Russia Ukraine war live: First lady Olena Zelenska highlights ‘worst-case scenario’ amid Putin’s invasion

In a rare interview the First Lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, has spoken to Independent TV about her work rebuilding Ukraine in the middle of war, the pressures on her family and concerns for the future of her country.

From the presidential palace, she told The Independent’s Bel Trew about the need to reconstruct cities despite the fighting raging on, about building cutting-edge facilities to treat the country’s’ war-wounded and fighting stigma on trauma around the country.

Ukraine’s first lady has warned that Russia winning the war it started is “the worst-case scenario for all humanity”, in a heartfelt plea for the world not to lose interest in her country as its soldiers are fighting for “the democratic balance of the world”.

Speaking exclusively to Independent TV, Olena Zelenska said Ukraine is deeply concerned that the world is underestimating the wider threat from Moscow as the conflict grinds into its 18th month.

Read the full interview here:

Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory are being forced to assume Russian citizenship or face harsh retaliation, including possible deportation or detention, US-backed research published yesterday said.

A series of decrees signed by Russian president Vladimir Putin compel Ukrainians to get Russian passports, in violation of international humanitarian law, the report said.

Yale University researchers said that as part of a plan by Moscow to assert authority over Ukrainians, residents of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions are being targeted by a systematic effort to strip them of Ukrainian identity.

The Kremlin has consistently denied allegations of war crimes in Ukraine by forces taking part in a “special military operation” it says was launched to “de-Nazify” its neighbour and protect Russia.

Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin said in May that Moscow has given passports to almost 1.5 million people living in the annexed parts of Ukraine‘s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions since last October.

Ahmed Salah grew anxious when he heard the news that Russia had suspended a crucial wartime grain deal. The bakery owner in Egypt‘s capital is concerned it could mean global food prices soar.

“There mightn’t be immediate impact,” the 52-year-old said last week as he oversaw workers baking bread in his shop in Cairo, “but if they didn’t find a solution soonest, things would be very difficult.”

Russia pulled out of the deal brokered by the U.N. and Turkey to allow Ukraine’s grain to flow during a global food crisis. It helped stabilize food prices that soared last year after Russia invaded Ukraine — two countries that are major suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other food to developing nations.

Even though Russian forces have not made any significant headway along the front lines, they are entrenched in heavily mined areas they control, making it difficult for Ukrainian troops to move east and south, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.

Russian forces have utilised ample time this year during their occupation in frontline areas to prepare defences and lay extensive minefields, Oleksiy Danilov, the Secretary of Ukraine’s Security Council, said.

“The enemy has prepared very thoroughly for these events,” he told national television. “The number of mines on the territory that our troops have retaken is utterly mad. On average, there are three, four, five mines per square metre.”

In June, Ukrainian forces launched a drive to retake occupied areas and have been pressing southward toward the Sea of Azov to sever a land bridge between occupied eastern Ukraine and the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.

Anti-aircraft units were in action against attack drones during a three-hour air raid alert in and around Kyiv in the early hours today, the military said, with several explosions reported but no strikes or casualties announced.

Kyiv military authorities lifted the alert just after 4am (1am GMT).

One report by the military said airborne targets had been downed, but no details were provided.

Alerts were also lifted in most other areas of the country.

Amid the ravages of war, Sergey, a seasoned Wagner mercenary, found himself grappling with the relentless violence that has become a way of life and death on the front line. The savage conflict, the sense of betrayal from the Kremlin, and rumours of plots, all combined to create an atmosphere of uncertainty and dread.

At the end he decided to abandon the Wagner group and the savage, meat-grinding combat of Donbas where corpses piled up, and towns and cities were razed.

Kim Sengupta meets a fighter – a father of two – who has recently left the mercenary group and hears about the daily routine of ‘fight, eat, pray’ on some of the fiercest frontlines in the war:

Officials in Kyiv have said its troops have retaken areas near Bakhmut, an eastern city seized by Russian forces in May after months of battles.

Deputy Ukrainian defence minister Hanna Maliar said Russian forces had “tried quite persistently to halt our advance in the Bakhmut sector. Without success.”

Russian forces, she wrote on Telegram, were beefing up reserves and equipment in three areas further north, where heavy fighting has also been reported in recent weeks.

Russia attacked Ukraine’s main inland port across the River Danube from Romania yesterday, sending global food prices higher as it ramps up its use of force to prevent Kyiv from exporting grain.

The attacks destroyed buildings in the port of Izmail, south of Moldova, and halted ships in their tracks as they prepared to arrive there to load up with Ukrainian grain in defiance of a de-facto Black Sea blockade reimposed by Russia last month.

The port, which lies across the river from Nato-member Romania, is the main alternative route for exports.

“Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia – to its symbolic centres and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process,” he said in a video address from the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk.

Russia’s defence ministry conceded on Sunday (30 July) that a 50-storey building containing the offices of a number of government agencies and a shopping precinct in the capital’s western Moskva-Citi business district were both hit by drone strikes it blamed on Ukraine, claiming to have brought down three more devices.

Joe Sommerlad has the full story: