Day: June 18, 2024
Visit is Russian president’s first to North Korea in 24 years as he seeks continued military support from Kim Jong-un
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. The time has just gone past 10:30am in Kyiv.
Vladimir Putin has praised North Korea for “firmly supporting” Moscow’s war in Ukraine, in an article written for Korea’s Central news agency (KCNA) ahead of a rare diplomatic visit to Pyongyang on Tuesday.
An overnight drone attack set several oil storage tanks ablaze near the town of Azov in southern Russia on Tuesday, sparking a large fire, local officials said. “Oil product tanks caught fire in Azov as a result of a drone attack. According to preliminary data, there were no casualties,” the governor of the local Rostov region, Vasily Golubev, wrote on Telegram.
Hungary has dropped its opposition to Mark Rutte as the next Nato secretary-general, Dutch media reported on Tuesday, after the outgoing Dutch prime minister and his Hungarian counterpart met on the sidelines of a EU leaders meeting in Brussels. Citing sources, Dutch outlets NOS and RTL reported that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán did not reiterate his demand for an apology from Rutte for what Orban described last month as “problematic” opinions on Hungary. The apology had been one of the two conditions Hungary had put forward for approving Rutte as the successor to Jens Stoltenberg at the helm of Nato. The other – the guarantee that Hungary would not have to provide funding for Ukraine or send personnel to the war-torn country – was met last week by Stoltenberg, Reuters reported.
A Russian occupation official said on Monday that fighting was gripping parts of Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region, with Ukraine’s military pouring men and equipment into the contested area. “There is fighting still going on in the Kharkiv sector. The fiercest clashes are in Vovchansk and near Lyptsy,” Vitaly Ganchev told Russian news agencies.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Ukrainian forces were gradually pushing Russian troops out of parts of Kharkiv they have fought over since May. His top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, predicted the Russians would try to press forward pending the arrival in Ukraine of sophisticated western equipment, including US-made F-16 fighter jets. Syrskyi also said Russian forces were concentrating their firepower on the Donetsk region, particularly on the Pokrovsk front.
The Russian emergency ministry released video showing firefighters tackling a blaze at an oil depot in the Rostov region, close to the border with Ukraine. The regional governor, Vaslilt Golubev, posted to his Telegram account to say the fire was a result of a drone attack and no casualties had been reported. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Kyiv has often targeted Russa’s energy, military and transport infrastructure to slow down Moscow’s efforts since the war began in February 2022