Ukraine Update…821 Days of the Russian Conflict…Ukraine getting more assistance from Europe…

Hungary seems to be working to slow EU asstance to Ukraine….

Poland is tightening up things in repsonse to Russian covert actions there….

And upgrading it’s internal defense by $2.5B , with emphasis on its border with Belarus….

Russian forces make small progress in the Donetsk region….

Ukraine President Zelensky arrives in Spain which is about to send $1.3B in assistance to the Ukraine….

The assistance will include Patriot missiles and tanks…..

Putin continues his corruption clean up effort in his senior Defense staff members….

President Biden has STILL not given the Ok for the Ukraine to use US missiles for deep Russian strikes….

 

• Hungary is systematically blocking all efforts at the European Union level to support Ukraine in its war against Russia, Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielis Landsbergis said on Monday, adding the bloc must “find a way to work around this.” “We have to start seeing this as a systematic approach towards any efforts by the EU to have any meaningful role in foreign affairs,” Landsbergis said, adding: “It has gone very, very far.”

• Two civilians were killed and five wounded in a Russian attack on Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region on Monday, Ukrainian emergencies service said. “In the afternoon, as a result of a missile attack on (the town of) Snihurivka, a fire broke out in a coffee shop, a car shop and a tyre service, and a blast wave damaged a self-service car wash,” the service said in the Telegram messaging app. “The bodies of two people were found during the rubble removal,” it added.

• Poland will introduce restrictions on the movement of Russian diplomats on its territory due to Moscow’s involvement in a hybrid war against the European Union, foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said. Relations between Poland and Russia have deteriorated sharply since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022. Warsaw has also accused Moscow of spying activity and taking part in acts of sabotage on its territory, Reuters reported.

• One civilian was killed and 10 injured in a Russian attack on Ukraine’s eastern city of Kharkiv on Monday, local governor said. “The enemy attacked a civilian enterprise with a guided bomb. There is damage to production facilities,” the governor Oleh Syniehubov said on the Telegram messaging app.

• Alar Karis, the Estonian president, said today that Russian hybrid attacks will likely continue. Speaking alongside his Finnish counterpart, Karis said “we both recognised that we are ready for this development,” the Estonian public broadcaster reported.

• Russian forces captured two villages in Ukraine, the defence ministry said on Monday. The settlements are Ivanivka in the Kharkiv region and Netailove in Donetsk.

• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrived in Madrid where he is set to meet prime minister Pedro Sanchez and sign a security deal through which Spain will supply Kyiv with 1.13 billion euros ($1.23 billion) worth of weapons. King Felipe welcomed Zelenskiy on the tarmac at Barajas airport, a gesture underlining the importance of the visit for Madrid. Zelenskiy later met Sanchez ahead of a joint press conference scheduled for later in the afternoon.

• Spain plans to send Patriot missiles and Leopard tanks to Ukraine as part of a $1.23 billion weapon package announced last month, El Pais newspaper reported on Monday, citing unidentified sources close to the operation. Spain will hand over a dozen crucial Patriot anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine and 19 second-hand German-made Leopard 2A4 tanks and other Spanish-made weapons, such as anti-drones gear and ammunition, the newspaper said.

• A Ukrainian drone attacked a Russian “Voronezh M” early-warning radar near the city of Orsk in the Orenburg region at a “record” distance, a Kyiv intelligence source said on Monday. The source told Reuters the attack was conducted by Ukraine’s military spy agency on Sunday and did not say whether it caused any damage. The city of Orsk lies around 1,500 km from the nearest parts of Ukrainian-controlled territory.

• One person was killed and three wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Oryol region on Monday, the regional governor, Andrey Klychkov, said on the Telegram messaging app. Klychkov said a drone had crashed into a gas station, damaging it, and a second fell on it later, killing a firefighter.

• The European Union has added Voice of Europe and two businessmen connected to the news website to an EU-wide sanctions list, extending sanctions imposed by the Czech Republic, its foreign ministry said. The sanctions on the two individuals, Viktor Medvedchuk and Artem Marchevskyi, and the website will consist of travel bans and asset freezes, the ministry said. In March, the Czech Republic sanctioned the Prague-based company, which runs the news website voiceofeurope.com, alleging it was a tool of Russian propaganda, Reuters reported.

• Poland fleshed out details on Monday of “East Shield”, a 10 billion zloty ($2.55 billion) programme to beef up defences along its eastern border with Belarus and Russia, saying it hoped to complete the plans by 2028. The border has been a flashpoint since migrants started flocking there in 2021, after Belarus, a close Russian ally, opened travel agencies in the Middle East offering a new unofficial route into Europe – a move the European Union said was designed to create a crisis, Reuters reported.

• Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nausėda has won re-election, official results showed, in a vote marked by defence concerns over neighbouring Russia. The count published by the electoral commission showed that Nausėda won 74.6% of votes with 90% of ballots counted after polls closed on Sunday in the second-round vote.

• A Russian military court has refused to release Ivan Popov, the former commander of Russia’s 58th army arrested on suspicion of fraud, turning down a request to put him under house arrest, a Reuters reporter in the court said. Following a June 2023 mutiny by Wagner mercenaries against Russia’s defence establishment, Popov said he had been dismissed after telling the top brass about the dire situation at the front in Ukraine.

• In the weeks since Vladimir Putin sacked his longtime defence minister Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s FSB security service has pursued a series of high-level corruption cases against a deputy minister and department heads in what many insiders are now calling a purge in the defence ministry. Andrei Belousov, the technocrat economist appointed to replace Shoigu, has a mandate to reduce corruption in the defence ministry and streamline military production for a long war against Ukraine that could largely be decided by industrial output.

• A former German armed forces officer was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on Monday for spying for Russia, German media reported, in a case that highlighted Germany’s vulnerability to the increasingly hostile neighbour to its east. The former army captain, who was stationed at the army’s procurement office in Koblenz, was accused of handing over classified documents to Russia’s consulate in Bonn and embassy in Berlin…..

More…