Ukraine Update…616 days into the Russian move on Ukraine…..

• A close military adviser to the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s army has been killed after a booby-trapped birthday present he was given exploded. “Under tragic circumstances, my assistant and close friend, Major Gennadiy Chastiakov, was killed … on his birthday,” Gen Valery Zaluzhny wrote online. Chastiakov leaves a wife and four children, he said.

• Zaluzhny said Chastiakov had been “fully devoting his life to the armed forces of Ukraine and the fight against Russian aggression”. Attacks targeting Ukrainian officials have been relatively rare since Moscow invaded. There have been attacks on Russian nationalists, which Russia has blamed on Ukraine. In April, a blast from a statuette rigged with explosives killed the 40-year-old pro-Kremlin military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said the deaths of at least 19 soldiers in a Russian missile strike on a military ceremony was a “tragedy that could’ve been avoided”. Other reports suggest the death toll could be much higher, while defence chiefs are under pressure over the staging of the event in a frontline village vulnerable to attack.

• Zelenskiy has said it is irresponsible to talk of holding an election in Ukraine in wartime and called for unity to avoid pointless political discussions. “We need to recognise that this is a time for defence, a time for battle, upon which the fate of the state and its people depend … I believe that elections are not appropriate at this time.” Elections are banned under martial law in force in Ukraine, but Zelenskiy had been considering whether to invoke special provisions to stage them. He has said he would like to run for a second term if a vote took place.

• In the US, some senate Republicans have released a sweeping set of US border security proposals as a condition for sending more aid to Ukraine, laying out a draft plan that includes resuming construction on parts of the Mexico border wall.

• Vladimir Putin has decided to run in the March presidential election, a move that would keep him in power until least 2030, as he is said to feel he must steer Russia through its most perilous period in decades, sources told Reuters.

• Radio Free Europe has said that it believes Russia may have taken one of its journalists “hostage” for a potential prisoner swap with the US and is appealing to Moscow not to treat her cruelly, the broadcaster’s acting president said.

• Several dozen owners of transport companies blocked three major Polish border crossings with Ukraine in protest at what they say is unfair competition from its businesses.

• Ukraine’s grain exports have fallen by almost a third compared with last year, agriculture ministry data shows, to 9.8m tonnes so far in the July 2023-June 2024 season. The ministry said that by this point last year, Ukraine had exported 14.3m tonnes.

• Odesa’s national art museum said seven exhibitions, most featuring the work of contemporary Ukrainian artists, were damaged by a Russian strike that left a large crater outside the museum, which is celebrating its 124th anniversary. Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Emine Dzheppar, said Kyiv was “deeply outraged” by the attack and urged the UN’s Paris-based heritage agency, Unesco, to condemn it….

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