Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky threatens Kyiv will pre-emptively attack Putin’s facilities linked to war – UK Times

The deputy leader of Russia’s liberal Yabloko party, which opposes the war in Ukraine, was convicted of spreading lies about the Russian army yesterday and jailed for seven years just over two months before a parliamentary election.

Maxim Kruglov, a former lawmaker in Moscow’s city legislature, was arrested in October last year and charged over the content of two posts he had made on the Telegram social media network in 2022, the year Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.

Kruglov pleaded ​innocent ⁠at his trial ‌and said he believed that the war in Ukraine was a tragedy that must stop as ‌soon as possible.

Russia ‌holds elections ​for the State Duma, ‌the lower house of parliament, ​in September.

One of his two posts had referred to UN data about the number of people killed in the conflict and another to events in Bucha, a town north of Kyiv, in March 2022.

Yabloko, one of Russia’s main liberal groups in the ‌early post-Soviet years, now has only a handful ​of seats in regional parliaments and no ‌seats in the national ⁠parliament.

Russia is losing its war against Ukraine. Proof of this has come from Vladimir Putin himself, who has issued a desperate call for a return to peace talks while his oil refineries burn and his bridges to occupied territory are pounded by Kyiv’s missiles.

Russia’s president has been badly rattled; his airports are closed, his military logistics chain has dangerously snapped, and public support is waning for a war he started, and for which Russia’s national media can no longer generate artificial enthusiasm.

His minions have been whining that an agreement they believe was struck with Donald Trump at the Anchorage summit with Putin last year – giving Moscow colonial ownership of 20 per cent of Ukraine – has been abandoned by the US president as he prepares to meet Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte.

Our world affairs editor Sam Kiley writes:

Donald Trump has said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was “doing pretty well” in the war against Russia, calling him “courageous”.

“He’s doing pretty well, no matter how you look at it, he’s holding his own at least. A lot of people dying on both sides, but I think he’s doing pretty well,” he said, in response to a question from Sky News during a meeting with Nato secretary general Mark Rutte.

“Look, you have to say he’s courageous, he’s got great equipment, but he’s got great men, he’s got fighters,” Trump said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that signal relay stations in Belarus being used by Russian drones to attack Ukraine had stopped working, days after he warned the country’s leader to disable them.

Zelensky had said on Friday that ⁠Ukraine would be ​forced ⁠to act if president Alexander Lukashenko did not remove the stations in ⁠two regions bordering Ukraine within ​a ⁠week.

“From 22 June, the relay stations have stopped working on the territory of Belarus,” Zelensky said in an audio message to reporters.

“Whether they took them down or not, honestly, I don’t know for now. But we are working on this,” he said.

It was not immediately clear how the stations had stopped working, if that was confirmed, or whether there had been an immediate effect of any shutdown.

Zelensky has warned in ‌recent months that ⁠Moscow plans to draw Minsk more ⁠deeply into its war in Ukraine. Russian ‌forces used ​Belarusian territory to ‌stage their full-scale invasion ​in February 2022.

Ukraine will carry out preemptive attacks on facilities Russia is using for its war, president Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address.

“I instructed our intelligence services ⁠and military to ​act preemptively ⁠against facilities Russia uses to expand its war effort,” Zelensky said.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian drones knocked out power in the biggest city in Russian-held Crimea and targeted facilities in central and southern Russia, as a fuel crisis deepened with Kyiv continuing to strike refineries and energy assets.

The capital’s Moscow oil refinery will be offline for ⁠at least six months after sustaining extensive damage in Ukrainian drone attacks, industry sources said, complicating Russian efforts to tackle fuel shortages across the world’s largest country.

The Poltavskaya ⁠oil depot in ⁠Russia’s southern ​Krasnodar ⁠region ⁠has ​caught ⁠fire from ‌falling drone debris, ‌TASS news ‌agency ⁠quoted local officials as ‌saying ​on Thursday.

Russia is considering a diesel export ban, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Tuesday, amid reports on possible fuel imports to tackle shortages, as Ukraine steps up strikes.

Speaking at a televised government meeting headed by Putin on Tuesday, Novak said Russia was considering the introduction of a ban on diesel exports and changes to tax legislation to help the domestic fuel market.

Novak also said that oil companies had delayed maintenance work at refineries and were using fuel reserves to meet demand.

“We are using reserves that were not previously tapped, and are also encouraging increased supplies of additional volumes to the domestic market. Relevant amendments to tax legislation have been prepared in coordination with the government,” he said.

The Vedomosti newspaper said imports were raised as an option at a meeting chaired by Novak on Monday.

We can bring you more news of deaths both in Russia and Ukraine as a result of overnight drone attacks and shelling.

In the Russian-held Ukrainian city of Horlivka, three people were killed when the entrance of an apartment building collapsed after an overnight drone attack, Russia’s TASS agency said, citing local emergency services.

In Russia’s border Belgorod region, a man was killed and a woman was injured in a drone attack.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Ukrainian city of Balakliia Russian shelling killed one person on Wednesday, local authorities said.