Moscow accused Kyiv and Ankara of violating a prisoner trade settlement after 5 commanders from Ukraine’s Azov Brigade returned to Ukraine from Turkey, the place they have been held after being free of Russian captivity. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov instructed Russian state information company RIA Novosti that neither Turkey nor Ukraine consulted Russia in regards to the switch. The workplace of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated he accompanied the lads from an Istanbul airport again to Ukraine after a state go to to Turkey.
NATO member states will meet in Vilnius, Lithuania, this week, with Ukraine’s candidacy and Sweden’s blocked bid to hitch the army alliance anticipated to dominate the agenda. President Biden heads to Europe on Monday.
Right here’s the most recent on the conflict and its ripple results throughout the globe.
Ukraine pushes to reclaim Bakhmut, combating on fallen metropolis’s flanks: Russia captured the embattled metropolis of Bakhmut, in japanese Ukraine, in Could following weeks of fierce combating — its solely vital territorial acquire in 2023. However now, its troops are battling Ukraine’s counteroffensive push from town’s flanks in an inch-by-inch combat, report Fredrick Kunkle and Serhii Korolchuk.
On a current moonlit night time, a four-man Ukrainian squad tried to drift a drone amid the ruins of a kindergarten in a village south of town.
“We are attempting to pin as many Muscovites as attainable round Bakhmut,” stated Mykola Bielieskov, a analysis fellow with Ukraine’s Nationwide Institute for Strategic Research.