Ukraine updates: Putin, Erdogan ‘satisfied’ with grain talks

US National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications Kirby has said that Putin’s visit to Iran demonstrates that he is isolated on the world stage.

“It shows the degree to which Mr Putin and Russia are increasingly isolated,” he told reporters at the White House. “Now, they have to turn to Iran for help.”

He added that the trip also shows that Russia’s “industrial base is having a hard time keeping up with his unprovoked war in Ukraine”.

US officials have claimed that Russia – faced with sanctions on microelectronic chips that are vital for its defence industry – is seeking military drones from Iran, which is also under heavy US-led sanctions.

Kirby said by requesting armed drones from Iran, Putin is signalling that he is not serious about finding a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine.

Russian President Putin has said Moscow and Turkey were “satisfied” by their meeting in Istanbul last week where the sides discussed grain exports via the Black Sea.

Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations are expected to sign a deal later this week aimed at resuming the shipping of grain from Ukraine across the Black Sea.

Putin and Turkey’s President Erdogan held a meeting in Iran earlier on Tuesday when Putin said that not all the issues had been resolved yet on the topic, “but the fact that there is movement is already good.”

US President Biden and first lady Jill Biden have welcomed the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, to the White House for a visit in advance of her address to Congress on Wednesday.

In May, Jill Biden had previously made a surprise visit to Ukraine, visiting her counterpart and a school that was sheltering displaced Ukrainians.

“When I came back, one of the things that I said was, you cannot go into a warzone and come back and not feel the sorrow and the pain of the people,” Jill Biden said at the beginning of her meeting with Zelenska.

She said she had spoken to her team about helping address mental health issues for mothers and children who have suffered atrocities.

Russian forces have made further gains in terrain in the fighting around the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian sources.

“The enemy has carried out an assault in the Pokrovskoe area, achieving partial success, and is entrenching itself on the southern edge of the locality,” the Ukrainian general staff said in its situation report.

Pokrovskoe is a settlement 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) east of the important transport hub of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. The line Siversk-Soledar-Bakhmut is considered Ukraine’s next line of defence in front of the major cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline has seen a rise in flow before the scheduled end of annual maintenance on Thursday, as the operator carried out pressure tests.

Hourly flows through the pipeline, the main source of natural gas fuelling Europe’s largest economy, Germany, have been at zero since July 11, when 10 days of maintenance began.

The planned outage on the biggest single pipeline carrying Russian gas to Germany is expected to end at 6:00am in Germany (04:00 GMT) on July 21. It transports 55 billion cubic metres (bcm) a year of gas under the Baltic Sea. Data for 2021 and 2020 show that gas flows via Nord Stream 1 resumed on time after the end of the maintenance periods.

Another six French-made Caesar artillery guns that President Emmanuel Macron promised to Ukraine in June are “on their way” to the war-torn country, France’s foreign minister has said.

“Twelve of the guns, prized for their accuracy and mobility, have already been delivered to Ukraine and “the six others are on their way,” Catherine Colonna told a Senate commission.

“At the national level, France is fully committed even though we communicate less than others what we are doing,” Colonna added. “We made the decision to not communicate all of our military contribution.”

Ukrainian legislators have dismissed the domestic security chief and prosecutor general, two days after President Zelenskyy suspended them for failing to root out Russian spies.

Ivan Bakanov was fired from his position at the helm of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) by a comfortable majority, several lawmakers said on the Telegram messaging app.

The head of Zelenskyy’s political faction said Iryna Venediktova had also been voted out as prosecutor general.

The EU is preparing to carve out exceptions in its sanctions against Moscow that would unblock assets at Russian banks linked to trade in food and fertiliser according to a document, the AFP news agency has reported.

Member countries “want to make it abundantly clear that there is nothing in the sanctions that is slowing the transport of grain out of Russia or Ukraine”, an EU diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The EU’s proposal is part of the bloc’s latest sanction update that is being negotiated by member states. It will require unanimous approval to enter into force.

A panel of retired military leaders from the United States, Canada and the Netherlands will advise a pro-Ukraine campaign on the procurement of protective gear for Ukrainian defence forces, a Canada-based nonprofit group has said.

The panel of four includes former commander of US forces in Afghanistan David Petraeus and former NATO commander Wesley Clark, as well as former Dutch defence chief Dick Lodewijk Berlijn, according to the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC).

It would focus on helping supply Ukraine’s territorial defence force with protective gear, such as helmets, body armour, ballistic goggles, and medical kits, the UWC said in a statement.

Ukraine has joined the US-aligned International Energy Agency as an association country, the watchdog announced, binding Kyiv closer to the mostly Western countries which oppose Russia’s invasion.

The Paris-based IEA consists of 31 big energy-consuming member countries, but not Russia, and has a second tier of 11 so-called “association states” such as China, India and Indonesia.

“In these particularly challenging times following Russia’s unprovoked invasion, we are further strengthening the relationship to support Ukraine’s significant reconstruction needs and help it build a new energy future,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said at a signing ceremony in Warsaw.

The CEO of Turkey’s Baykar, which makes the drones being widely used by Ukraine against Russian forces, has ruled out supplying the Bayraktar TB2 to Moscow.

In an interview with CNN on Monday, Haluk Bayraktar said Ukraine is “under very heavy aggression and disproportionate attacks”.

When pressed by CNN presenter Julia Chatterley, who repeatedly asked, “Would you supply Russia?”, Bayraktar responded, “We have not delivered or supplied them with anything, [and] we will as well never do such a thing because we support Ukraine, support its sovereignty, its resistance for its independence.”

Read more here.

A Russian natural gas embargo would cause deep recessions in Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Italy unless countries can cooperate more to share alternative supplies, the International Monetary Fund has said.

IMF researchers in a blog posting predicted that some countries could face shortages of as much as 40 percent of their normal gas consumption in the event of a total cut-off of Russian gas.

Hungary would suffer the most economically from such an embargo, with a reduction of more than 6 percent in gross domestic product, while Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Italy could see GDP shrink by 5 percent if alternate gas supplies, including liquefied natural gas, is impeded from flowing freely to where it is needed.

Putin has arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian and Turkish leaders, the Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday afternoon.

The official purpose of the visit is to discuss the situation in Syria, but the talks are also expected to address the impact of the war in Ukraine, particularly its effect on grain exports.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Russia expects talks on the safe passage for Ukrainian grain shipments via the Black Sea to continue in the near future, Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency reported.

Peskov said that Russia was willing to do its best to ensure that Ukrainian grain can reach global markets, TASS reported.

Turkey said on Monday that officials from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations were expected to meet later this week to discuss the issue, which the United Nations has said has contributed to a global food crisis.

Ukrainian shelling of a hydroelectric power station in Russian-controlled territory in southern Ukraine could lead to a complete shutdown of navigation on the Dnieper River, the country’s largest waterway, the TASS news agency has reported, citing Russian-installed authorities in the occupied Kherson region.

Russian forces took the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant in the Kherson region just north of Russian-annexed Crimea in the first days of Russia’s invasion.

Russian-installed authorities in Kherson have said Ukraine’s armed forces have accelerated shelling of the town and power station in recent days as part of a counteroffensive by Kyiv. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian authorities.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has destroyed and uprooted the ethnic Greek minority in the southeastern Donetsk region, the third largest ethnic group in the area after Ukrainians and Russians.

The population has for decades been centred in Mariupol and the surrounding villages, but the continuing violence, which has displaced some and killed others, has made preserving the unique culture even more difficult, community leaders told Al Jazeera.

“What Greeks face is that Mariupol is no longer a place where they are concentrated,” Mykola Akhbash, an ethnic Greek police officer told Al Jazeera. “It’s a huge blow to our people.”

Read more here.

The governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, has said a Russian missile strike in central Kramatorsk has killed at least one civilian.

“The Russians hit the central part of the city … At least one dead civilian is currently known about,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

A video posted by the Kyiv Post showed a building on fire and a body wrapped in a blanket.

A Russian missile has hit the centre of the city of Kramatorsk in the Donbas region of Donetsk, the mayor has said.

Writing on Facebook, Mayor Oleksandr Honcharenko said there were casualties, but gave no further details. A photograph posted on his and the city council’s Facebook pages showed a residential building on fire.

In April, Ukraine said a Russian missile hit a train station crowded with evacuating civilians, killing 52 people. Russia denied responsibility for the killing. The city has been recently bracing for a renewed Russian offensive.

Ukraine’s parliament has dismissed the domestic security chief and prosecutor general, two days after President Zelenskyy suspended them, saying they had failed to root out employees collaborating with Russia.

Ivan Bakanov was fired from his position leading the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) by a comfortable majority, several legislators said on the Telegram messaging app.

The head of Zelenskyy’s political faction said Iryna Venediktova had also been voted out as prosecutor general.

In a statement published on Telegram minutes before his dismissal was confirmed, Bakanov said “miscalculations” had been made during his tenure, but that he was proud of his record.

The European Commission has proposed spending $512m (500 million euros) to finance joint defence purchases among member states to replenish weapons stocks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

EU countries “have drawn on their stocks of ammunition, light and heavy artillery, anti-aircraft and anti-tank defence systems, and even armoured vehicles and tanks,” European Commissioner Thierry Breton said.

“This has created a de facto vulnerability that now needs to be addressed urgently,” he said.