Isobel Koshiw
Hours after Russia’s invasion began, Serhiy Package was receiving cellphone calls from members of the Ukrainian Affiliation for the Blind at his manufacturing unit’s workplace in Dnipro.
Like everybody else within the nation, Ukraine’s visually impaired had been terrified when the invasion started. Of their case, they’d an 88-year-old affiliation for visually impaired Ukrainians to fall again on.
Package is the director of a Dnipro manufacturing unit that welds components for railway tracks and was established in 1945 by the affiliation, one of many nation’s oldest-running organisations. The manufacturing unit is a non-profit, predominantly managed and staffed by visually impaired individuals.
Package’s manufacturing unit is certainly one of 48 factories owned by the organisation in Ukrainian-controlled areas; an additional 32 enterprises are in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

“We had been the primary shelter to open in Ukraine, on 25 February” stated Package. “Twenty-six of our (affiliation) members in Kharkiv rang me and requested me to assist them depart. We stated they might keep within the manufacturing unit.”
Kharkiv, 18 miles (30km) from the Russian border, was bombarded by Russian forces from the primary day of the invasion, whereas Dnipro, in south-central Ukraine, was comparatively calm. The Kharkiv members drove with their households to Dnipro.
“We rang round and located mattresses for them and cleared out certainly one of our places of work,” stated Package. “However then the calls stored coming. We’d by no means executed something like this earlier than, however we couldn’t simply cease.”
Russia and Turkey have agreed to proceed discussions on protected vessel departures and grain exports from Ukrainian ports, the Russian defence ministry stated.
Turkish presidency sources stated yesterday that its navy delegation would journey to Russia this week to debate particulars of a doable protected sea hall within the Black Sea to export grain, Reuters reported.
Russian state-owned information company Tass confirmed plans for the talks, citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.


The UK authorities has responded to accusations from Moscow that members of the Russian delegation to the Group for Safety and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) had been denied visas.
Russian lawmaker and delegation member, Vladimir Dzhabarov, was quoted by Russian information businesses as saying that Russia had “forward of time” requested “to resolve the problem of offering ensures from the British facet that visas shall be issued” due to UK sanctions.
Dzhabarov stated:
We acquired an outrageous response that the British authorities – actually – can’t concern visas to members of the Russian delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Meeting no matter their cause for visiting the nation.
Requested about Dzhabarov’s feedback, a spokesperson for the Dwelling Workplace stated:
There are at the moment no restrictions or limitations for Russian nationals to work within the UK on long-term work visas.
The spokesperson stated the UK was prioritising purposes from Ukrainians, and that purposes for examine, work and household visas had been taking longer to course of.
Dzhabarov stated Russia Russia despatched a letter to all different delegations stating the “exclusion of the Russian delegation severely damages the credibility of the occasion”.
All selections adopted in its absence “is not going to be recognised by us as professional”, the letter stated, in accordance with Dzhabarov.
The twenty ninth annual session of the OSCE Parliamentary Meeting is because of happen in Birmingham between 2-6 July.
Right this moment up to now …
- The navy scenario for Ukraine’s defenders within the japanese Donbas is “extremely difficult”, officers have stated. There are 568 civilians considered holed up in Sievierodonetsk’s Azot chemical plant, as Russian assaults intensify in an effort to seize town and neighbouring Lysychansk. Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk area, stated Lysychansk was getting shelled “en masse”.
- Russian forces have captured several settlements close to Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk. The top of the Sievierodonetsk district navy administration, Roman Vlasenko, stated the frontline village of Toshkivka had not been underneath Ukrainian management since Monday. Russian forces additionally reportedly captured Pidlisne and Mala Dolyna, positioned south-west of Sievierodonetsk, and likewise had success close to the Hirske settlement in Luhansk.
- Moscow’s response to Lithuania’s ban on the transit of products sanctioned by the EU to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad is not going to be solely diplomatic however sensible in nature, the overseas ministry press secretary Maria Zakharova has stated.
- Vitaliy Kim, the governor of Mykolaiv, has stated town was struck by seven missiles this morning.
- Casualties to the forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Individuals’s Republic (DPR), certainly one of Russias proxies in japanese Ukraine, might have amounted to about 55% of the unique power, British intelligence has claimed.
- One of many leaders of the authorities imposed in occupied Ukraine has described the border between Russia and Ukraine as “worse than the Berlin Wall for the Germans”. “Our reunification with Russia is inevitable, there needs to be no borders between us,” Vladimir Rogov is quoted as saying.
- Vladimir Putin is about to mark the day when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941. The date is critical in Russia and remembered because the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. Putin will reportedly lay flowers to honour the useless.
- A Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier who was accompanying him had been “coldly executed” after they had been killed within the first weeks of Russia’s invasion, in accordance with a just lately revealed investigation from Reporters With out Borders. The pair had been reportedly looking Russian-occupied woodlands for the photographer’s lacking image-taking drone, the company stated, citing its findings from an investigation into their deaths.
- Granting Ukraine candidate standing to hitch the EU could be a historic resolution signalling to Russia it could actually not declare a sphere of affect over its japanese neighbour, Kyiv’s ambassador to Brussels has stated. Vsevolod Chentsov, the pinnacle of Ukraine’s mission to the EU, stated Russia’s warfare had united Kyiv with the bloc, whereas ending what he referred to as a “mistake” about whether or not his nation might belong to the union.
- Members of the Russian delegation to the Group for Safety and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have been denied British visas to attend the subsequent session, in accordance with Vladimir Dzhabarov, the primary deputy head of Russian higher home’s worldwide affairs committee.
- The US lawyer common, Merrick Garland, visited Ukraine on Tuesday to debate Russia’s warfare crimes, a justice division official stated. Garland met with Ukraine’s prosecutor common, Iryna Venediktova, and announced a war crimes accountability team to establish and prosecute perpetrators. “There isn’t a hiding place for warfare criminals,” Garland stated.
The navy authorities within the self-proclaimed Donetsk Individuals’s Republic has issued its day by day operational briefing. It says it controls 239 settlements in occupied Donetsk, and it claimed that 13 settlements within the area have been shelled by Ukrainian forces. It says one particular person was killed and 14 individuals had been injured within the final 24 hours. The claims haven’t been independently verified.
Vitaliy Kim, governor of Mykolaiv, has simply posted to Telegram to say that town has been struck with seven missiles.
Russian overseas ministry: response to Lithuania transit ban will ‘not be diplomatic however sensible’
Moscow’s response to Lithuania’s ban on the transit of products sanctioned by the EU to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad is not going to be solely diplomatic however sensible in nature, Maria Zakharova has stated.
“One of many predominant questions has been about whether or not the response could be solely diplomatic. The reply: no,” the overseas ministry press secretary stated at her weekly briefing. “The response is not going to be diplomatic however sensible.”
Reuters experiences that Zakharova wouldn’t elaborate on the character of the sensible measures Russia deliberate to take in opposition to Lithuania.
Yesterday whereas internet hosting a gathering within the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s safety council, stated: “Russia will definitely reply to such hostile actions. Their penalties may have a critical detrimental impression on the inhabitants of Lithuania.”
From 17 June an EU prohibition on Russian metal and iron ore got here into power, and the Lithuanian state railway stated it might consequently not enable these items to be carried on its tracks and imported into Kaliningrad.

Jennifer Rankin
Granting Ukraine candidate standing to hitch the EU could be a historic resolution signalling to Russia it could actually not declare a sphere of affect over its japanese neighbour, Kyiv’s ambassador to Brussels has stated.
Vsevolod Chentsov, the pinnacle of Ukraine’s mission to the EU, stated Russia’s warfare had united Kyiv with the bloc, whereas ending what he referred to as a “mistake” about whether or not his nation might belong to the union.
Chatting with the Guardian forward of an EU summit on Thursday, he stated for a few years Ukraine had been seen as a bridge or a buffer state fairly than a possible member.
A call on candidate standing would “kill lastly, this ambiguity, what’s Ukraine for the EU: whether or not we’re constructing a standard home or not … I feel now lastly there’s readability.”
EU leaders will determine on Thursday whether or not to grant Ukraine candidate standing after positive recommendation from the European Commission last Friday. Expectations for a sure have grown since 4 EU leaders, together with France and Germany, which had been perceived as among the many most lukewarm, visited Kyiv last week in a show of support.
Learn extra of Jennifer Rankin’s report from Brussels: Kyiv’s EU envoy says Ukraine candidate status would send clear signal to Russia
There’s a fast snap from Reuters reporting that members of the Russian delegation to the Group for Safety and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have been denied British visas to attend the subsequent session, in accordance with Vladimir Dzhabarov, the primary deputy head of Russian higher home’s worldwide affairs committee.
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