June 9, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has moved here.

Valentyn Reznichenko, head of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region military administration, says the city of Kryvyi Rih, located in the central part of the country, is now under constant fire from Russian forces.

Reznichenko said villages and towns in Kryvyi Rih are “littered with cluster munitions due to shelling” and there is a problem with gas, electricity and water supply.

Meanwhile, in Kharkiv, five people were killed and 14 were injured in Russian attacks, according to Oleh Syniehubov, the head of Khakiv’s regional military administration.

“Today the enemy attacked Kharkiv region, in particular settlements in the northern and northeastern directions,” Syniehubov said, adding that attacks hit residential buildings in Zolochiv.

“Five houses were destroyed. The enemy also struck at Chuhuiv district today,’’ Syniehubov said Thursday in a live question and answer broadcast on Ukrainian national television.

Syniehubov said Ukraine’s armed forces “hold their positions in the northern and northeastern directions.”

When asked why the Russian military is shelling civilian infrastructure, even though there are no visible confrontations between Russian and Ukrainian armies in the Kharkiv region at the moment, Syniehubov replied that the Russian forces “concentrated their attention on the terror of the civilian population.” 

A damaged building is pictured in Lysychansk as black smoke and dirt rise from the nearby city of Severodonetsk during battle between Russian and Ukrainian troops in the eastern Ukraine region of Donbas, on Thursday.

Ukrainian forces say the battle for the city of Severodonetsk continues to rage late on Thursday. 

“The situation is consistently difficult. Our defenders are holding the line of defense, leveling the line of defense,” Serhiy Hayday, head of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region military administration, said on national television.

“The fiercest fighting continues in Severodonetsk,” Hayday said. The city has seen intense battles in recent days.

Hayday accused the Russians of using “lies and propaganda” in claiming victory in the Severodonetsk. 

While “the Russians had already reported that they had taken the city,” the official said, Russian forces had withdrawn some of their units.

Oleksandr Striuk, head of Severodonetsk’s military administration, said on television on Thursday that there is “constant street fighting.”

“The humanitarian situation in the city is critical. The bridge is under fire, so it is impossible to deliver goods. There is no water supply,” Striuk said.

Hayday said there are no direct battles in the neighboring city of Lysychansk, but he accused Russian forces of heavily shelling the area. If Russian troops took control of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, it would place all of the Luhansk region under Moscow’s control.

Here’s a look at the areas under Russian control:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed humanitarian and military support during a call Thursday, according to a statement from the French government, as troops continue to battle for a key eastern city.

Local Ukrainian officials say the city of Severodonetsk is now mostly controlled by Russian forces. Earlier in separate remarks, Zelensky said the region “remains the epicenter of the confrontation in Donbas.”

According to the statement describing the nature of the call between Zelensky and Macron, the French president said his country “will remain mobilized to meet Ukraine’s needs, including heavy weapons.”

Macron also asked Zelensky about his needs “in terms of military equipment, political support, financial support and humanitarian aid.”

The statement said the two leaders agreed to stay in touch, “especially in light of the opinion that the European Commission is going to deliver on Ukraine’s application to join the European Union.”

The UK government is “deeply concerned” with the sentencing of British citizens by a pro-Russian court, the British prime minister’s deputy spokesperson said Thursday in a statement to CNN.

A court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic on Thursday sentenced to death three men — British citizens Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner and Moroccan national Brahim Saadoune — that it has accused of being “mercenaries” for Ukraine, according to Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti.

“We will continue to work with Ukrainian authorities to try and secure the release of any British national who was serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and who are being held as prisoners of war,” according to the spokesperson.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Thursday she “utterly condemns” the sentencing of Aslin and Pinner, calling them “prisoners of war.”

“This is a sham judgment with absolutely no legitimacy. My thoughts are with the families. We continue to do everything we can to support them,” she said on Twitter.

A Ukrainian army officer inspects a grain warehouse earlier shelled by Russian forces on May 6 in Novovorontsovka, Ukraine.

Next year’s harvest in Ukraine could be cut by up to 40% due to the ongoing Russian invasion, Ukraine’s Agrarian Policy and Food Deputy Minister Taras Vysotskyi told CNN Thursday.

“We have lost 25% of the arable area. In terms of volumes, of course, it is more. We anticipate that the harvest will be around 35% less than previous years, which means around 30 million tonnes less, 35-40% less, almost half of the previous year harvest,” Vysotskyi said.

The deputy minister also said that an estimated 500,000 metric tons of grain have been stolen by Russia in territories controlled by Russian forces.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that issues related to grain exports from Ukraine could be resolved, but Ukraine needs to de-mine the waters to ensure the safe passage of the ships.

Vysotskyi said Lavrov’s remarks are not true.

The mines could be cleared quickly, but for that to happen, the war needs to end or there has to be some form of ceasefire, he added.

“If we receive the victory and the war is ended, of course we can clear it quite quickly,” he said, adding that the process physically is not complicated but it depends on other obstacles including the ongoing war.

“Ukraine is ready to fulfill all the obligations in order to supply necessary food for international food security. So the point is very clear, Russia should stop the war,” he said.

Ukraine has also accused the Russians of placing mines in the Black Sea.

From left to right: Aiden Aslin, Brahim Saadoune and Shaun Pinner were sentenced to death on Thursday.

A court in the pro-Russian self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic on Thursday sentenced three men to death that it has accused of being “mercenaries” for Ukraine, according to Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti.

British citizens Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner and Moroccan national Brahim Saadoune appeared in court on Thursday, where they were handed down the death penalty. 

The three men — all foreign fighters for the Ukrainian military — were captured by Russian forces in mid-April in Mariupol. 

Saadoune, Aslin and Pinner were sentenced to death and will be shot, according to RIA Novosti’s reporting from the court in Donetsk.

The “head of the judicial board” in Donetsk said that the convicted men “can appeal the decision within a month,” according to RIA Novosti.

One of the defendants’ lawyers, Pavel Kosovan, said that his client would appeal the verdict, Russian state media TASS reported after the death penalty was handed down.

On Wednesday, Pinner, Aslin and Saadoune pleaded guilty to acts of “seizing power by force,” state media reported at the time.  

“The relevant article of the Criminal Code of the DPR provides for the death penalty,” according to RIA Novosti.

Aslin also pleaded guilty under the article “training in order to carry out terrorist activities,” according to state media.

The so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, a pro-Russian area in the east of Ukraine, is not an internationally recognized government; therefore, the court’s decisions are not considered legitimate by the international community.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, right, speaks during a press conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands on June 9.

The European Central Bank (ECB) plans to raise interest rates from historic lows in order to counter record high inflation fueled by the war in Ukraine.

ECB kept rates unchanged in today’s meeting but confirmed plans to hike rates when it next meets in July. It said today it is looking at a 0.25% increase next month.

The announcement comes as annual inflation among the 19 countries that use the euro reached 8.1% in May, an all-time high.

“High inflation is a major challenge for all of us. The Governing Council will make sure that inflation returns to its 2% target over the medium term,” said ECB.

The European Central Bank also significantly cut its eurozone growth outlook compared to its March projections. It now expects annual real GDP growth at 2.8% in 2022 and 2.1% in 2023. In its March meeting it had projected that the economy would grow at 3.7% in 2022 and 2.8% in 2023.

“Russia’s unjustified aggression towards Ukraine continues to weigh on the economy in Europe and beyond. It is disrupting trade, is leading to shortages of materials, and is contributing to high energy and commodity prices. These factors will continue to weigh on confidence and dampen growth, especially in the near term,” said ECB. “Once current headwinds abate, economic activity is expected to pick up again.”

Russian forces in Mariupol have begun paying pensions in Russian rubles, using cash, an adviser to that city’s Ukrainian mayor said on Thursday.

“It is now known that the occupiers have already delivered trucks with cash,” Petro Andrushchenko said on national television. “Russian pensions are being handed to pensioners in Russian rubles – which shows very well what the Russian economy is, that such a sum of money can be stupidly brought in cash and start handing out.”

Andrushchenko is not in the city but has been a reliable conduit for information from Mariupol.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti has reported that around 46,000 applications for pension payments have been received, and that the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic has begun paying out those benefits.

Andrushchenko said that those figures can “more or less” be trusted.

“But we must add another 20 to 30 percent of our elderly Mariupol people who do not accept the occupation and deliberately did not submit documents, and another 5 percent who could not physically come and submit documents. This is a critical amount for the city in which it is located,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits troops in Bakhmut, Ukraine on June 5.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Russia to be expelled from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization over the impact its war in Ukraine has had on global food insecurity.

The call is likely largely symbolic. All 193 UN member nations are also members of the FAO.

The war in Ukraine could increase the number of “acute food insecure people” around the world by 47 million this year, to a total of 323 million, according to new projections in a joint report by the FAO and World Food Programme.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, right, speak after a news conference in Ankara, on June 8.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that no agreement had been reached yet on exporting Ukrainian grain to Turkey or the Middle East. 

“No agreements have been reached yet. Work is underway,” he said on a regular conference call with journalists, commenting on possible grain deals with Turkey or the Middle East.

Peskov couldn’t confirm to CNN that the first rail cars carrying Ukrainian grain from the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol have departed, saying he had “no information” about it. 

A leader in the Russian-backed military administration of the occupied portion of Zaporizhzhia region said Wednesday that the first railway wagons with grain had left from Melitopol and went through Crimea “in the direction of the Middle East.”

The Ukrainian Agrarian Council accused Russia of stealing about 600,000 tons of Ukrainian grain, which Russia denies.

Global leaders have condemned a months-long blockade by Russian forces at key ports in Ukraine — including Mariupol on the Sea of Azov and Odesa on the Black Sea — which has left more than 20 million tons of grain stuck inside the country.

The European Commission has announced another 205 million euros ($220 million) in aid for Ukraine, due to the “soaring” humanitarian crisis in the country. 

“This brings the total EU humanitarian assistance in reaction to the war to 348 million euro, of which 13 million is dedicated to Moldova to support displaced people arriving in the country,” according to Balazs Ujvari, the EU Commission’s spokesperson for budget and human resources, humanitarian aid and crisis management.

Acknowledging that Russia has the wherewithal to continue advancing on some parts of the frontline, Ukraine’s defense minister on Thursday said that he is dissatisfied with the “tempo and quantity” of weapons arriving to Ukraine.

“The situation at the front lines is difficult,” Oleksiy Reznikov said in a statement on Facebook. 

“The Kremlin continues to press by sheer mass. It stumbles and faces strong rebuff. It suffers huge casualties,” he said. “But yet still has forces to advance in some parts of the front.”

Ukraine, he said, had “already received, bought on the market, manufactured and handed over to the Armed Forces of Ukraine a significant number of weapons.”

“These numbers would have been enough for a victorious defence operation against any army in Europe. But not against Russia. The Russian Moloch still has a lot of means for devouring human lives for to satisfy its imperial ego,” said Reznikov. 

“That is why we emphasize: Ukraine desperately needs heavy weapons, and very fast. We have proved that, unlike many others, we do not fear the Kremlin,” he said. “But as a country we cannot afford to be losing our best sons and daughters.”

Russia has taken control of most of the strategic city of Severodonetsk, say Ukrainian officials, while concerns are growing over a looming global food crisis caused by the war.

Here are today’s latest headlines from the Russia-Ukraine war:

The conflict in Ukraine could increase the number of “acute food insecure people” around the world by 47 million this year, to a total of 323 million, according to new projections from the United Nations.

The war has disrupted vital agricultural production and exports, and increased energy prices, which all have an impact of the availability and price of food, according to a joint report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP).

Food prices have risen by 17% since January, according to the FAO price index. The price of cereals is up by more than 21%.

That 47 million would come on top of the 276 million people that WFP estimates were already facing acute hunger before the war. The largest increases are likely to be seen in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the report.

In the five years before the war, the two countries on average were responsible for 19% of global barley production, 14% of wheat and 4% of maize. Africa and the Middle East are particularly dependent on Ukrainian and Russian wheat exports.

“In March 2022, almost half of the area planted with winter wheat and about 40 percent of area planted with rye for the 2022 harvest were in occupied or war-affected areas. While areas affected by direct fighting have shifted, the uncertainty about damages, losses and the actual harvestable area remains. Between 20 and 30 percent of these areas may remain unharvested in 2022,” according to the report.

A note that was been found on a blackboard in a school in Katyuzhanka after the Russian troops left the area.

When Ukrainian forces regained control of Katyuzhanka, a village north of Kyiv that had been under Russian occupation for more than a month in March, they found the local school wrecked. Any equipment that hadn’t been stolen was smashed, there was a makeshift cemetery in the school yard and deep trenches had been dug across the football pitch.

Inside one of the destroyed classrooms, written in chalk on a big, green blackboard hanging on the wall just below a portrait of Isaac Newton, was a letter addressed to the pupils and signed “the Russians.”

The note, written in Russian, as opposed to Ukrainian — the school’s language of instruction — was one of several left on blackboards and whiteboards scattered around the building. “We are for the peace in the whole world,” another one said.

CNN cannot independently verify who wrote the notes.

Mikola Mikitchik, the principal of the Secondary School of Katyuzhanka, told CNN last month he felt disgusted when he found the notes.

“They wrote ‘Russians and Ukrainians are brothers’ and at the same time they robbed the school … they ruined computers, they took out hard drives, they took away laptops, printers, they left nothing at the school! It’s barbarism and hypocrisy,” he said.

Read the full story here:

Related article Russian soldiers smashed up their school. Then they purportedly left messages for pupils urging peace

The integration of the Ukraine’s Kherson region into Russia is underway, the Russian-appointed leader of the region claimed on Thursday.

Saldo offered no further details on what “integration” means.

Russian troops guard an entrance of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station, a run-of-the-river power plant on the Dnieper River in Kherson region, southern Ukraine, on May 20.

The city of Kherson, in the south of Ukraine, has been under Russian control since the early days of the invasion.

But the Ukrainian military has in recent weeks stepped up its counterattacks on Russian positions in the Kherson region.

A senior official in Russia’s governing United Russia party, Andrei Turchak, visited Kherson last week.

“We feel that we are already together with Russia,” Saldo said. “There is confidence that in a common big family all problems will be solved systematically and we will adequately respond to all requests of the time.” 

The battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk continues to rage as local officials say that Russia now controls most of the key city.

“The night was difficult,” said Oleksandr Striuk, head of Severodonetsk’s city military administration, on national television Thursday morning. “Our armed forces control part of the city – the industrial zone, and the surrounding neighborhoods.”

There were no casualties at the chemical plant overnight and “the bomb shelter also survived,” said Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk region military administration via Telegram on Thursday.

“The blasts damaged at least two plant shops in the chemical plant,” Hayday said. “One of them is a key one – for the ammonia production 1-B. However, no chemicals emissions were into the environment – all fertilizers and chemicals, according to the owner of the enterprise, were removed from the territory on the second day of the war.”

Earlier Thursday, in an interview on national television, Hayday said that “street fights” continue to rage in the city.

“Russia is constantly firing on the part that is controlled by the Ukrainians. They are constantly firing artillery, and very powerfully,” he added. “And they dismantle the houses floor by floor. In this sense, it is very difficult.”

Hayday said that he believed that Russia wanted to capture the whole city by the weekend, in time for Russia Day on Sunday, but that they would not achieve that goal.

“As soon as we have long-range artillery so that we can hold artillery duels with Russian artillery, our special forces can clear the city in two to three days,” he said.

A National Guard commander fighting for control of the city told national television on Thursday that his forces were “catastrophically short of artillery barrels.”

On Wednesday Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, said that his military is progressing according to plan in its so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine. 

“You will see the liberation of all the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts,” he said. “That will hopefully take place soon.”

The first rail cars carrying Ukrainian grain from the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol have departed, headed towards Crimea, a leader in the Russian-backed military administration of the occupied portion of Zaporizhzhia region said on Wednesday.

Balitsky said he hoped the grain would find its way to Turkey and the Middle East in quotes cited by state-run broadcaster Russia-24.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses reporters during a news conference to introduce the second report of the Global Crisis Response Group on June 8, at UN headquarters, New York.

The war in Ukraine threatens to “unleash an unprecedented wave of hunger and destitution” around the world, the United Nations Secretary-General said on Wednesday. 

This year’s crisis is about “lack of access,” he said. “Next year’s could be about lack of food.

“Make no mistake: no country or community will be left untouched by this cost-of-living crisis.”