July 25, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia's war in Ukraine has moved here.

Trevor Reed's fighting in Ukraine “shouldn’t have any effect” on negotiations to free other detained Americans, Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday.

Reed is a former US Marine who was wrongfully detained in Russia for nearly three years before being released in a prisoner swap. The State Department said earlier Tuesday that he was injured fighting in Ukraine.

“As I've noted before, even with countries where we have profound differences, and almost by definition, countries that are arbitrarily detaining or unlawfully detaining Americans are usually countries with which we have profound differences, we manage to find ways to bring Americans home,” Blinken said at a press conference in Tonga.

He touted the success of the administration so far, saying 29 Americans from at least 10 countries were brought back home.

Blinken said he had seen the reports that Reed was injured but didn’t have any additional information on his condition. The top US diplomat said it underscored why the US warns Americans against traveling to Ukraine.

Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has been detained in Russia following his arrest on espionage charges that he, the WSJ, and the US government vehemently deny.

Whelan has been imprisoned for nearly five years, also on espionage charges that he and the US government have denied.

Two children were among three people killed as a result of cluster shelling in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka on Monday, a local military official said Tuesday. 

The victims were an 11-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy and a 28-year-old man, Kyrylenko said.

Six people were also wounded, he said in a Telegram post with a link to his TV interview.

Some context: Cluster munitions indiscriminately scatter “bomblets” across large areas, posing such a threat to civilians that key US allies have outlawed its use in warfare. Russia is known to have deployed them throughout its invasion of Ukraine, and Ukrainian troops are now using US-provided cluster munitions.

Russian forces south of the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut have taken heavy losses and appear to have fallen back amid intense artillery fire from the Ukrainian side, according to official and unofficial Ukrainian accounts, as well as reports from Russian military bloggers.

Ukraine has been trying to break Russian resistance here for several weeks. Ukrainian advances near Andriivka are part of a plan to encircle Bakhmut and drive out Russian forces, the spokesperson for the eastern grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Serhii Cherevatyi, said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military said it has made slight progress on the southern front, in an area that has seen constant fighting for nearly two months. Valerii Shershen, the spokesperson for Ukrainian forces in the south, said troops had advanced by some 500 meters in an area near the town of Staromaiorske — a target of the Ukrainians since the beginning of their counter-offensive.

Here's what else you should know to get up to speed:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is sternly rebuking lawmakers and public officials who are going on vacation during the war.

“Millions of Ukrainians are focused on one thing day after day. Not on themselves, not on their own desires, but on defending the state and their lives,” he said, according to an official English transcript of his nightly address on Tuesday. “But unfortunately, some people think that the war is somewhere far away from them."

He spoke directly to members of parliament, officials and others in public office, asking them to work "in Ukraine and for the sake of the Ukrainian people."

His remarks come amid a slew of corruption scandals being reported in Ukrainian media involving public officials. 

Five European Union member states bordering Ukraine are requesting that an existing ban on imports of four types of Ukrainian grain be extended beyond the scheduled expiry date of September 15, the EU Council said on Tuesday.  

Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Romania would like to see a temporary EU import ban of Ukrainian wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower oil be extended to the end of the year, Spain’s Minister for Agriculture Luis Planas Puchades said at a news conference in Brussels. He was speaking in his capacity as president of the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council. 

The EU adopted the measures in May to ease logistical bottlenecks and protect local farmers from being undercut in price by cheaper grain produced in Ukraine. 

Speaking at the same event, the EU’s Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski said the bloc will need to consider “new circumstances” while considering the extension given Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal.  

Trevor Reed, a former US Marine who was wrongfully detained in Russia for nearly three years before being released last year, was injured while participating in fighting in Ukraine, US State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel confirmed Tuesday.

Reed, who was freed in a prisoner swap in April 2022, was transported to a hospital in Kyiv and then evacuated to Germany for medical care at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which is a US military hospital near Ramstein Air Base, a US official told CNN.

The circumstances around Reed's injury in combat were not immediately clear.

The Messenger was first to report the news.

The Biden administration is aware Reed “was injured while participating in fighting in Ukraine,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday.

Jean-Pierre noted that Reed “was not engaged in any activities on behalf of the US government,” while fighting in Ukraine.

And she warned that, for Americans traveling to the region, “we are not able to provide assistance to evacuate US citizens — that’s not something that we are able to do from Ukraine, including those Americans who may decide to travel to Ukraine to participate in an ongoing war.”

Impact on other detained US citizens: When asked if he is concerned this will have negative implications on negotiations for Americans designated as wrongfully detained in Russia, Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich, the State Department's Patel said he wouldn’t speculate. 

“We will continue to engage directly with the Russian Federation, calling for the release, you've seen us do so in the case of Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich, and will continue to remain deeply engage on those issues,” Patel said.

A US official, however, said that “of course” they are concerned about the potential impact this will have on negotiations, but stressed that they should not be considered together.

“This was something an individual did of their own volition and should be treated entirely separately from negotiations for the release of Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan,” the official told CNN.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday announced a new $400 million tranche of security assistance for Ukraine, which includes air defense munitions and armored vehicles.

The assistance includes “air defense munitions, artillery rounds, armored vehicles, and anti-armor capabilities, as well as other equipment essential to strengthening Ukraine’s brave forces on the battlefield, helping them retake Ukraine’s sovereign territory, and defend their fellow citizens,” according to a statement announcing the latest drawdown – the 43rd to date.

Blinken also slammed Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, noting that Moscow “continues to attack Ukrainian ports and grain infrastructure," including in the southern port city of Odesa.

The strikes – the latest in a wave of attacks on Odesa – killed at least one person and injured several others, Ukrainian officials said. At least 25 architectural monuments were destroyed and a historic Orthodox cathedral was badly damaged, a regional military official said.

According to a State Department spokesperson, some of the specific capabilities in this pacakge are:

Russian accounts of a rocket attack on a camp holding Ukrainian prisoners of war in July 2022 are not supported by evidence, according to the United Nations.

The findings by the UN Human Rights Commissioner (UN OHCHR) support the conclusions of an extensive CNN investigation published in August last year, which demonstrated that the Russian narrative that the camp had been hit by a Ukrainian HIMARS rocket did not stand up to scrutiny. 

More than 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in the strike at the detention center in the town of Olenivka.

Russian and local officials from the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic said the attack was carried out by the Ukrainian side, using one of the HIMARS rockets that had been recently supplied by the United States.

But the CNN investigation, based on analysis of video and photographs from the scene, satellite imagery from before and after the attack and the work of forensic and weapons experts, concluded that “the Russian version of events is very likely a fabrication. There is almost no chance that a HIMARS rocket caused the damage to the warehouse where the prisoners were being held.” 

A UN statement issued Tuesday concurred that “the information available and our analysis enable the Office to conclude that [the strike] was not caused by a HIMARS rocket.”

“The Russian Federation provided neither satisfactory assurances about secure access for the United Nations to visit the particular site, nor granted general requests by the UN Human Rights Office to access areas of Ukraine under the temporary military control of the Russian Federation," the statement said.