WAR IN UKRAINE: June 2, 2023

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 464

  • Ukrainian authorities said air-defense forces shot down all 15 missiles and 21 drones over Kyiv on June 2, as Russia launched its sixth consecutive day of attacks on the capital.

  • Two women have been killed in shelling in the Russian border region of Belgorod, its governor says. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the victims were hit by shrapnel as they were travelling in a car near the village of Maslova Pristan. Officials in the neighbouring Bryansk and Kursk regions said buildings had been damaged in shelling and an overnight drone attack. Ukrainian officials have so far not commented. However Kyiv has denied involvement in previous attacks across the border, which it says are carried out by Russian anti-government groups - BBC

  • My analysis of the latest attacks inside Russian territory: this is definitely Russian President Vladimir Purim’s special military operation spilling over back into his own territory. I suspect the people behind the attacks are anti-Kremlin/pro-Ukrainian operatives, perhaps with some informal connection to Ukraine intelligence or military operations

  • Ukraine's ministry of renovation and infrastructure said on Thursday the U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain export deal had been halted again because Russia had blocked registration of ships to all Ukrainian ports. The United Nations and Turkey brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative between Moscow and Kyiv last July to help tackle a global food crisis aggravated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a leading global grain exporter. Russia agreed in May to a two-month extension of the deal but has said the initiative will cease unless an agreement aimed at overcoming obstacles to Russian grain and fertiliser exports is fulfilled. "The Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul (which oversees the initiative) has announced that it is impossible to draw up an inspection plan for June 1 due to another unjustified refusal of the Russian delegation to register the incoming fleet for participation in the Initiative," the Ukrainian ministry said on Facebook - Reuters

  • President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has asked NATO for a "clear" decision on Ukraine's future with the Western military alliance as another wave of air strikes on Kyiv killed at least three people, including a child, on June 1.

  • The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has frozen more assets of Oksana Marchenko, the wife of pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk. The SBU said on June 2 that the assets, estimated to have a value of 740 million hryvnyas ($19.8 million), are related to stakes Marchenko owned via offshore schemes in several energy transportation companies located in Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Odesa -- Eximnaftoprodukt, Sintez Oil, Sintez Transit, Ukrloadsystem, Odesnaftoprodukt, Black Sea Fuel Terminal, and Albion Commodities. “The freezing of these assets will prevent their re-registration under other fake names and will allow them to be transferred for our state's needs," the SBU statement said - RFE/RL