‘Peace on our terms’: Russia keeps up bombardment of cities across Ukraine

Russian forces kept up their bombardment of cities across Ukraine, authorities said on Tuesday, as former president Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow will set the terms for a future peace deal with Kyiv. “Russia will achieve all its goals. There will be peace – on our terms,” Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said in a post on Telegram. The former leader, once held up in the West as a possible partner, has becoming increasingly hawkish and outspoken in his criticism of the West since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on February 24. Medvedev’s comments came after a Kremlin adviser said Moscow planned to impose tougher conditions on Kyiv if peace talks were to resume. According to Yuri Ushakov, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, concrete results were achieved during talks in March in Türkiye before Kyiv broke off contact. However “if negotiations are resumed now, it will be on completely different terms,” Ushakov said, according to the RBK news agency, without providing further details. Zelensky purges Ukraine’s SBU after ousting childhood friend as top spy There have been no new peace talks since mass graves of civilians were found in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, among other places. Ukraine and its Western allies accused Russia of war crimes, which Moscow denied. The “denazification” and the “demilitarisation” of Ukraine, as well as the cession of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the recognition of the Crimea as Russian, were named back then by Moscow as conditions to end what it calls a “special military operation”. An adviser to Ukraine’s president laid out Kyiv’s conditions earlier this month. “Ceasefire. Z-troops withdrawal. Returning of kidnapped citizens. Extradition of war criminals. Reparations mechanism. Ukraine’s sovereign rights recognition. The Russian side knows our conditions well,” adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said. The hardened positions of both sides wouldn’t bode well for peace talks at this time, with war now well into its fifth month. After failing to capture the capital Kyiv at the outset of the invasion, Russia has shifted to a campaign of devastating bombardments to cement and extend its control of Ukraine’s south and east. Ukraine says Russian forces have intensified long-distance strikes on targets far from the front, killing large numbers of civilians and designed to intimidate the population and create panic. Moscow says it is hitting military targets. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia had fired more than 3,000 cruise missiles and uncountable artillery shells during the five-month conflict. In Odesa, a Russian missile strike injured at least four people, burned houses to the ground and set other homes on fire, Oleksii Matsulevych, a spokesman for the regional administration, said on his Telegram channel. Russian forces targeted Mykolaiv with cluster shells Monday, injuring at least two people and damaging windows and roofs of private houses, the Ukrainian city’s mayor Oleksandr Senkevich said in a social media post. ‘Judgment Day’ warning as Russia hunts Ukraine’s US-made weapons More than 150 mines and shells had been fired on the Sumy region, Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, the head of the Sumy regional military administration, said on Telegram. “They fired mortars, barrel and rocket artillery. The Russians also opened fire using machine guns and grenade launchers,” he said. Russian troops have tried unsuccessfully to advance towards the city of Avdiyivka north of Donetsk, the head of Avdiyivka’s military administration, Vitaliy Barabash, said on Tuesday. He said Ukrainian forces have pushed back the Russians after the latter attacked for several days. “Enemy losses are much bigger than ours,” he said, and include about 40 dead. Kyiv hopes the war is at a turning point, with Moscow having exhausted its offensive capabilities in seizing a few small cities in the east, while Ukraine now fields long-range Western weapons that can strike behind Russian lines. Kyiv cites a string of successful strikes on 30 Russian logistics and ammunition hubs, which it says are crippling Russia’s artillery-dominated forces that need to transport thousands of shells to the front each day. In a Facebook post on Monday, Ukraine’s top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, credited US-supplied advanced long-range rocket systems known as HIMARS with helping to “stabilise the situation” through “major strikes at enemy command points, ammunition and fuel storage warehouses”. Ukraine says Russia using captured nuclear plant to store missiles Russia said on Monday that Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had ordered the military to concentrate on destroying Ukraine’s Western-supplied rockets and artillery. In the south, Ukraine is preparing a counter-attack to recapture the biggest swathe of territory taken since the invasion. Ukraine reported destroying Russian missile systems, communications, radar, ammunition depots and armoured vehicles in strikes in the southern Kherson region. In the east, Ukrainian forces withdrew at the start of July from Luhansk, one of two provinces Russia claims on behalf of its separatist proxies. Kyiv says Moscow is planning another assault to capture the last Ukrainian-held pocket of neighbouring Donetsk province. British military intelligence said on Tuesday that Russia has struggled to sustain effective offensive combat power since the start of its invasion and the problem is likely becoming increasingly acute. “As well as dealing with severe undermanning, Russian planners face a dilemma between deploying reserves to the Donbas or defending against Ukrainian counter-attacks in the southwestern Kherson sector,” the Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update. The ministry also added that while Russia may still make further territorial gains, their operational tempo and rate of advance is likely to be very slow. Reuters, dpa and Associated Press