Ukraine war: Kyiv troops retreat from key eastern town

A plane used by the Hungarian government landed in Moscow on Friday, flight-tracking website Flightaware.com showed, following media reports that Prime Minister Viktor Orban is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin later in the day.

Hungary’s government did not reply to emailed questions about who is on the plane, and Reuters could not verify whether Hungary’s prime minister is on board.

World Athletics president Lord Coe revealed a trip to Ukraine reaffirmed his stance that the governing body remains right to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from its competitions.

Coe, who also met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, praised the resilience of athletes he met at the country’s national championships, which also served as trials for this summer’s Paris Olympics.

Russia‘s defence ministry is carrying out drills involving mobile nuclear missile launchers, the Interfax news agency cited the ministry as saying on Friday.

Yars missile launcher crews from two units are set to move over 100 kilometres and practice camouflage and deployment, it said, with more crews joining drills in the future.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday he was not in a position to negotiate between Ukraine and Russia following media reports that he would travel to Moscow during the day to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Orban, a critic of Western military aid to Ukraine who has the warmest relations of any EU leader with Putin, said the fact that Hungary currently holds the bloc’s rotating presidency does not give him a mandate to negotiate on its behalf.

“I do not need a mandate as I do not represent anything,” Orban said on his regular Friday morning radio interview, without saying whether he would travel to Moscow later in the day.

“All I do is go to places where there is a war or threat of war that threatens the European Union and Hungary, or has a negative consequence on them, and ask questions,” he added.

In a sign of their more defensive posture, some Russian warships that seldom entered the Sea of Azov to the east of Crimea are now stationed there regularly, Ukraine’s navy chief said.

Monitoring data compiled by the Ukrainian Navy and provided to Reuters showed that as of June 27, 10 Russian warships were stationed in the Sea of Azov compared with none in 2023.

Vice-Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa said the Black Sea Fleet is primarily used now for logistics, a small amount of coastal territorial control and for firing Kalibr cruise missiles at Ukraine.

He declined to say what Ukraine‘s future plans in the Black Sea would involve.

Ukraine‘s operations in the Black Sea have allowed it to establish and secure its own shipping corridor without Russia‘s blessing after Moscow pulled out of the wartime food export deal brokered by the United Nations last year.

Neizhpapa said the delivery of U.S.-made F-16 fighter aircraft, expected to happen soon, would be a boost allowing it to challenge what he called Russia‘s “full dominance” of the skies over the Black Sea.

“F-16s with the right armaments will be able to push away Russian warplanes. The northwestern part of the Black Sea, particularly the corridor for civilian ships, will be almost 100% secure,” he said.

The Russian navy’s Black Sea Fleet has been forced to rebase nearly all its combat-ready warships from occupied Crimea to other locations, and its main naval hub is becoming ineffectual because of attacks by Kyiv, Ukraine’s navy chief said.

Vice-Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa said Ukrainian missile and naval drone strikes had caused heavy damage to the Sevastopol base, a logistics hub for repairs, maintenance, training and ammunition storage among other important functions for Russia.

“They were established over many decades, possibly centuries. And clearly they are now losing this hub,” Neizhpapa told Reuters in a rare interview in the port city of Odesa ahead of Ukraine Navy Day on Sunday.

“Almost all the main combat-ready ships have been moved by the enemy from the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, and the ships are kept in Novorossiisk, and some of them are kept in the Sea of Azov,” he said.

Neizhpapa said Ukraine had destroyed or damaged 27 naval vessels, including five that he said were destroyed by sea mines laid by Ukrainian naval drones near the Bay of Sevastopol.

Russia‘s Federal Security Service said it had prevented an attack on a defence facility in the Samara region in southwest Russia, the RIA state news agency reported on Friday.

Chasiv Yar is a short distance west of Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia last year after a bitter 10-month battle. For months, Russian forces have focused on capturing Chasiv Yar, a town which occupies an elevated location. Its fall would put nearby cities in jeopardy and compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes.

The Ukrainian army retreated from a northeastern neighborhood in the town, Nazar Voloshyn, the spokesperson for the Khortytsia ground forces formation, told The Associated Press in a written message Thursday.

A six-year-old girl died in hospital after a Ukranian drone attack on the town of Primorsko-Akhtarsk in Russia’s Krasnodar region, Veniamin Kondratyev, the regional governor, said on Friday.

He said six people were hospitalised after the attack. Ukraine has not commented on the incident so far.