Ukraine updates: German FM brushes off talks with Putin

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Russian President Vladimir Putin mocked European leaders in a clip that was broadcast on Russian state television on Sunday.

In the video, Putin claimed other European leaders were dependent on the US as war rages in Ukraine.

"If they are told tomorrow: 'We have decided to hang you all!' they will ask only one question, with their eyes down in surprise from their boldness: 'Can we do this with the help of domestically-made ropes?" Putin said, as cited by the state news agency TASS.

"And this will be another bust for them, sorry. I think it will be a fiasco for them because the Americans are highly unlikely to refuse ... such a large contract for their textile industry."

Several hundred Wagner troops arrived in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Sunday, a Russian defense contractor said.

The Officers' Union for International Security — which the United States says is a front group for Wagner — said that a planned rotation of Wagner troops was underway to provide security for a referendum that could allow CAR President Faustin Archange Touadera to seek a third term.

"Russian instructors will continue to aid soldiers in the Central African armed forces to ensure security in anticipation of the constitutional referendum scheduled for July 30," the company said.

The news comes amid uncertainty of the Wagner Group's operations abroad after it launched short-lived mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin's government last month. Earlier this week, Putin said the group had no legal basis to operate.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday threatened to use cluster bombs against Ukraine if Kyiv deployed similar munitions recently supplied by the US.

"I want to say that Russia has sufficient reserves of various types of cluster munitions," Putin told Russian state TV in an interview set to be aired on Sunday evening.

Putin claimed Russia has so far refrained from using cluster bombs — a claim squarely refuted by the AP news agency and various international human rights groups that found both Moscow and Kyiv have been using this type of ammunition. The Russian president added that, if such munitions are used against Russian troops, "we reserve the right to take reciprocal action."

Cluster bombs work by dispersing scores of smaller bomblets while still in the air, set to explode when hitting their target.

Such munitions have a high "dud" rate, meaning bomblets can lie unexploded indefinitely, greatly increasing the risk of harm to unsuspecting civilians who may come across them at a later point in time.

Neither Russia, Ukraine nor the US are among the world’s 111 signatories to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use, transfer and stockpiling of cluster bombs.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Ukrainian counteroffensive to recapture territory was "not succeeding" and that Russian defenses were holding.

"All attempts by the enemy to break through our defense ... have not been successful throughout the entire offensive," Putin said in a state TV interview.

Kyiv said Friday its troops had advanced nearly two kilometers (1.2 miles) along the southern front over the past week.

Mykola Urshalovych, a senior representative of the National Guard, told reporters that Ukrainian forces moved towards the occupied southern city of Melitopol during the ongoing offensive.

On Sunday, the army said it was pursuing offensive operations toward Melitopol and Berdyansk.

 

South Korea will provide more demining equipment to Ukraine, a South Korean official said, following President Yoon Suk Yeol's visit to Kyiv, where he pledged more military and humanitarian aid in Ukraine's   fight against Russian forces.

"We are thinking to expand support on mine detectors and demining equipment as Ukraine's demand for them was assessed to be desperately huge," Yoon's deputy national security adviser, Kim Tae-hyo said.

Yoon made the pledge for more aid in talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday in a surprise visit to Kyiv after attending a NATO summit in Lithuania and visiting Poland, where he expressed solidarity with Ukraine.

South Korea is a US ally and major arms exporter but it has been resisting Western pressure to help arm Ukraine directly, citing business ties with Russia and Moscow's influence over North Korea.

The last ship to travel under a UN-brokered deal that allows the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain left the port of Odesa early on Sunday, according to a Reuters witness and MarineTraffic.com.

Russia has not agreed to register any new ships since June 27 and the grain deal initiative will expire on Monday unless Moscow agrees to extend it.

A United Nations spokesman said on Friday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was waiting for a response from Russian President Vladimir Putin on a proposal to extend the deal.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Putin has agreed to extend the Black Sea grain deal. However,  the Kremlin spokesperson did not confirm Erdogan's comments.

On Saturday, Putin told South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in a phone call that commitments to remove obstacles to Russian food and fertilizer exports had yet to be fulfilled, the Kremlin said.

More than 32 million metric tons of corn, wheat and other grains have been exported by Ukraine under the arrangement. 

Seven civilians were injured in Russian shelling in a village in the Zaporizhia region, where fierce fighting continues during Ukraine's counteroffensive against invading Russian forces, Ukrainian officials said.

Zaporizhzhia Governor Yuriy Malashko posted on Telegram that three women and four men were injured and a number of houses were damaged in Russian shelling from multiple rocket launchers on the village of Stepnohirske on Saturday afternoon. Over the past day, there had been 48 instances of Russian artillery firing on a number of towns and villages in the region, Malashko said.

In a move widely condemned as illegal, Russia said last year it was annexing Zaporizhzhia and other parts of Ukraine, and it controls a nuclear power plant there, Europe's largest, but the regional capital, the city of Zaporizhzhia, remains under Kyiv's control.

Meanwhile, one civilian was killed and another wounded in Russian shelling in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, while seven were injured. Ukraine recaptured much of the eastern Kharkiv region in September, with Russian forces occupying now only a small strip of land there.

Redoubling support for war-stricken Ukraine is the "single best" way to aid the global economy, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on the sidelines of a G20 finance ministers summit in India.

"Ending this war is first and foremost a moral imperative," she told reporters. "But it's also the single best thing we can do for the global economy."

According to Yellen, she would "push back" on criticism there was a tradeoff between aid to Ukraine and developing nations. "Ending this war is first and foremost a moral imperative. But it's also the single best thing we can do for the global economy," she said.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, both global breadbaskets that together exported almost a quarter of the world's wheat supply, triggered shockwaves in economies worldwide by sending prices for food and fuel shooting up.

However, any discussion on Ukraine is awkward for G20 host India, which has not condemned Russia's invasion but is also part of the Quad grouping alongside Australia, the United States and Japan.

Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces had prevented Ukraine from attacking the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, destroying seven aerial and two underwater drones. There were no casualties and no damage, the ministry added.

It said that two aerial drones were shot down over the Black Sea at a great distance from the coastline, while five were intercepted by Russia's electronic warfare forces.

Two unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), also known as underwater drones, were discovered in the northern part of the Black Sea, and destroyed by fire, the ministry said.

Earlier, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol, said on the Telegram messaging app that the attacks were over the harbor of Sevastopol and the city's Balaklava, Khersones districts.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the attack on Sevastopol, a port in the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine and Russia have traded fresh accusations of attacking areas in Zaporizhzhia, near Europe's largest nuclear power plant.

The plant has been under Moscow's control since shortly after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The head of Ukraine's presidential administration accused Russia of shelling a village in the Zaporizhzhia province on Saturday, injuring three civilians.

Andriy Yermak said on Telegram that multiple Russian rocket launchers hit an administrative building, injuring two women and a man.

Meanwhile, Moscow-backed officials accused Ukrainian forces of shelling a school. Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in parts of Zaporizhzhia controlled by Moscow, accused Ukrainian forces of destroying a school in the village of Stulneve.

A Moscow court charged seven people with plotting to kill two notable Russian journalists out of "national hatred." This plot was reportedly supported by Ukraine, according to Russia's state-run TASS news agency.

The alleged victims were Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the pro-Kremlin international broadcaster RT, and leading TV anchor Ksenia Sobchak.

Russia's FSB security agency claimed the suspects were members of a neo-Nazi group called "Paragraph-88."

According to the Interfax news agency, the detainees told the FSB that Ukraine had promised them 1.5 million roubles ($16,600; €14,800) for each person.

Kyiv did not immediately respond to the claims, which have not been independently verified.

Simonyan, who is a fervent supporter of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, posted a message on Telegram telling authorities to "keep on working, brothers!"

Sobchak, who has criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past and ran against him at the 2018 presidential election, struck a slightly different tone.

"If this is all true, then thanks to all the services involved for their work," she wrote on Telegram.

"If not, and if the point was simply to put me in the same sentence as Simonyan, then this is just plain mean."

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has shrugged off the possibility of negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the foreseeable future.

Speaking in an interview given to German newspapers Bild and Welt and the US-based website Politico, Baerbock said there was no basis for negotiations.

"I wish we could negotiate. But at the moment it is not [about] what you wish for, but at the moment it is about facing reality," she said.

The German foreign minister said that attempts to negotiate with Putin were made in the period before Russia invaded Ukraine.

"The response to that was that 100,000 troops went in," she said.

Baerbock stressed that the answer lay with Kyiv winning back its peace.

"That will only work if this brutal Russian war of aggression is stopped, if the Russian soldiers leave Ukraine and these daily nightly attacks by drones, by missiles, by bombs on Ukraine stop.

rmt/lo (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)