The Ukrainian military said on Saturday that Ukrainian troops had withdrawn from the strategic frontline city of Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine.
“After the withdrawal of our military units, the enemy is consolidating its positions in … Sievierodonetsk,” it said in an update.

Budanov added Russia is using its reserve forces in a covert mobilisation to replenish its ranks in eastern Ukraine and there is no point in waiting for its offensive potential to diminish.

He told Reuters he believed Ukraine could only achieve a victory against Russia through military force.

“We shouldn’t wait for a miracle that they will tire and stop wanting to fight and so on. We will win back our territory as a result of our counteroffensive,” said Budanov, head of the defence intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.

Budanov said Ukraine should see “visible results” of its counteroffensive in the Russian-occupied region of Kherson in Ukraine’s south from August.

Ukraine is regrouping its forces from the rubble of the city of Sievierodonetsk to higher ground in neighbouring Lysychansk to gain a tactical advantage over Russia, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said.

In an interview in Kyiv, Kyrylo Budanov told Reuters that Ukrainian forces would continue their defence of that front from Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine and that it was no longer possible to hold the line in Sievierodonetsk.

“The activities happening in the area of Sievierodonetsk are a tactical regrouping of our troops. This is a withdrawal to advantageous positions to obtain a tactical advantage,” said, Budanov, head of the defence intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.

Russia is using the tactic … it used in Mariupol: wiping the city from the face of the earth. Given the conditions, holding the defence in the ruins and open fields is no longer possible. So the Ukrainian forces are leaving for higher ground to continue the defence operations,” he said.

Asked if he meant Lysychansk, he said: “Yes, this is the only higher ground.”

The mayors of several European capitals have been duped into holding video calls with a deepfake of their counterpart in Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko.

The mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey, took part in a scheduled call on the Webex video conferencing platform on Friday with a person she said looked and sounded like Klitschko.

“There were no signs that the video conference call wasn’t being held with a real person,” her office said in a statement.

Ukraine said it came under “massive bombardment” from neighbouring Belarus as clashes were reported in the streets of the eastern city of Lysychansk, AFP reports.

Twenty rockets “fired from the territory of Belarus and from the air” targeted the village of Desna in the northern Chernigiv region, Ukraine’s northern military command said.

It said infrastructure was hit, but no casualties had yet been reported.

Belarus has provided logistic support to Moscow since the 24 February invasion, particularly in the first few weeks, and like Russia has been targeted by western sanctions but is officially not involved in the conflict.

“Today’s strike is directly linked to Kremlin efforts to pull Belarus as a co-belligerent into the war in Ukraine,” the Ukrainian intelligence service said.

Russian helicopters have launched missiles at a border village in the northeastern Ukrainian province of Sumy province.

Two Russian helicopters “carried out six launches of unguided missiles” on the Krasnopillia village in Sumy, near the Ukrainian border with Russia, Kyiv Independent reports, citing Ukraine’s border guard service.

No casualties have been reported yet.

The mayors of several European capitals were tricked into holding video calls with a deepfake of the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, last week.

There were “no signs that the video conference call wasn’t being held with a real person”, said the office of the mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey, who was among those who were duped.

Almost all of Ukraine’s troops have now withdrawn from the strategic frontline city Sievierodonetsk, the local mayor has said.

Fierce fighting over the city has been ongoing for weeks against advancing Russian forces.

Reuters reports that mayor Oleksandr Stryuk did not confirm whether a full withdrawal was under way, but told national television:

Unfortunately, they have almost left the city.

Greece has suspended visa applications for Russians, the Association of Tour Operators of Russia has said.

Russians will no longer be able to apply for a visa for the country from 27 June, the Russian state-owned news agency RIA reported.

Greece joins several other European countries in suspending new visa applications from Russians since its invasion of Ukraine, including Bulgaria and Spain. Greece had already stopped issuing ‘golden visas’ – residence permits for investment purposes – to Russians.

Germany has signed an agreement to provide Ukraine’s state budget with €1 billion in grant funding, according to a statement by Ukraine’s finance ministry.

The funding will be “directed to the state budget of Ukraine to finance priority social and humanitarian expenditures during martial law”, it said. Ukraine will receive the funds via the International Monetary Fund.

Ukraine’s finance minister Serhiy Marchenko said: “Mr Lindner [referring to German finance minister Christian Lindner], thank you personally, your team and everyone involved in the process, thanks to whose efforts we structured this agreement very quickly.

“We hope to receive funds in the near future. This grant is an extremely important contribution to support our state in this difficult time. We highly appreciate the assistance from the government of the Federal Republic of Germany.”

Russian forces have killed dozens of Polish fighters in the eastern Donetsk region, according to the country’s defence ministry.

It said “up to 80” Polish fighters were killed in “precision strikes” on the Megatex zinc factory in Kostyantynivka, AFP reports.

Rocket systems supplied by the US are already working and hitting targets in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, the country’s top general said on Saturday.

“Artillerymen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine skilfully hit certain targets – military targets of the enemy on our, Ukrainian, territory,” chief of Ukraine’s general staff Valeriy Zaluzhnyi wrote on Telegram.

Russia launched artillery bombardments and airstrikes on the cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk on Saturday, hitting a chemical plant where hundreds of civilians were trapped, a Ukrainian official has said.

Russian authorities have taken a Polish flag down from a memorial for the thousands of Poles killed by the Soviet Union amid deteriorating relations between Moscow and Warsaw over the war in Ukraine.

The mayor of Smolensk city confirmed the flag’s removal on Friday evening, sharing a photo showing the Russian flag flying alone at the Katyn memorial’s entrance.

“There cannot be Polish flags on Russian monuments. Even less so after the frankly anti-Russian comments by Polish political leaders,” Andrei Borisov said on social media platform VKontakte.

“The culture ministry of the Russian Federation made the right decision by removing the Polish flag. Katyn is a Russian memorial.”

The Katyn memorial was erected to commemorate the 25,000 Poles massacred on Joseph Stalin’s orders in a forest near Smolensk in 1940. For decades, the Soviet Union denied it had been behind the massacre, accusing the Nazis of the crime, before admitting the truth in 1990.

The Ukrainian prosecutor-general’s office has shared an update of alleged war crimes it claims Russia has committed as its invasion enters its fifth month.

It says it has registered 19,530 alleged crimes of aggression and war crimes and 9,678 alleged crimes against national security. Additionally, 339 children have been killed, it says.

Eurovision winners Kalush Orchestra have said they hope Ukraine is able to host next year’s contest despite organisers saying it would not be possible.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) on Thursday said the “severe” risk of air raids in Ukraine alongside the “high” risk of mass casualties contributed to the decision that the “necessary requirements for hosting” the competition were not met.

In an interview with the PA news agency, Kalush, thanked Boris Johnson for saying the event should take place in Kyiv. He said: “Right now there [are still] a lot of discussions [going on] in Ukraine. Maybe Ukraine will be invited [to host Eurovision]. And we altogether hope Eurovision will be in Ukraine.”

Johnson on Friday said he believed it would be possible for Ukraine, which won the contest, to host the event next year, saying “they deserve to have it”. “I believe that they can have it and I believe that they should have it. I believe that Kyiv or any other safe Ukrainian city would be a fantastic place to have it.”

UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said that he fears the economic consequences of war could pressure Ukraine to agree a peace deal with Russia that was not in its interests.

“Too many countries are saying this is a European war that is unnecessary … and so the pressure will grow to encourage – coerce, maybe – the Ukrainians to a bad peace,” he told broadcasters in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, where he is attending a Commonwealth summit.

He said the consequences of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, winning the war would be dangerous to international security and “a long-term economic disaster”.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said that he would resign if he had to abandon Ukraine because it became too difficult or expensive.

Asked by the BBC if he thinks leadership is about morality and if there are any circumstances in which he would resign, he pointed to supporting Ukraine as one issue over which he would step down.

Johnson said: “Of course I think it is [about morality]. If it was put to me we had to abandon the Ukrainian cause because it was getting too difficult and the cost of supporting that people was too great in terms of inflation, economic damage, I would accept I had lost a very important argument and I would go. But I don’t see that.”

Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security claims that Russia has lost 34,700 troops since it began its invasion in February.

The body estimates that 1,511 tanks have also been lost and 217 aircraft.

I’m Clea Skopeliti, taking over the blog from my colleague Martin Farrer. I’ll be bringing you the latest news from Ukraine for the next few hours. It’s 10.25am in Kyiv.

Our correspondent Daniel Boffey has been to the eastern edge of the EU’s border with Russia to talk to local people who fear that Russian troops could cross into their lands.

The Suwalki gap is a 60-mile strip on the edge of Poland and Lithuania and is seen as vulnerable due to its position between Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus.

Read his full report here:

Poles and Ukrainians will walk for peace and demand an end to discrimination against the LGBT+ community on Saturday, Reuters reports, in a joint Pride march in Warsaw that organisers say aims to defend freedom and equality as war casts a shadow over eastern Europe.

The annual Pride march in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was cancelled due to Russia’s invasion, leading the LGBT+ community in Warsaw to team up with their counterparts in Ukraine to organise the event in the Polish capital.

“Russia denied us the right that we were fighting for for years, Russia denied us the Pride, our march of equality that we are holding every year since 2012 in Kyiv. … That is why we are marching in Warsaw,” said Lenny Emson, executive director of KyivPride, who came to Poland for the march.

“We are marching for peace, we are marching for Ukraine, we are marching for victory.”

Welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Martin Farrer and these are the latest developments you need to know about:

• Ukraine is likely re-configuring its defence of the Sievierodonetsk-Lysychansk sector, as Russian armoured units continue to make creeping gains on the southern edge of the build up area, according to UK military intelligence. It follows an announcement that Ukrainian forces are preparing to retreat from Sievierodonetsk after weeks of fierce fighting.

• The nearby city of Lysychansk appears likely to become the next main focus of fighting. A pro-Russian leader says it would take another week and a half to secure full control of Sievierodonetsk’s twin. Ukrainian soldiers have also retreated from the towns of Hirske and Zolote in the face of overwhelming Russian forces, said Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

• German consumers could face a tripling of gas prices in the coming months after Russia’s throttling of deliveries to Europe, a senior energy official has said. Moscow reduced the flow of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline by 40% last week, citing technical reasons that Berlin dismisses as a pretext, prompting a four- to sixfold rise in market prices, said the head of Germany’s federal network agency, Klaus Müller.

• The European Council has approved €9bn of financial aid to Ukraine. In a statement made by the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, at the European Council summit in Brussels on Friday, he said: “There is a war in Ukraine and there is nothing to pay nurses, teachers, police, border guards or many other public services.”

• Russia has condemned the European Union’s decision to accept Ukraine and Moldova as membership candidates. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, said the EU had confirmed that it continued to “actively exploit the CIS on a geopolitical level”, referring to Russia’s sphere of influence within former Soviet countries.

• Canada will be able to seize and dispose of assets sanctioned as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, following the Canadian Senate’s passage of the budget of the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, on Thursday. The government will then be able to use the funds from seized assets to support Ukraine.

• Ukraine’s main domestic security agency said on Friday it had uncovered a Russian spy network involving Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach, who was previously accused by the US of being a Russian agent. The state security service said Derkach, whose whereabouts were not made clear, set up a network of private security firms to use them to ease and support the entry of Russian units into cities during Moscow’s 24 February invasion.

• More than 3,000 dolphins in the Black Sea have died as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Ukrainian scientists working in the “Tuzlovsky Lymans” reserve, a national nature park. Nexta reports that the “work of sonar and explosions prevent them from finding food” and that dead dolphins have been increasingly found on the coasts of Bulgaria and Romania, in addition to Ukraine

• Mass kidnappings have been occurring in Melitopol, the mayor of the south-eastern Ukrainian city said. “More than 500 people have been abducted in the last four months,” Ivan Fedrov said, adding that mass kidnappings resumed in the Russian-occupied territory last week.

• Russia has launched 70 missiles at Odesa since February 24, the south-western city’s regional prosecution has said. According to the prosecution, the majority of the missiles have targeted residential areas and public utilities.