Moscow’s response to Lithuania’s ban on the transit of goods sanctioned by the EU to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad will not be exclusively diplomatic but practical in nature, Maria Zakharova has said.

“One of the main questions has been about whether the response would be exclusively diplomatic. The answer: no,” the foreign ministry press secretary said at her weekly briefing. “The response will not be diplomatic but practical.”

Reuters reports that Zakharova would not elaborate on the nature of the practical measures Russia planned to take against Lithuania.

Yesterday while hosting a meeting in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s security council, said: “Russia will certainly respond to such hostile actions. Their consequences will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania.”

From 17 June an EU prohibition on Russian steel and iron ore came into force, and the Lithuanian state railway said it would consequently no longer allow these goods to be carried on its tracks and imported into Kaliningrad.

One of the leaders of the authorities imposed in occupied Ukraine has described the border between Russia and Ukraine as “worse than the Berlin Wall for the Germans”, according to a report from RIA Novosti.

It quotes Vladimir Rogov saying:

For us, the border with Russia is worse than the Berlin Wall for the Germans. According to various estimates, 60-68 per cent of the inhabitants of East Berlin and the German Democratic Republic [East Germany] had relatives in West Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany [West Germany]. In Ukraine, depending on the region, 73-85 percent residents have relatives in Russia. Accordingly, this border should not exist.

Rogov went on to say, the agency reports, that the Germans did not hold a referendum on the wall, they took it into their own hands to destroy it and live in a single state.

“Our reunification with Russia is inevitable, there should be no borders between us,” Rogov is quoted as saying.

Rogov is a member of the main council of the self-proclaimed military-civilian administration of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine.

Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is set to mark the day when Hitler’s Nazi Germany forces invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941.

The date is significant in Russia and remembered as the ‘Day of Remembrance and Sorrow’.

Putin will reportedly lay flowers to honour the dead on Wednesday.

To mark the anniversary, the Russian defence ministry released documents dating back to the start of the second world war purporting to show Germany intended to claim the Soviet army was bombing churches and cemeteries to justify its invasion.

“Just as nowadays, in 1941, the Nazis prepared provocations in advance to discredit our state,” Russia’s defence ministry said.

June 22 is one of the most tragic dates in Russian history – Memorial and Mourning Day. On this day 81 years ago, the Great Patriotic War began.

A divine liturgy and a memorial service will be held in the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces.”

Ukraine’s army has said it had launched airstrikes on Zmiinyi Island, also known as Snake Island, causing “significant losses” to Russian forces.

In a video address posted to Facebook, the military’s southern operational command said it had used “aimed strikes with the use of various forces” on the island.

The command added:

The island of Zmiinyi was dealt a concentrated blow with the use of various forces and methods of destruction.”

Russian troops stationed on the island took “significant losses”

The military operation continues and requires information silence until it is over.

Moscow claimed it repelled the “mad” attack which saw Ukraine “plan to carry out massive air and artillery fire… before landing and capturing” the island.

In an update posted to its Telegram channel, Russia’s ministry of defence said:

On June 20 at 5am, the Kyiv regime undertook another mad attempt to take possession of Snake Island.

This is another fake ‘victory’ of the Ukrainian military.

The ministry said 15 Ukrainian attack and reconnaissance drones took part in the airstrike while missile launchers and howitzers fired at the island, with 13 drones reportedly shot down.

Hello it’s Samantha Lock back with you as we continue to report all the latest news from Ukraine.

Here are all the other major developments as of 8am in Kyiv.

• Ukraine’s army said it launched airstrikes on Zmiinyi Island, also known as Snake Island, causing “significant losses” to Russian forces. The military’s southern operational command said it had undertaken “aimed strikes with the use of various forces” and the military operation was continuing.

• The military situation for Ukraine’s defenders in the eastern Donbas is “extremely difficult”, officials have said. There are 568 civilians thought to be holed up in Sievierodonetsk’s Azot chemical plant, as Russian attacks intensify in an effort to capture Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk. Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, said Lysychansk was getting shelled “en masse”.

• Russian forces have captured several settlements near Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk. The head of the Sievierodonetsk district military administration, Roman Vlasenko, said the frontline village of Toshkivka had not been under Ukrainian control since Monday. Russian forces also reportedly captured Pidlisne and Mala Dolyna, located south-west of Sievierodonetsk, and saw success near the Hirske settlement in Luhansk.

• At least 15 civilians were killed in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region by Russian shelling on Tuesday, according to the regional governor, Oleh Synegubov.

• Mass mobilisation is “about to happen” in Russia with the Kremlin recruiting people in poorer regions to fight in Ukraine, according to western officials. Officials also said there was “more chatter” about Vladimir Putin’s health and “more speculation” about who would replace him in Russia. However, there did not appear to be an “immediate threat” to the Russian president’s position from the elite or the general population, they said.

• A fire that broke out after Ukrainian forces allegedly attacked oil rigs in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea was approaching an oilwell, according to a pro-Russian official. Three people were wounded and seven people were still reportedly missing. The Russian-backed leader of annexed Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, blamed Kyiv for the attack.

• Russia has demanded that Lithuania immediately lift a ban on the transit of goods on an EU sanctions list across its territory to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. The secretary of the security council of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Patrushev, said the consequences of the ban “will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania”.

• The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, visited Ukraine on Tuesday to discuss Russia’s war crimes, a justice department official said. Garland met with Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, and announced a war crimes accountability team to identify and prosecute perpetrators. “There is no hiding place for war criminals,” Garland said.

• The Kremlin has said that two captured US volunteers are not covered by the Geneva conventions and could face the death penalty. Russian media claimed that two of three US volunteers missing in Ukraine had been captured and were being held by pro-Russian separatist forces. The Kremlin has denied it knows their locations.

• German self-propelled howitzers have arrived in Ukraine in the first delivery of heavy weapons promised by Berlin. “We have replenishment!” Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, announced. “The German Panzerhaubitze 2000 with trained Ukrainian crews joined the Ukrainian artillery family.”

• Turkey should be cautious about delivering more weapons to Ukraine, the head of Turkey’s weapons production agency said. The remarks by Ismail Demir to the Wall Street Journal show how Ankara is increasingly playing both sides of the war. Turkish-made drones have played a critical role in Kyiv’s defence.

• Turkey’s military delegation will travel to Russia this week to discuss a possible safe sea corridor in the Black Sea to export Ukrainian grain, according to Turkish presidency sources. A meeting between Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and the United Nations would be held in Istanbul in the coming weeks, possibly with the participation of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, the sources said.

• European countries are united in their support for granting Ukraine the status of EU member candidate, Luxembourg’s foreign affairs minister has said. Jean Asselborn told reporters: “We are working towards the point where we tell Putin that Ukraine belongs to Europe, that we will also defend the values that Ukraine defends.”

• The UK government is “determined” to impose further sanctions on Russia and will continue to do so until Moscow fully withdraws from Ukraine, Britain’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said. She told parliament that she would be travelling to Turkey on Wednesday to discuss options to help get grain out of Odesa. Boris Johnson also warned of the need to resist “growing fatigue” around the war and said any concessions to Vladimir Putin would be a “disaster”.

• Estonia summoned the Russian ambassador on Tuesday to protest about an “extremely serious” violation of its airspace by a Russian helicopter. The Estonian foreign ministry said the helicopter flew over a point in the south-east without permission on 18 June.