NATO should discuss Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Moscow says
From CNN’s Uliana Pavlova and Christian Edwards
A view shows Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant from the bank of Kakhovka Reservoir near the town of Nikopol after the Nova Kakhovka dam breach in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, on June 16, 2023. Alina Smutko/Reuters
Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Sunday that NATO leaders should discuss the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine at its upcoming summit this week, since most alliance members would find themselves in the “direct hit zone.”
In her post, Zakharova quoted Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar, who posted on Saturday that it was "273 days since the first strike on the Crimean bridge to disrupt the Russians' logistics."
Zakharova responded by calling Ukraine “a terrorist regime.”
“Now they have embarked on a plan for ‘their own salvation’ - systematic damage to the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The NATO summit should have focused on this very subject. After all, the vast majority of the Alliance members will find themselves in the direct hit zone,” she said.
Some context: Alarm began to spread last week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Russian troops placed “objects resembling explosives” on roofs at the ZNPP – “perhaps to simulate an attack on the plant,” he said.
The ZNPP has been under the control of Russian troops since March last year, but has continued to be operated by its original Ukrainian staff, who reported initially being forced to work at “gunpoint” by the invading Russian troops.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long flirted with this nuclear specter since launching his invasion of Ukraine – but Zelensky’s comments raised the prospect that he may cause a nuclear incident not by firing warheads, but by turning the ZNPP itself into a weapon.
However, Zakharova’s claim that the “majority” of NATO members will find themselves in the hit zone is false. Each of the six reactors at the ZNPP have been put into a “cold shutdown” mode – due to an unprecedented intervention by the UN’s nuclear watchdog – limiting the chances of a large-scale nuclear disaster.
If the reported explosives were to detonate, the effects would not recreate the sort of destruction seen after the meltdown of the active Chernobyl plant in 1986. “A plume will come off the reactor where there will be radiation aerosolized,” William Alberque, director of Strategy, Technology and Arms Control at the International Institute for Strategy Studies, told CNN.
This would create a radiation zone close to the ZNPP where “you’ll have a higher chance of cancer over the next 40 years,” but would not have anywhere close to the effect described by Zakhorova.
Ukrainian official appears to claim responsibility for Crimea bridge explosion
From CNN's Josh Pennington and Tim Lister
Black smoke billows from a fire on the Kerch bridge that links Crimea to Russia, after a truck exploded, near Kerch, on October 8, 2022. AFP/Getty Images
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar has made what appears to be the clearest admission yet that Ukrainian forces were responsible for an attack last October on the bridge connecting Russia and occupied Crimea.
Listing 12 Ukrainian achievements since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion 500 days ago, Maliar wrote on Telegram:
273 days ago, [we] launched the first strike on the Crimean bridge to disrupt Russian logistics."
The Telegram message also mentioned the sinking of the Moskva cruiser (451 days ago) and the liberation of Snake Island (373 days ago).
The attack on the Kerch bridge, which disrupted major transport links between mainland Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula, not only struck a blow against Russia’s military effort in Ukraine but also represented a psychological blow for Moscow and a major propaganda victory for Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials celebrated the blast at the time but did not make a clear claim of responsibility.
It took place the day after Russian leader Vladimir Putin turned 70, and Ukraine’s Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov published a video of the bridge in flames alongside a video of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mister President.”
Among other responses, the Navy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posted on Facebook, “Air defense of the Russian Federation, are you sleeping?” alongside a video showing a section of the bridge’s road that had been completely destroyed.
CNN has contacted the Armed Forces of Ukraine for a statement about the claim of responsibility of the bridge explosion but has yet to receive a response.
25 min ago
Death toll rises to nine after Russian shelling of Lyman, regional official says
From CNN's Maria Kostenko
Nine people have died after Russian shelling in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman on Saturday, according to the head of the Donetsk military administration Pavlo Krylenko.
“Russians killed ten residents of Donetsk region over June 8, including nine people in Lyman and one in Avdiivka. 13 more people have been wounded,” Kyrylenko said in a Telegram update Sunday, the day after the attack.
"In the Donetsk direction, the enemy launched a rocket attack on Avdiivka. Artillery shelling of Krasnohorivka in Mariinka community was recorded,” he added.
Kramatorsk was shelled overnight on Saturday, with three houses and a shop sustaining damage with no casualties.
10 min ago
Azovstal defenders freed in prisoner swap will return to the battlefield in Ukraine
From CNN's Mary Knight and Heather Chen
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomes commanders of defenders of the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol Denys Prokopenko, Sviatoslav Palamar, Denys Shleha, Serhii Volynskyi and Oleh Homenko after their return from Istanbul in Lviv, Ukraine, on July 8, 2023. Roman Baluk/Reuters
Ukrainian commanders who were captured by Russians forces after leading the defense of Mariupol from the Azovstal steel plant have vowed to return to the battlefield following a prisoner swap.
The commanders announced their intentions at a press conference held shortly after arriving in Lviv, Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday.
They had previously been in Turkey as part of the prisoner swap.
After a lengthy siege which began on the first day of the war, the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol fell under complete Russian control in 2022 with the surrender of Azovstal, the city’s last bastion of Ukrainian defense. The Russian military has claimed that over 2,000 Ukrainian service members surrendered there.
At a press briefing, some of the fighters spoke about their experiences in Turkey and shared their expectations of the future.
“The most important thing for today is that the Ukrainian army has seized the strategic initiative on the front line and is moving forward every day," said Denys Prokopenko, a commander of Azov regiment.
Prokopenko said returning to the front line was the reason he and others had returned to Ukraine.
Video footage showed large crowds that gathered in Lviv to greet the leaders.
Zelensky thanked his team and President Erdogan in particular for helping to bring the Azovstal leaders home.
The US military says its cluster munitions have a lower rate of "duds" that could endanger civilians
From CNN's Natasha Bertrand and Haley Britzsky
Ukrainian military serviceman Igor Ovcharruck holds a defused cluster bomb from an MSLR missile, among a display of pieces of rockets used by Russian army, that a Ukrainian munitions expert said did not explode on impact, in the region of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on October 21, 2022.
A defense official provided more information to CNN on Saturday about how the military tested the cluster munitions that US President Joe Biden's administration plans to send to Ukraine.
The goal of the testing: Make sure the munitions have a "dud rate" of 2.35% or lower.
The dud rate of a cluster munition refers to how often the bomblets the munition scatters across a large area fail to explode, posing a long-term risk to civilians who may encounter them later, similar to landmines. It's part of what has made the weapon so controversial, and banned in more than 100 nations, including US and Ukrainian allies.
The defense official told CNN the testing of the munitions "was executed via live fire," as opposed to a simulated or virtual test, and the most recent tests were conducted in 2020 at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona by employees at the US Army's Joint Munitions Command.
"During the testing, a sample set from each lot in the test group is fired and the number of unexploded bomblets is assessed and recorded," the official said. "That data is then compiled to develop the report, which includes dud rates."
The official said the types of cluster munitions the US is planning to send, the M864 and M483A1 models, were most recently tested in 2020 and 2017, respectively.
"We set aside 40 rounds from each of the 11 lots tested," the defense official explained. A "lot" is essentially a batch of ammunition, and the rounds were randomly selected by employees at the Joint Munitions Command where the rounds are stored.
The official explained that the munitions were tested in multiple ways, including through "air burst" and "ground point detonation," and from multiple distances ranging from 15-30 kilometers (about 9 to 18 miles).
"There are also multiple ways that the duds are counted to include photo tracking systems, acoustic systems, and manual observation," the official said.
Why it matters: The Biden administration has sought to emphasize that the cluster munitions it will provide to Ukraine pose a lesser risk to civilians than the cluster munitions currently being used by Russia, which can have a dud rate of as high as 40%, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday.
However, critics have raised questions about the military's testing process, including whether it was done in ideal conditions or tested under different weather and terrain conditions that might affect how the munition reacts. The defense official did not address whether the munitions were tested under those different conditions.
57 min ago
Fighters who survived infamous siege on Ukrainian steel plant have returned home, president says
From CNN's Svitlana Vlasova in Kyiv
A view shows Azovstal steel mill destroyed in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Mariupol, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on March 16, 2023. Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters/FILE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that five soldiers who defended the Azovstal plant in the southern city of Mariupol were returning home with him to Ukraine.
“We are returning home from Türkiye and bringing our heroes home. Ukrainian soldiers Denys Prokopenko, Svyatoslav Palamar, Serhiy Volynsky, Oleh Khomenko, Denys Shleha. They will finally be with their relatives,” Zelensky said in a Telegram post.
In the video, Zelensky is seen meeting and hugging the men at an airport field before boarding a plane.
Later, social media videos showed large crowds greeting the fighters and Zelensky in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, according to state news agency Ukrinform.
The five Ukrainian soldiers surrendered following the fall of Mariupol. After their release from Russian captivity, they were taken to Turkey as part of a prisoner swap back in September, where they were obliged to stay until the end of the war, according to the terms of the swap.
Zelensky was in Turkey to hold talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Background on Azovstal and Mariupol: The siege of the southern port city of Mariupol lasted almost three months, with the steel plant serving as a symbol of resistance and a final holdout as Russian troops advanced further into the city.
The plant sprawled over 4 square miles and once employed more than 10,000 people, a mass of tunnels, pipes and chimney stacks perched on the Azov Sea.
Russian forces shelled the facility day and night for weeks. The Ukrainians’ last stand became increasingly desperate as food and water supplies dwindled, and hundreds of casualties were left without adequate medical care. Huddled together underground in grim conditions, many soldiers and civilians began to doubt that they’d ever escape the plant alive, before negotiations led to a mutual ceasefire.
What Russia says: Turkey was "pressured" by NATO into returning the five Azovstal leaders to Ukraine, Russian state media RIA reported on Saturday, citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
Peskov called it "a violation of the terms of the existing agreements," adding that "the conditions for the return were violated by both the Turkish side and Kyiv."
CNN's Mariya Knight and Chris Liakos contributed reporting to this post.
59 min ago
Welcome to our live coverage. Here are some of the major stories we're tracking today
From CNN staff
With the NATO military alliance's pivotal summit beginning Tuesday, many of the developments surrounding the war in Ukraine have been happening in the diplomatic arena in recent days.
Here are some of the key headlines we've tracked so far this weekend:
Gearing up for the NATO summit: Next week's gathering of the military alliance will not yet result in Ukraine's membership, a US official said Friday, but the agenda is dominated by issues relevant to the war in Ukraine.
Shelling in Russian border region: Belgorod, which sits along the border with Ukraine, came under heavy shelling Saturday, wounding two people, according to regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov, who said Ukraine fired over 100 artillery shells over the past 24 hours. There have been recent reports of drone attacks, shelling and incursions by anti-Kremlin Russians as the effects of Moscow's war in Ukraine increasingly reverberate back onto its own territory.
Gradual gains around Bakhmut: Troops have advanced about 1 kilometer in the direction of the battered eastern city, Ukrainian officials said Friday. Artillery units firing at Bakhmut have seen tangible progress in pushing the Russians away, Ukrainian fighters told a CNN team reporting from the eastern front. "The Russians are falling back. We know because they hit us much less," according to one gunner.
A controversial addition to Kyiv's arsenal: Russia's foreign ministry called Friday's announcement by the US to transfer controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine an "act of desperation" that reflects Ukraine's counteroffensive "failure."
Both Russia and Ukraine have already used cluster munitions during the war, but the weapons are banned by more than 100 nations — including US and Ukrainian allies — because of their potential threat to civilians.
US President Joe Biden said it was a "difficult decision" to provide the weapons to Ukraine, but he did so due to the country's decreasing ammunition. The US Defense Department said one of the primary reasons it is providing the cluster munitions is to help Ukrainian troops punch through Russian defensive lines as the counteroffensive is "going a little slower than some had hoped."
Deadly attack on eastern town: At least eight people were killed and 13 injured as a result of Russian troops shelling the Ukrainian town of Lyman on Saturday, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukrainian commanders who were captured by Russia after leading the defense of Mariupol from the Azovstal steel plant have vowed to return to the battlefield following a prisoner swap.
Russia’s foreign ministry called the US' announcement that it would to transfer controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine an “act of desperation” that reflects Ukraine’s counteroffensive “failure.”
Ukraine deserves NATO membership, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, following talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of the alliance’s key summit that starts Tuesday in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Belgorod, which sits along Russia's border with Ukraine, came under heavy shelling Saturday, wounding two people, according to the regional governor, who said that Ukraine fired over 100 artillery shells within 24 hours.
A view shows Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant from the bank of Kakhovka Reservoir near the town of Nikopol after the Nova Kakhovka dam breach in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, on June 16, 2023. Alina Smutko/Reuters
Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Sunday that NATO leaders should discuss the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine at its upcoming summit this week, since most alliance members would find themselves in the “direct hit zone.”
In her post, Zakharova quoted Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar, who posted on Saturday that it was "273 days since the first strike on the Crimean bridge to disrupt the Russians' logistics."
Zakharova responded by calling Ukraine “a terrorist regime.”
“Now they have embarked on a plan for ‘their own salvation’ - systematic damage to the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The NATO summit should have focused on this very subject. After all, the vast majority of the Alliance members will find themselves in the direct hit zone,” she said.
Some context: Alarm began to spread last week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Russian troops placed “objects resembling explosives” on roofs at the ZNPP – “perhaps to simulate an attack on the plant,” he said.
The ZNPP has been under the control of Russian troops since March last year, but has continued to be operated by its original Ukrainian staff, who reported initially being forced to work at “gunpoint” by the invading Russian troops.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long flirted with this nuclear specter since launching his invasion of Ukraine – but Zelensky’s comments raised the prospect that he may cause a nuclear incident not by firing warheads, but by turning the ZNPP itself into a weapon.
However, Zakharova’s claim that the “majority” of NATO members will find themselves in the hit zone is false. Each of the six reactors at the ZNPP have been put into a “cold shutdown” mode – due to an unprecedented intervention by the UN’s nuclear watchdog – limiting the chances of a large-scale nuclear disaster.
If the reported explosives were to detonate, the effects would not recreate the sort of destruction seen after the meltdown of the active Chernobyl plant in 1986. “A plume will come off the reactor where there will be radiation aerosolized,” William Alberque, director of Strategy, Technology and Arms Control at the International Institute for Strategy Studies, told CNN.
This would create a radiation zone close to the ZNPP where “you’ll have a higher chance of cancer over the next 40 years,” but would not have anywhere close to the effect described by Zakhorova.
Black smoke billows from a fire on the Kerch bridge that links Crimea to Russia, after a truck exploded, near Kerch, on October 8, 2022. AFP/Getty Images
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar has made what appears to be the clearest admission yet that Ukrainian forces were responsible for an attack last October on the bridge connecting Russia and occupied Crimea.
Listing 12 Ukrainian achievements since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion 500 days ago, Maliar wrote on Telegram:
273 days ago, [we] launched the first strike on the Crimean bridge to disrupt Russian logistics."
The Telegram message also mentioned the sinking of the Moskva cruiser (451 days ago) and the liberation of Snake Island (373 days ago).
The attack on the Kerch bridge, which disrupted major transport links between mainland Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula, not only struck a blow against Russia’s military effort in Ukraine but also represented a psychological blow for Moscow and a major propaganda victory for Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials celebrated the blast at the time but did not make a clear claim of responsibility.
It took place the day after Russian leader Vladimir Putin turned 70, and Ukraine’s Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov published a video of the bridge in flames alongside a video of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mister President.”
Among other responses, the Navy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posted on Facebook, “Air defense of the Russian Federation, are you sleeping?” alongside a video showing a section of the bridge’s road that had been completely destroyed.
CNN has contacted the Armed Forces of Ukraine for a statement about the claim of responsibility of the bridge explosion but has yet to receive a response.
Nine people have died after Russian shelling in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman on Saturday, according to the head of the Donetsk military administration Pavlo Krylenko.
“Russians killed ten residents of Donetsk region over June 8, including nine people in Lyman and one in Avdiivka. 13 more people have been wounded,” Kyrylenko said in a Telegram update Sunday, the day after the attack.
"In the Donetsk direction, the enemy launched a rocket attack on Avdiivka. Artillery shelling of Krasnohorivka in Mariinka community was recorded,” he added.
Kramatorsk was shelled overnight on Saturday, with three houses and a shop sustaining damage with no casualties.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomes commanders of defenders of the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol Denys Prokopenko, Sviatoslav Palamar, Denys Shleha, Serhii Volynskyi and Oleh Homenko after their return from Istanbul in Lviv, Ukraine, on July 8, 2023. Roman Baluk/Reuters
Ukrainian commanders who were captured by Russians forces after leading the defense of Mariupol from the Azovstal steel plant have vowed to return to the battlefield following a prisoner swap.
The commanders announced their intentions at a press conference held shortly after arriving in Lviv, Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday.
They had previously been in Turkey as part of the prisoner swap.
After a lengthy siege which began on the first day of the war, the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol fell under complete Russian control in 2022 with the surrender of Azovstal, the city’s last bastion of Ukrainian defense. The Russian military has claimed that over 2,000 Ukrainian service members surrendered there.
At a press briefing, some of the fighters spoke about their experiences in Turkey and shared their expectations of the future.
“The most important thing for today is that the Ukrainian army has seized the strategic initiative on the front line and is moving forward every day," said Denys Prokopenko, a commander of Azov regiment.
Prokopenko said returning to the front line was the reason he and others had returned to Ukraine.
Video footage showed large crowds that gathered in Lviv to greet the leaders.
Zelensky thanked his team and President Erdogan in particular for helping to bring the Azovstal leaders home.
Ukrainian military serviceman Igor Ovcharruck holds a defused cluster bomb from an MSLR missile, among a display of pieces of rockets used by Russian army, that a Ukrainian munitions expert said did not explode on impact, in the region of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on October 21, 2022.
A defense official provided more information to CNN on Saturday about how the military tested the cluster munitions that US President Joe Biden's administration plans to send to Ukraine.
The goal of the testing: Make sure the munitions have a "dud rate" of 2.35% or lower.
The dud rate of a cluster munition refers to how often the bomblets the munition scatters across a large area fail to explode, posing a long-term risk to civilians who may encounter them later, similar to landmines. It's part of what has made the weapon so controversial, and banned in more than 100 nations, including US and Ukrainian allies.
The defense official told CNN the testing of the munitions "was executed via live fire," as opposed to a simulated or virtual test, and the most recent tests were conducted in 2020 at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona by employees at the US Army's Joint Munitions Command.
"During the testing, a sample set from each lot in the test group is fired and the number of unexploded bomblets is assessed and recorded," the official said. "That data is then compiled to develop the report, which includes dud rates."
The official said the types of cluster munitions the US is planning to send, the M864 and M483A1 models, were most recently tested in 2020 and 2017, respectively.
"We set aside 40 rounds from each of the 11 lots tested," the defense official explained. A "lot" is essentially a batch of ammunition, and the rounds were randomly selected by employees at the Joint Munitions Command where the rounds are stored.
The official explained that the munitions were tested in multiple ways, including through "air burst" and "ground point detonation," and from multiple distances ranging from 15-30 kilometers (about 9 to 18 miles).
"There are also multiple ways that the duds are counted to include photo tracking systems, acoustic systems, and manual observation," the official said.
Why it matters: The Biden administration has sought to emphasize that the cluster munitions it will provide to Ukraine pose a lesser risk to civilians than the cluster munitions currently being used by Russia, which can have a dud rate of as high as 40%, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday.
However, critics have raised questions about the military's testing process, including whether it was done in ideal conditions or tested under different weather and terrain conditions that might affect how the munition reacts. The defense official did not address whether the munitions were tested under those different conditions.
A view shows Azovstal steel mill destroyed in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Mariupol, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on March 16, 2023. Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters/FILE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that five soldiers who defended the Azovstal plant in the southern city of Mariupol were returning home with him to Ukraine.
“We are returning home from Türkiye and bringing our heroes home. Ukrainian soldiers Denys Prokopenko, Svyatoslav Palamar, Serhiy Volynsky, Oleh Khomenko, Denys Shleha. They will finally be with their relatives,” Zelensky said in a Telegram post.
In the video, Zelensky is seen meeting and hugging the men at an airport field before boarding a plane.
Later, social media videos showed large crowds greeting the fighters and Zelensky in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, according to state news agency Ukrinform.
The five Ukrainian soldiers surrendered following the fall of Mariupol. After their release from Russian captivity, they were taken to Turkey as part of a prisoner swap back in September, where they were obliged to stay until the end of the war, according to the terms of the swap.
Zelensky was in Turkey to hold talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Background on Azovstal and Mariupol: The siege of the southern port city of Mariupol lasted almost three months, with the steel plant serving as a symbol of resistance and a final holdout as Russian troops advanced further into the city.
The plant sprawled over 4 square miles and once employed more than 10,000 people, a mass of tunnels, pipes and chimney stacks perched on the Azov Sea.
Russian forces shelled the facility day and night for weeks. The Ukrainians’ last stand became increasingly desperate as food and water supplies dwindled, and hundreds of casualties were left without adequate medical care. Huddled together underground in grim conditions, many soldiers and civilians began to doubt that they’d ever escape the plant alive, before negotiations led to a mutual ceasefire.
What Russia says: Turkey was "pressured" by NATO into returning the five Azovstal leaders to Ukraine, Russian state media RIA reported on Saturday, citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
Peskov called it "a violation of the terms of the existing agreements," adding that "the conditions for the return were violated by both the Turkish side and Kyiv."
CNN's Mariya Knight and Chris Liakos contributed reporting to this post.
With the NATO military alliance's pivotal summit beginning Tuesday, many of the developments surrounding the war in Ukraine have been happening in the diplomatic arena in recent days.
Here are some of the key headlines we've tracked so far this weekend:
Gearing up for the NATO summit: Next week's gathering of the military alliance will not yet result in Ukraine's membership, a US official said Friday, but the agenda is dominated by issues relevant to the war in Ukraine.
Shelling in Russian border region: Belgorod, which sits along the border with Ukraine, came under heavy shelling Saturday, wounding two people, according to regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov, who said Ukraine fired over 100 artillery shells over the past 24 hours. There have been recent reports of drone attacks, shelling and incursions by anti-Kremlin Russians as the effects of Moscow's war in Ukraine increasingly reverberate back onto its own territory.
Gradual gains around Bakhmut: Troops have advanced about 1 kilometer in the direction of the battered eastern city, Ukrainian officials said Friday. Artillery units firing at Bakhmut have seen tangible progress in pushing the Russians away, Ukrainian fighters told a CNN team reporting from the eastern front. "The Russians are falling back. We know because they hit us much less," according to one gunner.
A controversial addition to Kyiv's arsenal: Russia's foreign ministry called Friday's announcement by the US to transfer controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine an "act of desperation" that reflects Ukraine's counteroffensive "failure."
Both Russia and Ukraine have already used cluster munitions during the war, but the weapons are banned by more than 100 nations — including US and Ukrainian allies — because of their potential threat to civilians.
US President Joe Biden said it was a "difficult decision" to provide the weapons to Ukraine, but he did so due to the country's decreasing ammunition. The US Defense Department said one of the primary reasons it is providing the cluster munitions is to help Ukrainian troops punch through Russian defensive lines as the counteroffensive is "going a little slower than some had hoped."
Deadly attack on eastern town: At least eight people were killed and 13 injured as a result of Russian troops shelling the Ukrainian town of Lyman on Saturday, according to Ukrainian officials.
