Russia Ukraine war today: Kyiv commander says Russian defensive line breached near villages of Bakhmut

The rights situation in Russia has “significantly deteriorated” since President Vladimir Putin launched his war against Ukraine in February last year, an expert commissioned by the U.N.’s top human rights body said in her first report on the country on Monday.

Mariana Katzarova, the special rapporteur on Russia’s rights situation mandated by the Human Rights Council, chronicled the domestic crackdown that has largely targeted critics of Putin’s war as well as other opposition voices in Russia.

Her report, made public on Monday, is separate from another probe by U.N.-backed investigators that has accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine.

Republican U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week, McCarthy told reporters on Monday.

Democratic President Joe Biden is slated to host Zelensky on Thursday at the White House, and the Ukrainian leader is expected to meet with congressional leaders from both political parties while he is in Washington, the White House said last week.

Ukraine’s military claims its latest recapture of a key village in Bakhmut will act as a “springboard” for further offensive actions against Russia’s continuing invasion.

Ukraine scored another victory recently when it recently recaptured village Klishchiivka that lies in the southern flank of Bakhmut, as its forces fought off Russian attempts to get back into the area.

The war-torn country’s forces had last week also recaptured Andriivka, another village a few kilometres to the south of Klishchiivka, after earlier criticism alleged Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces had slowed.

UK paper and packaging giant Mondi has agreed to sell its largest Russian plant for around 775 million euros (£668 million) to a Moscow-based property development group.

Mondi’s share price jumped by nearly 5% on Monday morning after it unveiled the deal involving Syktyvkar, its last remaining plant in Russia and the country’s biggest paper producer.

The sale to Sezar Invest, a division of property development firm Sezar Group, will involve six monthly payments in Russian rubles.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will meet his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in New York on Wednesday, two sources from the Brazilian government said on Monday.

Russian warships patrol the surface of the Black Sea, launching missiles at Ukrainian cities and towns as part of a near-daily assault. While also enforcing a de-facto blockade, leaving ships in little doubt of the consequences if they try to break it.

Such is the importance of this shipping route for both sides. For a long time Russian ships moved with relative impunity. And a grain deal that allowed Ukraine to export from its ports on the Black Sea allowed for an uneasy status quo to hold. But after Moscow withdrew from that deal in the summer and stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s ports, and Kyiv began a counteroffensive to retake land occupied by Russia in southern and eastern Ukraine – the Black Sea has become one of the most active fronts in the war.

Poland proposed on Monday that new European Union sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine should include a ban on Russian diamonds and Liquid Petroleum Gas and called for aligning sanctions against Belarus with those against Moscow.

In a proposal seen by Reuters, Poland calls for banning imports of Russian diamonds, the sales of which brought the Russian budget $4.5 billion in 2021, it said, and putting individual sanctions on the Russian Alrosa diamond company.

“Alrosa has supported Russian military forces and the Russian war efforts in Ukraine, both directly and indirectly, for many years,” the Polish paper said.

The EU, which has already agreed 11 sanctions package against Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, should also ban the provision of Information and Communication Technology services to entities from Russia, including computer software, cybersecurity services, and other ICT/IT services.

“In the 8th package of sanctions against Russia, IT consultancy services were banned. This is a fairly narrow scope. No further ICT services were banned in the 9th and 10th sanctions packages. Therefore, we call for other services to be included in the ban, in accordance with Poland’s proposals,” it said.

The EU should also stop buying Russian Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), Poland said, to preserve the integrity and transparency of the Liquefied Petroleum Gas market and avoid distortion of competition.

“Although LPG is a petroleum product, it has not fallen within the scope of the EU’s embargo on the products belonging to the aforementioned category,” it said.

The commander of Ukrainian ground forces said on Monday the recent recapture of the eastern villages of Andriivka and Klishchiivka had enabled Kyiv’s troops to breach Russian lines near the devastated city of Bakhmut.

“These settlements, at first glance small, were important elements in the enemy’s defensive line which stretched from Bakhmut to Horlivka,” General Oleksandr Syrskyi said on the Telegram messaging app, referring to a town about 40 km (25 miles) from Bakhmut.

“As a result of our troops’ successful actions, the enemy’s defensive line – which it tried to close by throwing all available reserves into battle – was breached.”

Syrskyi said Russian troops were still trying to regain the positions they had lost in the Bakhmut sector, and that fighting there was heavy. He gave no further details.

A Bulgarian army bomb disposal team on Monday destroyed in a controlled explosion a device attached to a drone that landed on Sunday evening in the Black Sea town of Tyulenovo, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The army unit inspected the site and concluded that transporting the drone to another location with the explosives still attached would not be possible, the defence ministry said.

“We can certainly assume that it is related to the war that Russia launched against Ukraine,” Defence Minister Todor Tagarev told reporters. “This war is inevitably associated with increasing risks to our security.”

Tagarev did not provide more detailed information on where the drone came from and how it reached NATO member Bulgaria.

The tourist resort of Tyulenovo is situated 70 kilometres (43 miles) south of the Romanian border and across the Black Sea from Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 and now a regular target of Ukrainian drone attacks.

Police cordoned off the area on Sunday evening and restricted public access to local restaurant terraces, Marian Zhechev, mayor of Shabla municipality of which Tyulenovo is a part, told Nova TV.

He said the drone had been found on rocks next to moored boats at Tyulenovo, describing it as an “aircraft with standard ammunition”.

It was unclear whether the drone had fallen from the air or had been washed up by the sea currents.

Georgia on Monday accused a former deputy interior minister now working for Ukrainian intelligence of plotting to encourage civil unrest to try to overthrow the Tbilisi government, testing ties with Ukraine as Georgia deepens relations with Russia.

The State Security Service said it had been monitoring a group led by Giorgi Lortkipanidze, now deputy head of Ukrainian military intelligence but previously deputy minister in a strongly pro-Western Georgian government.

“According to confirmed and verified information, the implementation of the plan – developed by Giorgi Lortkipanidze – would involve a rather large group of Georgian fighters in Ukraine and a part of Georgian youth, influenced by interested parties, whose training is taking place near the Polish-Ukrainian state border,” the service said in a statement.

It did not provide corroborating evidence and no comment was immediately available from Kyiv or Lortkipanidze.

The statement said the alleged plotters planned to channel likely frustration among young Georgians if the European Union failed to grant their country candidate status after a process culminating at an EU summit in mid-December.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday said the future of Ukraine, Moldova and Western Balkan countries was “in our union”, but was more cautious on Georgia, which EU officials say has slid back on its path to membership.

The Caucasus republic, which says it is committed to joining the EU, was denied candidate status last year even as Ukraine and Moldova received it.