. Cherkasy has been largely untouched by bombardment since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Meanwhile, two explosions were heard in the southern outskirts of Kyiv on Sunday after a missile struck a building in the centre of the capital in the early hours, a Reuters reporter said.

It was not immediately possible to confirm what caused the blasts. 

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 10:00

Five people wounded in missile strike in central Kyiv - police chief

At least five people were wounded when a missile hit a building in central Kyiv on Sunday, the head of Ukraine's police force Ihor Klymenko said on national television.

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 09:00

Explosions shake Kyiv's centre, fire at residential building - officials

Several explosions shook Kyiv's central Shevchenkivskiy district early on Sunday, causing a widespread damage and a fire at a residential building, officials said, in the first assault on Ukraine's capital since early June.

Emergency services said that as a result of the Russian shelling a fire broke out in a 9-storey residential building that had been partially damaged in the attack.

Kyiv's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said that residents are being rescued and evacuated from two buildings.

"There are people under the rubble," Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app.

June 25 2022 — 08:00

Indonesia president to visit Ukraine, Russia on peace-building mission

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Sunday he will urge his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts to open room for dialogue during a peace-building mission to the warring countries and ask Russia's Vladimir Putin to order an immediate ceasefire.

"War has to be stopped and global food supply chains need to be reactivated," Jokowi, as the president is popularly known, said before leaving for Germany to attend the G7 summit on Monday.

The president also said he will encourage the G7 countries to seek peace in Ukraine following Russia's invasion, and find an immediate solution to global food and energy crises. 

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 07:05

Several explosions in Kyiv's central district - mayor

Several explosions took place early on Sunday in the Shevchenkivskiy district of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, the city's mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app.

There was no immediate information on the cause of the explosions or casualties.

"Ambulance crews and rescuers dispatched to the scene. More detailed information - later," Klitschko said.

"Residents are being rescued and evacuated from two buildings."

The historic district, one of Kyiv's central, is home to a cluster of universities, restaurants and art galleries.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, but abandoned an early advance on Kyiv in the face of fierce resistance bolstered by Western arms.

Since then Moscow and its proxies have focused on the south and Donbas, an eastern territory made up of Luhansk and its neighbour Donetsk, deploying overwhelming artillery in some of the heaviest ground fighting in Europe since World War Two . 

-Reuters

June 25 2022 — 07:00

War in Ukraine is 'costing SA billions'

Cargo bottlenecks, payment delays and weapon scans of exports to Russia have cost SA  billions and have prompted urgent diplomatic talks.

Trade officials this week confirmed ongoing and costly disruption caused by the war.  The crisis has also caused a delay in delivery of critical equipment needed to stabilise ships at the port of Cape Town.

Further widespread disruptions to SA's economy are likely, with the prices of fuel and wheat-based commodities the biggest concerns. Price hikes affect inflation and interest rates, with implications for the entire economy.

June 25 2022 — 06:30

WATCH | Inside the fall of Sievierodonetsk 

June 25 2022 — 06:00

Sievierodonetsk falls to Russia after one of war's bloodiest fights

Russian forces fully occupied the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk on Saturday, both sides said, confirming Kyiv's biggest battlefield setback for more than a month after weeks of some of the war's bloodiest fighting.

Ukraine called its retreat from the city a “tactical withdrawal” to fight from higher ground in Lysychansk on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donets river. Pro-Russian separatists said Moscow's forces were now attacking Lysychansk.

The fall of Sievierodonetsk — once home to more than 100,000 people but now a wasteland — was Russia's biggest victory since capturing the port of Mariupol last month. It transforms the battlefield in the east after weeks in which Moscow's huge advantage in firepower had yielded only slow gains.

Russia will now seek to press on and seize more ground on the opposite bank, while Ukraine will hope that the price Moscow paid to capture the ruins of the small city will leave Russia's forces vulnerable to counterattack.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed in a video address that Ukraine would win back the cities it lost. But acknowledging the war's emotional toll,

-Reuters