Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 858

A Ukrainian soldier preparing to fire a 122mm self-propelled howitzer in the Donetsk region [Press service of the 24th Mechanized Brigade via AFP]

Here is the situation on Tuesday, July 2, 2024.

Fighting

• Two women were killed and eight people injured in a Russian attack on the town of Ukrainsk in eastern Donetsk. Regional prosecutors said the attack with an Uragan multiple rocket launcher damaged an administrative building and several homes in the town with a pre-war population of 13,000 people. Regional Governor Vadym Filashkin repeated a call for civilians to leave the town.
• Kyiv said it had evacuated 700 residents from Toretsk, a mining town near the front line in Donetsk, which is being targeted by Russia. Some 5,000 people remain in the town which had a population of about 30,000 people before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
• Seven people were injured and dozens of residential buildings damaged in a Russian ballistic missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, said Serhiy Lysak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
• At least one person was killed and nine injured in Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s Belgorod, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Officials said Ukrainian attacks on border regions also led to power cuts and water supply issues.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed that its forces captured two more Ukrainian villages, Novopokrovske in the war-battered eastern Donetsk region, and Stepova Novoselivka in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
• The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, in its evening update, said its forces had repelled 17 attacks in the Kupiansk sector near Kharkiv, including at Stepova Novoselivka. It said fighting was also raging near Synkivka, further west. It identified the Pokrovsk front as the location of some of the fiercest fighting, saying 44 Russian assaults had been repelled there in the previous 24 hours, with 14 battles still raging.

Politics and diplomacy

• A Russian military court sentenced popular Ukrainian YouTube blogger and journalist Dmitry Gordon to 14 years in prison for making public calls to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin. The 56-year-old has millions of followers on social media and was convicted in absentia.
• A posthumous book by Victoria Amelina, the Ukrainian author killed a year ago in a Russian missile strike, will be published next February on the war’s third anniversary, her publisher said. Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary draws on Amelina’s interviews with 11 women who had been documenting war crimes since the Russian invasion and will include a foreword by Margaret Atwood.
• Russia’s United Nations Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed claims made by former United States President Donald Trump that if he was again elected president, he could settle the war between Moscow and Kyiv in a day.
• The United Kingdom’s Financial Times newspaper reported that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban would make his first trip to Kyiv on Tuesday and meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Orban has been an outspoken critic of Western military aid to Ukraine. Hungary this month took on the presidency of the European Union Council, which rotates among the bloc’s 27 members every six months.

Weapons

• The Netherlands said the necessary permits had been approved and the first of 24 promised F-16 fighter jets would arrive in Ukraine soon. Outgoing Minister of Defence Kajsa Ollongren declined to specify how many planes would be in the first delivery and when they would arrive in Ukraine for security reasons.