- Grain export deal signed, wider truce seems distant
- Zelenskiy: There is no ceasefire without taking back the conquered lands
- US announces $270 million in new support
- Lithuania lifts ban on Kaliningrad railway – Russia’s RIA
KYIV, July 23 (Reuters) – The United States pledged more military support to Ukraine, including drones, and is considering sending fighter jets as Russian forces relentlessly shelled towns and cities in the east with the war about to enter its sixth month. .
Moscow and Kyiv signed a historic deal on Friday that raised hopes of unlocking major grain exports from Black Sea ports. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy praised the deal, but with heavy fighting continuing on several fronts, he said there could be no ceasefire unless lost territory is regained.
“Freezing the conflict with the Russian Federation means a pause that gives the Russian Federation a break to rest,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
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“Society believes that first all the territories must be liberated, and then we can negotiate what to do and how we could live in the coming centuries.”
There has been no progress on the front line since Russian forces seized the last two Ukrainian-held towns in eastern Luhansk province in late June and early July.
Russian forces failed to establish control of Ukraine’s second-largest power plant at Vuhlehirska, northeast of Donetsk, and troops tried to advance west from the city of Lysychansk, but were rejected, said the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Several people were killed and injured when 13 Russian missiles hit a military airfield and railway infrastructure in the central Kirovohrad region on Saturday, its governor said.
STRUGGLES IN THE SOUTH
In the southern city of Nikopol on the Dnipro River, continued Russian shelling killed at least one person, a Ukrainian official said on his Telegram channel.
The attack on Nikopol, the target of more than 250 rockets last week, damaged 11 houses and farm buildings, cut gas and water pipes and destroyed a railway line, said Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the administration military from Kryvyi Rih in the center. Ukraine
Upriver in the Dnipropetrovsk region, rockets targeted a city and nearby villages, said the region’s governor, Valentyn Reznychenko.
Heavy fighting has taken place over the past 48 hours as Ukrainian forces continued their offensive against Russia in Kherson province, west of the Dnipro River, British military intelligence said on Saturday.
“The supply lines of Russian forces west of the river are increasingly at risk,” the Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update.
In the northeast, “several powerful attacks” hit the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, on Saturday morning, Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote in a Telegram post.
Russia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside regular business hours.
Kyiv hopes that its steadily increasing supply of Western weapons, such as the US High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), will allow it to regain territory.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Friday that its forces had destroyed four HIMARS systems between July 5 and Wednesday, a claim denied by the United States and Ukraine. Read more
The Ukrainian mayor of the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, reported two explosions early Saturday in the Azov Sea resort of Kyrylivka, where he said Russia had moved equipment to avoid turning se in objective of HIMARS.
“They expected that neither our HIMARS nor the Armed Forces and the resistance movement would get them there. But someone definitely got them,” Fedorov said from territory still in Ukrainian hands.
Reuters could not verify reports from the battlefield.
The White House announced $270 million in new support to Kyiv on Friday, saying it was doing preliminary work on whether to send fighter jets, though that move would not happen in the near term.
The February 24 invasion of Ukraine has sparked Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945, forcing millions to flee and turning entire cities into rubble. The Kremlin says it is involved in a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “desazify” Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies say the war is an act of unprovoked aggression.
GRAIN OFFER
Friday’s deal to allow certain exports to be shipped from Black Sea ports aims to stave off hunger among tens of millions of people in poorer countries by delivering more wheat, sunflower oil, fertilizer and other products to world markets , even for humanitarian needs. Read more
The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s blockade of Ukrainian ports, which has seized tens of millions of tons of grain and grounded many ships, has worsened bottlenecks in the global supply chain and, along with sanctions Western countries, has fueled inflation in food and energy prices.
Moscow has denied responsibility for the crisis, blaming sanctions for curbing its own food and fertilizer exports and Ukraine for exploiting approaches to its Black Sea ports.
“Today there is a lighthouse in the Black Sea. A beacon of hope… possibility… and relief in a world that needs it more than ever,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Russia’s RIA news agency reported that Lithuania has lifted a ban on rail transport of sanctioned goods in and out of the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, an enclave between Poland and the Baltic state, cut off from the rest of Russia.
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Reuters bureau reports; Written by Costas Pitas and Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and William Mallard
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