Shelling by Russian forces has caused a massive fire at a chemical plant in the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Syevyerodonetsk, the local governor said, as Ukrainian leaders continued to plea for additional weapons to fight off the onslaught by invading forces throughout the region.

Speaking on June 11 on national television, Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Hayday did not indicate if the fire at the Azot chemical plant had yet been extinguished, but he said fighting continued to rage in the city, where Ukrainian forces were attempting to push back Russian troops conducting a major offensive against the city.

Hayday said Russian forces controlled some 90 percent of the strategic city but that Ukrainian troops were holding out at the chemical plant. Pro-Russian fighters earlier said they had surrounded the site and that the defenders were trapped.

“A small group of Ukrainian formations on the territory of the Azot chemical plant can no longer leave the factory. All escape routes are cut off for them,” Rodion Miroshnik, an official in what the separatists call the Luhansk People’s Republic, wrote on Telegram. He acknowledged that civilians could also be holding out in the plant.

The claims could not be independently confirmed. The siege was reminiscent of what occurred in the port city of Mariupol, where residents and fighters took cover in and below the Azovstal steel plant before being surrounded and eventually surrendering to Russian forces after brutal fighting.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, renewed his call for Western countries to speed deliveries of weapons as Russian forces pounded much of the east of the country.

Ukrainian troops “are doing everything to stop the offensive, as much as they possibly can, as long as there are enough heavy weapons, modern artillery — all that we have asked for and continue to ask for from our partners,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on June 10.

Zelenskiy said “very difficult battles” were ongoing, including in the eastern Donbas region where Moscow has concentrated its firepower.

Zelenskiy said Russia wants to destroy every city in the Donbas.

“Every city, that’s not an exaggeration. Like Volnovakha, like Mariupol. All of these ruins of once-happy cities, the black traces of fires, the craters from explosions — this is all that Russia can give to its neighbors, to Europe, to the world.”

The fiercest fighting remains around Syevyerodonetsk, a small industrial city that has become the focus of Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in its daily intelligence bulletin on June 11 that the Russians had not made advances into the south of the city.

“Intense street to street fighting is ongoing and both sides are likely suffering high numbers of casualties,” the ministry said in an intelligence update posted on Twitter.

The update said Russian bombers have likely been launching 1960s-era heavy, anti-ship missiles meant to destroy aircraft carriers with nuclear warheads against land targets in Ukraine. It added that Russia is likely using such weapons because it is running short of more precise modern missiles.

Also on June 11, the Ukrainian Army said that Russian forces were regrouping to launch an offensive on the city of Slovyansk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

In its regular operational update, the Ukraine’s General Staff said Moscow managed to get a foothold overnight in the village of Bohorodychne, 24 kilometers northwest of Slovyansk, and was preparing to attack the city.

The war in the east is now primarily an artillery battle in which Kyiv is severely outgunned, Ukrainian officials say.

“This is an artillery war now,” Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence, told The Guardian.

“Everything now depends on what [the West] gives us. Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces.”

Germany plans to revise its rules on arms exports to make it easier to arm democracies like Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported on June 10. Berlin has been among the largest suppliers of weapons since Russia invaded but criticized for being slow to supply heavy weaponry to Kyiv.

Another German publication, Bild am Sonntag, reported on June 11 that Scholz will travel to Kyiv along with Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi sometime before the Group of Seven summit at the end of June. German officials said they could not confirm the report.

Ukraine also asked for humanitarian support to combat an outbreak of dysentery and cholera in the port city of Mariupol, which has been reduced to ruins.

Mayor Vadym Boychenko told national television that sanitation systems were broken and corpses were rotting in the streets.

“Unfortunately…these infection outbreaks will claim thousands more Mariupolites,” Boychenko said.

The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor-general said on June 11 that it has learned about the deaths of 24 more children in Mariupol as the result of shelling by Russian forces.

In total, the office said that at least 287 children have died since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. More than 492 have been wounded, according to the tally.

Meanwhile, on June 11, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reinforced Washington’s commitment to the region in light of the war.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is what happens when oppressors trample the rules that protect us all,” Austin told an Asian security forum in Singapore. “It’s a preview of a possible world of chaos and turmoil that none of us would want to live in.”

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz looks on during a joint news conference with Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov (not pictured) after their meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, June 11, 2022. REUTERS/Spasiyana Sergieva

FRANKFURT, June 11 (Reuters) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will travel to Kyiv with his counterparts from France and Italy before the Group of Seven summit at the end of June, the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported on Saturday.

It cited French and Ukrainian government sources.

A German government spokesperson told Reuters: “We are not able to confirm this.” The Elysee Palace in Paris and the Italian government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

None of the three leaders has been to Kyiv since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

French President Emmanuel Macron has sought to maintain a dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin since the war began.

His stance has been criticised by some eastern and Baltic partners in Europe as they see it as undermining efforts to push Putin to the negotiating table. read more

Reporting by Andreas Rinke, Mathieu Rosemain, Angelo Amante, and Tom Sims; Editing by Angus MacSwan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has compared himself to Peter the Great, comparing his invasion of Ukraine to the czar’s quest to “reclaim” Russian lands from neighboring countries.

The Kremlin strongman, 69, made the remarks Thursday while speaking at an event in St. Petersburg — his hometown built by Tsar Peter on land conquered from Sweden — celebrating the 350th anniversary of the ruler’s birth.

“Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he reclaimed [what was Russia’s],” Putin said after a visiting an exhibition dedicated to the revered autocratic modernizer.

Putin went on to say that when Peter founded what would become Russia’s cosmopolitan new capital city in 1703, “no European state recognized that territory as Russian land. Everyone considered it to be Swedish land.”

He continued: “The Slavs together with the Finno-Ugric peoples had always lived there, moreover this territory had been under the control of the Russian state.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the multimedia exhibition “Peter I. The Birth of Empire” in Moscow, Russia, Thursday.EPA/MIKHAIL METZEL / KREMLIN POOL / SPUTNIK

PA/MIKHAIL METZEL / KREMLIN POOL / SPUTNIK

Putin has repeatedly sought to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where his forces have ravaged cities, killed thousands and displaced 12 million people since Feb. 24, by arguing that Ukraine has no national identity of its own, and that Ukrainians and Russians are one nation artificially divided.

In televised comments on day 106 of the full-scale war, Putin compared Peter’s campaign to expand Russia’s territory with his own mission.

Putin was at the event celebrating the 350th anniversary of Peter’s birth,Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

“Apparently, it also fell to us to reclaim [what is Russia’s] and strengthen [the country],” he told his audience. “And if we proceed from the fact that these basic values form the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in solving the tasks that we face.”

In response to Putin’s comments, Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted that Putin’s musings prove that the war’s true aim was to steal land, not to defend Russian-speaking Ukrainians, or to “denazify” Ukraine.

“Putin’s confession of land seizures and comparing himself with Peter the Great prove: there was no ‘conflict’, only the country’s bloody seizure under contrived pretexts of people’s genocide,” he wrote. “We should not talk about ‘saving [Russia’s] face but about its immediate de-imperialization.”

In the run-up to what Russia calls its “special military operation,” Putin blamed Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, for creating Ukraine on what Putin said was historically Russian territory.

With Post Wires

Russia’s top commander General Valery Gerasimov has been suspended, a top adviser to the Ukrainian president has claimed, while a clutch of other officers have been sacked or arrested amid a rumoured purge of top brass.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a veteran of military intelligence and one of President Zelensky‘s inner circle, claimed late Wednesday that Gerasimov – the chief of staff of the Russian army – has been suspended as Putin looks for senior commanders to blame over his blundering invasion of Ukraine.

Arestovych, speaking to dissident Russian lawyer and politician Mark Feygin on YouTube last night, said: ‘According to preliminary information, Gerasimov has been de-facto suspended. They are deciding whether to give him time to fix things, or not.’

He added: ‘The commander of the first tank army of the western military district Lieutenant General Sergei Kisel has also been arrested and fired after the first tank army was defeated near Kharkiv.’

Two further army commanders have been fired due to heavy battlefield losses, according to information released on a Telegram channel run by the Ukrainian interior ministry, which also claimed the commander of the Black Sea fleet has been sacked and arrested and his vice admiral has been placed under investigation.

Arestovych stressed that his information is ‘preliminary’, but it comes after Gerasimov failed to appear during Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow on Monday which he was widely expected to attend. It also comes after he was reportedly wounded by shrapnel in Ukraine when Putin sent him there in order to turn the war around.

Putin’s army – once championed as the world’s second-best – has been handed a series of humiliating battlefield defeats in just two months of fighting in Ukraine that has seen more than 10,000 troops killed, hundreds of tanks destroyed, its Black Sea flagship sunk and Russia’s international standing trashed.

Just yesterday, it was revealed that Russian troops were massacred while trying to cross a river in the Donbas after Ukraine discovered their sneak-attack and unleashed an artillery barrage that destroyed at least 58 vehicles.

‘After the failure in Ukraine – repressions and purges in the Russian army,’ a post from the Find Your Own Telegram feed, run by Kyiv’s interior ministry, said late yesterday.

‘The Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Igor Osipov, was removed from his post and arrested. [There are] Investigative actions in relation to… first deputy commander of the fleet, Vice Admiral Sergei Pinchuk.

‘Due to the large losses of personnel, weapons and military equipment, [Russia] fired: Commander of the 6th Army, Lieutenant General Vladislav Ershov; ommander of the tank army of the western military district, Lieutenant General Sergei Kisel and one of the deputy commanders.

‘[Also] Commander of the 22nd Army Corps of the Southern Military District, Major General Arkady Marzoev.’

If confirmed, it would mark the largest purge of senior military commanders during the conflict so far and represent a tactic admission by Putin that the invasion has largely been a failure.

Despite being forced to retreat from Kyiv in the first phase of the war and failing to make a breakthrough in the Donbas in the second, Putin has continued to insist that his military is achieving all of its targets on time and in accordance to the plan – statements echoed by his lapdog officials and puppet propagandists.

But the goals have continued to change. Initially, the aim was to seize Kyiv in a rapid attack designed to topple the government and install a puppet regime – revealed by a Russia state media article that was mistakenly published just days after the war started which preemptively declared victory.

Once it became clear that Russia lacked the manpower to take Kyiv, it retreated – but generals claimed that had been the goal all along. Kyiv, they said, had now been demilitarized which would allow them to focus all of their efforts on liberating Donbas: A region in the east that Putin has declared to be independent.

But Russia has yet to make any significant gains on this front, even in Mariupol – the heavily besieged southern city where Ukrainian troops are holed up in a huge steel works – instead inching forward in a hugely bloody advance that is draining both men and resources.

Putin was thought to have ordered his generals to produce a victory for him to brag about during Monday’s Victory Day parade in Moscow. In the end, he simply avoided the topic of victory in Ukraine altogether – saying simply that troops were fighting ‘for our people in Donbass, for the security of our Motherland, for Russia.’

He also made no mention of officially declaring war on Ukraine – a move that many had feared because it could lead to a full mobilisation of Russia’s military reserves or a general conscription, with new recruits poured on to the battlefield in an attempt to achieve victory at any cost.

It could indicate little more than unrealised hype built around a day that – by its nature – is heavy on symbolism but light on action. Or, viewed another way, it could indicate a change of thinking within the Kremlin and perhaps the start of a climb-down after months of sabre-rattling.

Aside from its battlefield defeats, Russia has been hammered economically and politically over the war  – sliding into the worst recession for three decades as a result of lost trade and sanctions pressure, while also being isolated on the world stage.

Backing from Beijing for the invasion, which seemed almost certain before the fighting broke out, has been half-hearted – Chinese state media has pushed Russian narratives about the world, but its diplomats have also vocally supported Ukrainian sovereignty and abstained from key votes at the UN.

And, on Thursday, Finland’s prime minister and president took the much-anticipated step of saying they are in favour of joining NATO with a formal application expected within days. It comes after Britain and America gave the country guarantees to come to its defence if Russia attacks before membership is ratified.

The move is likely to prompt Sweden, which shares an exposed coast and border with Finland, to follow suit – putting an end to decades of neutrality.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry warned the country would take retaliatory ‘military-technical’ steps and said the move would ‘inflict serious damage to the Russian-Finnish relations as well as stability and security in Northern Europe.’ 

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, said that ‘there is always a risk of such conflict turning into a full-scale nuclear war, a scenario that will be catastrophic.’ 

But even as the globe-shaking repercussions of the invasion spread, the conflict on the ground slogged on, with Ukraine’s military recapturing some towns and villages in the country’s northeast but acknowledging that Russian forces have seen ‘partial success’ farther south in the eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas.

Western officials say Russia has gained ground and taken some villages but has not managed to seize any cities.

Associated Press reporters heard explosions Thursday and saw plumes of smoke near the town of Bakhmut, an area of the Donbas that has seen heavy fighting. The Ukrainian military said that Russian forces were ‘storming’ two villages near Bakhmut, but the source of the blasts wasn’t immediately clear.

Russian advances in the east follow weeks of their stubborn efforts to push through Ukrainian defenses in the Donbas. It’s unclear how significant the Russian gains have been.

But any gains in the east may have come at expense of territory elsewhere. Britain’s Defense Ministry said Russia’s focus on the Donbas had left its remaining troops around the northeastern city of Kharkiv vulnerable to counterattack from Ukrainian forces, which recaptured several towns and villages around the city.

Still, Russian rocket strikes Thursday killed one person and wounded three in a suburb of Kharkiv, the regional governor said. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has suffered heavy Russian bombardment during the war as Russia sought to encircle it.

Fighting across the east has driven thousands of residents from their homes. Evacuees wiped away tears as they carried their children and belongings onto buses and vans to flee.

‘It is terrible there now. We were leaving under missiles,’ said Tatiana Kravstova, who left the town of Siversk with her 8-year-old son Artiom on a bus headed to the central city of Dnipro. ‘I don’t know where they were aiming at, but they were pointing at civilians.’

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military also said Russian forces had fired artillery and grenade launchers at Ukrainian troops in the direction of Zaporizhzhia, which has been a refuge for civilians fleeing Mariupol, and attacked in the Chernihiv and Sumy regions to the north.

Overnight airstrikes in Chernihiv killed three people and wounded 12, according to local media citing emergency services. The regional governor said the strikes on the town of Novhorod-Siverskyi damaged a boarding school, dormitory and administrative building.

The military governor of the southern Ukrainian region of Kryvyi Rih accused Russia of using prohibited cluster bombs and phosphorus munitions. The claim could not immediately be verified. Ukraine has previously accused Russian forces of using such munitions in the Donbas, and Ukrainian authorities have launched investigations into their use.

In the southern port city of Mariupol, which has seen some of the worst destruction of the war, Ukraine offered to release Russian prisoners of war in exchange for the safe evacuation of badly wounded fighters trapped inside the Azovstal steel mill, the last redoubt of Ukrainian forces in the ruined city.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that negotiations were underway to release the wounded. She said there were different options, but ‘none of them is ideal.’ Russia hasn’t confirmed any talks on the subject but seems unlikely to agree to any such swap as the release of the fighters would be a major morale boost for Ukraine.

Russia’s forces have taken control of the rest of the city, which they besieged for weeks, as residents ran short of food, water and medicine, though Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the Mariupol mayor, said Thursday that troops have resumed water supplies to two neighborhoods as a test.

‘The occupiers turned Mariupol into a medieval ghetto,’ said Mayor Vadym Boychenko in comments published by City Hall, as he called for a complete evacuation of the city.

Officials said in recent weeks that about 100,000 residents could still be trapped in Mariupol, which had a prewar population of over 400,000. Russian and Ukrainian authorities have periodically agreed to cease-fires to evacuate residents, and repeatedly blamed each other when those efforts failed.

Putin reaffirmed Russia’s determination to ensure territory in the Donbas held by Moscow-backed separatists never returns to Ukraine in a congratulatory message Thursday to the head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic.

On the eve of its invasion, Russia recognized the separatists’ claim to independence in Luhansk as well as in the other Donbas region of Donetsk. Moscow sought to justify its offensive by claiming, without evidence, that Ukraine was planning to attack areas held by separatists and that it intervened to protect people in those regions.

Putin also said Thursday that Russia would withstand tough Western sanctions – imposed in response to the invasion – though he said they were provoking a global economic crisis.

Speaking to officials during a meeting on the economy, Putin said that Western nations have been ‘driven by oversized political ambitions and Russophobia’ to introduce the restrictions that ‘hurt their own economies and well-being of their citizens’ as well as people in the world’s poorest countries.

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