Key events
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. The time has just gone past 10:45am in Kyiv.
Nato is in talks to deploy more nuclear weapons, taking them out of storage and placing them on standby, the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said as Russia continues to threaten the use of nuclear weapons.
Stoltenberg told the Telegraph that there were live consultations between members to use transparency around its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent.
He said:
I won’t go into operational details about how many nuclear warheads should be operational and which should be stored, but we need to consult on these issues. That’s exactly what we’re doing.
Transparency helps to communicate the direct message that we, of course, are a nuclear alliance.
Nato’s aim is, of course, a world without nuclear weapons, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, we will remain a nuclear alliance, because a world where Russia, China and North Korea have nuclear weapons, and Nato does not, is a more dangerous world.
The comments come after the G7 sharply criticised China and Russia in a communique last week that urged Beijing to stop providing weapons technology to Moscow and opposed China’s “militarisation” in the Pacific.
Last week, Stoltenberg said that nuclear weapons were Nato’s “ultimate security guarantee” and a means to preserve peace.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, frequently evoked Moscow’s nuclear arsenal in the early days of its invasion of Ukraine, repeatedly pledging to use all means necessary to defend Russia.
He later seemed to moderate his rhetoric, reportedly after Chinese officials persuaded him to abandon his nuclear threats, but he recently warned Nato countries they risked provoking a nuclear war if they deployed troops to Ukraine.
In other developments:
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Russia will hold the espionage trial of detained US reporter Evan Gershkovich behind closed doors later this month, a court in the city of Ekaterinburg has said.
Gershkovich, 32, was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on 29 March 2023, in a steak house in Ekaterinburg on charges of espionage that carry up to 20 years in prison. Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be detained on spy charges in Russia since the cold war, denies the charges. The first hearing is scheduled for 26 June, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court said. -
More than 80 countries and international organisations have endorsed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s invasion in a joint communique issued at the end of a peace conference in Switzerland. The final statement of the summit in Bürgenstock said the UN charter, the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states “can and will serve as a basis in achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine”. It called for Ukraine’s control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and its Azov Sea ports to be restored.
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Russia on Sunday claimed its troops had captured a village in southern Ukraine, continuing its progress on the frontline against a Ukrainian army lacking troops and ammunition. “Units of the eastern forces have liberated the settlement of Zagrine in the Zaporizhzhia region and occupied more favourable positions,” the Russian defence ministry said in its daily report. Earlier in the week, it claimed the capture of three villages in Ukraine’s east, south-east and north-east.
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The Russian army is suffering heavy losses in its Kharkiv offensive, a Russian soldier has claimed. Anton Andreev, a Russian soldier from the fifth company of the 1009th regiment, said his unit had been decimated, with only 12 out of 100 soldiers still alive as they came under constant Ukrainian fire and drones in Vovchansk, a prime target of Russia’s advances. “We are sent under machine guns, under drones in daylight, like meat,” he said in a clip, which was first published by the Russian outlet Astra and verified by the Guardian.
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A Russian journalist was killed in a drone attack in eastern Ukraine two days after the death of another correspondent near the frontline. “Our correspondent Nikita Tsitsagi was killed during an attack by Ukrainian army drones,” his news organisation, News.Ru, posted on Telegram on Sunday.
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Vladimir Putin may be permitted to attend a potential second global peace summit, despite an international criminal court arrest warrant issued against him, Swiss President Viola Amherd told the media.
