Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Fighting in Severodonetsk has ‘worsened,’ official says; Britain pledges rocket systems

More than 100 days into the war, Ukrainian and Russian troops remain mired in heated combat for Severodonetsk, the Luhansk area’s largest city where Kyiv still retains some control. Local officials stated that while the Ukrainian military claimed it prevented Russia’s seizure of a strategic highway, the fighting within Severodonetsk is worsening for the defenders.

Here are some updates from across the country:

Severodonetsk: Prospects for Ukrainian forces defending the city have deteriorated, according to Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai, who compared the intensity of Russian shelling there to what occurred in the battered port city of Mariupol before it fell. He said on Telegram that the fighters still held onto an industrial zone.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in its Monday battlefield report that Moscow is likely to have control over most of Severodonetsk. The ISW warned that it was difficult to establish precise control lines in urban warfare.

Elsewhere in Luhansk: Regional police said Russia has shelled a humanitarian aid facility in Lysychansk, a city separated from Severodonetsk by a river. Authorities had not yet released any information about potential casualties, but stated that they are investigating the attack as a possible war crime. On the same day, 98 people were evacuated from Lysychansk, offering hope to a region that has faced relentless bombing in recent weeks.

Kyiv: For the first time in over a month, Russian rockets struck the Ukrainian capital, shattering the city’s tentative sense of safety. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed its missiles destroyed tanks and other armored vehicles sent to Ukraine by Eastern European allies, but Ukrainian authorities denied this and accused Moscow of targeting civilian infrastructure. Britain’s Defense Ministry said Monday that Russia was probably attempting to disrupt the supply of Western military equipment to Ukrainian troops by striking rail infrastructure.

Mykolaiv oblast: Authorities in the southern region said intense Russian shelling continued Monday, after reports of a “mass rocket attack” early Sunday. The attack resulted in civilian casualties, the city council said in a preliminary report, though no further details were provided.

Mariupol: The bombed-out Black Sea city is under quarantine imposed by occupying forces, a Ukrainian official in exile said Monday. The Washington Post couldn’t independently confirm this assertion. The city’s decomposing bodies, along with garbage and trash littering the streets may make it a breeding ground of cholera.

Snake Island: British officials said that after the loss of the Russian warship Moskva in April, Moscow probably moved air defense assets — including SA-15 and SA-22 systems — to Snake Island in the western Black Sea to protect naval vessels in the area. Officials added that Russia’s actions on the island were contributing to a maritime blocade and hindering Ukrainian exports.

Russia escalated its assault against Ukraine on the battlefield Monday, pummeling a city that has emerged as a key battleground in the east as Moscow expanded sanctions against those who have condemned its actions during the war.

The fight for Severodonetsk has “worsened for us,” Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, said in a televised interview. While Russian troops have expanded their presence in the city and are shelling it, Ukrainian troops still control its industrial zone.

The creeping losses come as the West scrambles to send Ukraine more firepower as fighting in the country’s eastern Donbas region intensifies. On Monday, Britain said it would send rocket launch systems that can be used to strike targets up to 50 miles away despite threats from the Kremlin that it would retaliate. This announcement comes after the United States pledged to send similar weapons to Ukraine.

European Council President Charles Michel accused Russia of triggering a global food crisis with its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council in New York on Monday, prompting Moscow’s U.N. ambassador to walk out.

“The Kremlin is using food supplies as a stealth missile against developing countries,” Michel said. The dramatic effects of Russia’s war have spread across the globe. And this is driving up food prices, pushing people into poverty and destabilizing entire regions.”

Michel also hit back at Moscow’s claims that Western sanctions are to blame. “The E.U. There are no sanctions against Russia’s agricultural sector. Zero. Zero. borders,” he said.

“You may leave the room, maybe it’s easier not to listen to the truth Mr. Ambassador,” Michel said, directly addressing Russia’s representative, Vassily Nebenzia, as he stormed from the room, before continuing with his prepared remarks. He said that Russian vessels carrying food, fertilizers or grain to developing nations are not prohibited by sanctions.

Michel’s remarks come the same day U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a virtual meeting on food security that reports Russia is plundering Ukrainian grain to export for its own profit are “credible.” Blinken also accused Russia of using propaganda to shift the blame onto the West even as its bombs destroy fields and its naval blockade prevents Ukrainian grain ships from leaving key ports.

“The Kremlin needs to realize that it is exporting starvation and suffering well beyond Ukraine’s borders,” Blinken said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has described reports that Russia is taking Ukrainian grain exports and selling them for a profit as “credible.”

Speaking at a virtual discussion Monday on food security issues arising from the conflict, Blinken said the alleged plunder of wheat exports — as well as other actions taken by Russia during its unprovoked invasion — are contributing to a worsening global food security crisis.

Around 20 million tons of wheat is trapped in silos and in ships stuck in the Black Sea port of Odessa because of Russia’s naval blockade, he said. The ongoing fighting has caused disruptions in farming as well as the mining of fields by Russian forces.

“There are credible reports. He stated that Russia was stealing Ukraine’s grain exports in order to make its own profits.

He appeared to be referring to a report in the New York Times on Monday that American diplomats sent an alert to 14 countries, mostly in Africa, in mid-May that Russian cargo vessels were leaving ports near Ukraine laden with what U.S. officials reportedly described as “stolen Ukrainian grain.”

“This is all deliberate,” Blinken said, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of stopping food from being shipped to push back against global sanctions against Moscow. “Quite simply put, it’s blackmail.”

In Mariupol, the ruined and Russian-occupied port city in Ukraine’s southeast, fears of constant bombardment have given way to silent threats: bacteria-laced water and deadly cholera outbreaks.

The city’s exiled leaders have warned about the water supply for weeks, and on Monday, mayoral aide Petro Andryushchenko said that decomposing bodies and piles of garbage are contaminating drinking sources, leaving residents vulnerable to cholera, dysentery and other ailments.

The Russian officials now running the city recently imposed a quarantine, Andryushchenko said in an appearance on Ukrainian television. Although he did not give details and could not independently verify his statements, he stated that the humanitarian situation in the city was worsening.

“Spontaneous burials are still in almost every yard in Mariupol,” the city council wrote in an update on Telegram. It is causing a stench in the air. And it literally poisons the air.”

The council warned of thousands more civilian deaths if an outbreak were to rage uncontrolled, which would bring more tragedy to a city that has already endured some of the most brutal bombing of the Russian invasion. The near-constant shelling, which allowed Moscow to claim full control of Mariupol last month, reduced much of the city to rubble and destroyed water and sewer infrastructure, along with medical facilities, the council said.

To get access to clean water, Mariupol residents must queue for hours, and it has only been available every two days at most, Andryushchenko said on Telegram.

In a news briefing Monday, Ukraine’s chief sanitary doctor, Ihor Kuzin, said national authorities began monitoring potential cholera outbreaks across the country on June 1. According to Kuzin, Mariupol is in a very dire situation.

“We can’t be 100 percent sure that there will be disease outbreaks,” he said. “But all prerequisites for them are already there.”

The Biden administration is continuing to issue visas to qualified Russian journalists and has not revoked the credentials of any Russian journalists working in the United States, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday.

His remarks followed a briefing between the Russian government and U.S. news organizations in which the Kremlin warned that the outlets could have their credentials in Russia revoked if conditions don’t improve for Russian journalists in the United States.

“Suffice it to say the Russians continue to make a false equivalency,” Price told reporters. “The Russian government fundamentally and willfully disregards what it means to have a free press, as evidenced by them blocking or banning nearly every independent Russian outlet seeking to report inside their country.”

YouTube and other media platforms have banned Russian state media in Europe and elsewhere since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Western nations have added pro-Kremlin news groups to sanctions lists.

NEW YORK — A federal judge has issued a warrant granting the Justice Department permission to seize two private jets worth more than $400 million that are owned by Roman Abramovich, a wealthy Russian whose foreign business entanglements have grown increasingly complicated since the start of the war in Ukraine.

The action against Abramovich over alleged violations of the Export Control Reform Act and related regulations is part of a bigger push by the U.S. government to enforce sanctions and to pursue legal actions against Russian oligarchs.

Justice Department officials said Monday that Abramovich re-exported his planes, which were manufactured in the United States, in violation of federal law. They said Abramovich re-exported his Gulfstream G650ER, worth about $60 million, and his Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, worth about $350 million, to Russia in March. Now, the Boeing is in the United Arab Emirates.

Abramovich, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin, became a target of Western governments because of his extreme wealth and assets around the world. Late last month, the British government approved the $3 billion sale of the Abramovich-owned Chelsea FC soccer team in London after he was hit with sanctions there.

It is unclear whether officials think they will be able to recover the planes at issue, though the warrant could significantly limit where they would be able to travel.

“Our international partners — nations devoted to the rule of law — far outnumber those jurisdictions where these aircraft can safely hide, and our investigation of illegal exports in violation of U.S. law will continue unabated,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.

The Commerce Department is also seeking significant monetary penalties — about twice the value of the planes — from Abramovich.

In response to U.S. sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has announced more travel bans targeting notable Americans, adding to a list of high-profile people prevented from entering the country.

United Airlines President Brett Hart, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings were among the more than 60 Americans barred from entering Russia in response “to the ever-expanding U.S. sanctions against Russian political and public figures, as well as representatives of domestic business,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday.

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, Universal Pictures President Peter Cramer and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young also are part of the list.

Last month, Russia barred nearly 1,000 Americans from entering the country in response to the U.S. stance on the war, including President Biden and high-ranking officials in his administration, as well as media personalities.

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — The top Pentagon general said Monday that Ukrainians are “experiencing the same horrors that the French citizenry experienced in World War II at the hands of the Nazi invaders,” drawing a direct comparison between Russia’s invasion of its neighbor and a conflict fought on the nearby beaches of Normandy 78 years ago.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the world is “again seeing death and destruction on the European continent.” He stood among the snow-white marble headstones of Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, the final resting place for more than 9,000 U.S. troops killed in action.

Milley commemorated their sacrifices as he and the defense chiefs from countries supporting Ukraine meet this week in the Normandy countryside to discuss how else they may assist Kyiv in fighting off a Russian invasion that has left tens of thousands dead.

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