headlines: Russia will not take Donbas in ‘immediate future’, say western officials – as it happened
articles: From 27 Jul 2022 17.47 Russia will not manage to take Donbas in 'immediate future', say western officials Russia has “definitively” lost the initiative in the battle for the Donbas in Ukraine, according to western officials. Moscow will not take the eastern industrial heartland in the “immediate future”, one official said, but “they are not just going to give up and go home”. They said there has been “wax and wane” in the war in Ukraine, and Russia has the capacity to “adapt and adjust what they are doing”, according to a Press Association report. Earlier this month, western officials said the sustainability of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine was “challenging”, with Moscow making “genuine headway” on the objective it claimed was the rationale for the invasion - the supposed liberation of the Donbas. But a western official said on Wednesday that Russia has “definitively lost the initiative” in the battle for the region. They said it is believed that securing the full extent of Donetsk Oblast remains the “minimum political objective of the Donbas campaign”, but it looks “increasingly unlikely” that Russia will achieve this in the next several months.
  
  Updated at 17.50 BST
  
  27 Jul 2022 19.00 Summary The time in Kyiv is now 9pm. Here is a round-up of the day’s top headlines: Russia has “definitively” lost the initiative in the battle for the Donbas in Ukraine, according to western officials. Moscow will not take the eastern industrial heartland in the “immediate future”, one official said, but “they are not just going to give up and go home”. Ukraine’s navy confirmed on Wednesday that work had started at three Ukrainian Black Sea ports aimed at preparing for the resumption of grain exports. “In connection with the signing of the agreement on the unblocking of Ukrainian ports for the export of grain, work has been resumed in the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdeny,” the navy said on Facebook. Russia cannot be trusted to honour an agreement to allow the export of Ukrainian grain from Odesa, the Polish prime minister said on Wednesday, after Moscow launched a missile strike on the Black Sea port. “The day after the signing [of the agreement], the Russian armed forces ... attacked Odesa,” Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference. Ukrainian parliament approved the appointment of lawmaker Andriy Kostin as the country’s prosecutor general on Wednesday, the prosecutor general’s office said. Some 299 deputies in the 450-seat parliament endorsed Kostin’s appointment, it said on the Telegram messaging app. A key Russian-held bridge into the occupied southern city of Kherson has been hit with a barrage of rocket fire by Ukrainian forces, who appeared to be stepping up operations to isolate the city. Video and witness accounts showed up to 18 detonations on the Antonivskiy Bridge over the Dnieper river, one of the main Russian resupply routes into Kherson, with Russian anti-missile air defences apparently failing to intercept the strikes. There were also reports that a railway bridge was targeted. Germany has accused Moscow of engaging in “power play” over energy exports, as Russian state-run Gazprom further throttled gas supplies into Europe. As announced two days earlier, the energy giant on Wednesday reduced the gas flow through Nord Stream 1 to 33m cubic metres a day – about 20% of the pipeline’s total capacity and half the amount it has been delivering since resuming service last week after 10 days of maintenance work. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign affairs minister, was in Uganda on Tuesday for bilateral talks with President Yoweri Museveni, on his third stop of an African tour that ends in Ethiopia today. The trip comes against the backdrop of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is having devastating consequences on food supply across Africa. The war has fuelled food shortages in east Africa, which was already hard-hit by climate change and disruptions to the food supply due to Covid-19. One person has been killed and four wounded in a Russian attack on a hotel in Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, according to local emergency services and the regional governor. A bipartisan group of three US senators urged Meta’s Facebook, Twitter and Telegram to do a better job of stopping Russian efforts to spread Spanish-language disinformation about the invasion of Ukraine. Senators Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent the letters, dated Wednesday, along with Senators Tim Kaine, also a Democrat, and Bill Cassidy, a Republican. A tongue-in-cheek petition to give the outgoing British prime minister, Boris Johnson, Ukrainian citizenship and make him the country’s prime minister has garnered over 2,500 signatures hours after being put up on Ukraine’s official petitions site on Tuesday. The European Union had understood how “essential” to Russia the issue of goods transit to the country’s Kaliningrad exclave is, according to Moscow. Reuters reported that the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said developments around the exclave were “positive”, after a deal with the EU to unblock transit to Kaliningrad. That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Ukraine live blog for tonight. Thanks for following along. The latest news from Russia’s war on Ukraine can be found here.
  
  
  
  27 Jul 2022 18.50 A bipartisan group of three US senators urged Meta’s Facebook, Twitter and Telegram to do a better job of stopping Russian efforts to spread Spanish-language disinformation about the invasion of Ukraine. Senators Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent the letters, dated Wednesday, along with Senators Tim Kaine, also a Democrat, and Bill Cassidy, a Republican. In particular, the lawmakers asked the companies to better moderate Russia’s RT en Espanol and Sputnik Mundo, Reuters reported. “We ... know that disinformation campaigns by Russian state media’s Spanish-language outlets targeted at Latin American and Caribbean audiences regularly reach Spanish-speaking communities in the United States, directly harming our national interests,” they said in the three letters. The letters were sent to Telegram Chief Executive Pavel Durov, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO. Representatives of Facebook and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment while Telegram could not be reached. A group of 21 US lawmakers sent a similar letter to Facebook in April.
  
  
  
  27 Jul 2022 18.08 The British foreign secretary Liz Truss has said Vladimir Putin is holding the rest of the world to ransom over gas prices and said allowing him to succeed would cause “untold misery” across Europe. Asked by broadcasters whether she believed “Vladimir Putin is effectively holding the rest of the world to ransom” by “cutting off supplies to Germany,” she replied:
  
  That is exactly what he is trying to do and it’s vitally important that we stay strong in the face of his appalling aggression. If we allow Vladimir Putin to succeed, it will cause untold misery across Europe. We know that he wouldn’t just stop at Ukraine the east of Europe is under threat and democracy is under threat.
  
  
  
  27 Jul 2022 17.47 Russia will not manage to take Donbas in 'immediate future', say western officials Russia has “definitively” lost the initiative in the battle for the Donbas in Ukraine, according to western officials. Moscow will not take the eastern industrial heartland in the “immediate future”, one official said, but “they are not just going to give up and go home”. They said there has been “wax and wane” in the war in Ukraine, and Russia has the capacity to “adapt and adjust what they are doing”, according to a Press Association report. Earlier this month, western officials said the sustainability of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine was “challenging”, with Moscow making “genuine headway” on the objective it claimed was the rationale for the invasion - the supposed liberation of the Donbas. But a western official said on Wednesday that Russia has “definitively lost the initiative” in the battle for the region. They said it is believed that securing the full extent of Donetsk Oblast remains the “minimum political objective of the Donbas campaign”, but it looks “increasingly unlikely” that Russia will achieve this in the next several months.
  
  Updated at 17.50 BST
  
  27 Jul 2022 16.34 Germany accuses Russia of ‘power play’ as gas pipeline supply drops by half Philip Oltermann Germany has accused Moscow of engaging in “power play” over energy exports, as Russian state-run Gazprom further throttled gas supplies into Europe. As announced two days earlier, the energy giant on Wednesday reduced the gas flow through Nord Stream 1 to 33m cubic metres a day – about 20% of the pipeline’s total capacity and half the amount it has been delivering since resuming service last week after 10 days of maintenance work. According to network data from the gas transfer station in Lubmin, north-east Germany, only about 17m kilowatt hours of gas arrived between 8am and 9am, compared with more than 27m kWh between 6am and 7am. Germany accuses Russia of ‘power play’ as gas pipeline supply drops by half Read more
  
  Updated at 16.54 BST
  
  27 Jul 2022 16.03 A tongue-in-cheek petition to give the outgoing British prime minister, Boris Johnson, Ukrainian citizenship and make him the country’s prime minister has garnered over 2,500 signatures hours after being put up on Ukraine’s official petitions site on Tuesday. Despite losing domestic popularity and eventually having been forced to announce his resignation after dozens of ministerial departures in early July, Johnson remains a cult figure in Kyiv for his vocal support of Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion. The Reuters news agency reported: The petition, addressed to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, lists Johnson’s strengths as “worldwide support for Boris Johnson, a clear position against the military invasion of Ukraine, (and) wisdom in the political, financial and legal spheres.” The petition, however, does acknowledge one negative side of such an appointment: its non-compliance with Ukraine’s constitution. In an apparent coincidence, several hours after the petition was put up on Tuesday, Johnson presented Zelenskiy with the Sir Winston Churchill Leadership award for what his Downing Street office described as “incredible courage, defiance, and dignity” in the face of Russia’s invasion. Zelenskiy did not mention the new petition when accepting the award, but he will be obliged to officially respond if it receives 25,000 signatures. Boris Johnson and Volodymyr Zelenskiy visit an exhibition of destroyed Russian military vehicles and weapons in Kyiv. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
  
  Updated at 16.09 BST
  
  27 Jul 2022 15.39 The Czech government has backed allowing its fighter jets to protect neighbouring Slovakia’s air space from September, the defence ministry said on Wednesday. Slovakia has sought help from its Nato allies as it looks to ground its Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets in August under long-standing plans to modernise the military. Slovak government officials have said the old jets could be sent to neighbouring Ukraine to help Kyiv defend itself against Russia’s invasion, Reuters reported. From September, the Czech army’s Gripen JAS-39 fighter jets will provide air policing for Slovakia until at least the end of 2023, the Czech Defence Ministry said. Poland is also expected to take part, it said. More details will come as part of a joint declaration from the countries to be signed in the near future.
  
  
  
  27 Jul 2022 15.13 Russia cannot be trusted to honour an agreement to allow the export of Ukrainian grain from Odesa, the Polish prime minister said on Wednesday, after Moscow launched a missile strike on the Black Sea port. “The day after the signing [of the agreement], the Russian armed forces ... attacked Odesa,” Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference. “It follows that such agreements cannot be considered fully credible, because unfortunately that is what Russia is like.”
  
  
  
  27 Jul 2022 14.48 Peter Beaumont In response to the attack on the Antonivskiy Bridge, Russian military bloggers, some of whom have become more critical of the Kremlin’s conduct of the war, underlined the problems facing Russian forces in the Kherson area. Among them was the Voennyi Osvedomitel (military informant) Telegram channel, which has a following of 450,000 people. “The repeated attacks by the armed forces of Ukraine have led to – so far – a temporary failure of the Antonivskiy Bridge, forcing the construction of ferry and pontoon crossings as an alternative.
  
  
  
  “There are exactly two problems here. First, the consequences of shelling the bridge have a cumulative effect, that is, each subsequent one does more damage than the previous one … The second is that alternatives in the form of pontoons / ferries are much more vulnerable to enemy fire.
  
  
  
  “We are forced to conclude that the problem with the ongoing attempts of the armed forces of Ukraine to cut off the right-bank grouping of [Russian forces] from supplies is not being resolved.” Map of the Kherson region The bridge has come under repeated attack in the past week as Ukraine has tried to cut off the handful of routes Russia can use to move heavy weapons in and around Kherson, including a road over the dam at nearby Nova Kakhovka.
  
  
  
  27 Jul 2022 14.42 Gazprom says turbine used for Nord Stream 1 has not arrived from Canada Gazprom’s deputy CEO, Vitaly Markelov, has said the company has still not received a Siemens turbine used at Nord Stream 1’s Portovaya compressor station that has been undergoing servicing in Canada.
  
  Reuters reports Markelov blamed Siemens, which is servicing the turbine, for the delay, saying that there were sanctions risks associated with the machinery. Yesterday energy ministers from the 27 EU member states, except Hungary, backed a voluntary 15% reduction in gas usage over the winter, a target that could become mandatory if the Kremlin ordered a complete shutdown of gas to Europe.
  
  Updated at 15.11 BST
  
  27 Jul 2022 14.40 Here are some pictures of the newly opened joint coordination centre (JCC) in Istanbul which will oversee the export of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in a deal brokered by Turkey. Military delegations of Turkey, Russia and Ukraine sit at the opening of the coordination centre for Ukrainian grain exports. Photograph: Ozan Köse/AFP/Getty Images A general view of the JCC in Istanbul. Photograph: Erdem Şahin/EPA Reuters reports that a Turkish official close to the matter said that prior to last week’s agreement the Ukrainian and Russian sides initially did not talk to each other during the negotiations, but then they softened. “The Ukrainian and Russian representatives are staying here at the joint centre. The parties have social conversations with each other in this campus. They are eating together here,” he said. A Ukrainian official attends the opening of the JCC. Photograph: Ozan Köse/AFP/Getty Images Russian military delegation during the opening ceremony. Photograph: Erdem Şahin/EPA
  
  Updated at 14.42 BST