Ukraine-Russia war live: Press Putin to end war, Germany urges China’s Xi Jinping

Three people have been killed and eight others injured in Russian attacks over the past 24 hours, regional authorities have said.

Two men, aged 63 and 65, were reportedly killed, while two other men, aged 38 and 65, and two women, aged 63 and 66, were injured in an attack on Kharkiv Oblast, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

An attack on the city of Krasnohorivka in Donetsk Oblast killed one person and injured two other, regional governor Vadym Filashkin said.

Russian troops also reportedly attacked the Bakhmut, Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk districts, damaging 11 buildings, including three high-rise buildings, an infrastructure facility and an administrative building.

Russia has lost 455,340 troops in Ukraine since invading the country in February 2022, Ukraine has said.

Some 920 of those casualties occurred in the past day, according to a report by Ukraine’s general staff of the Armed Forces.

According to the report, Moscow has also lost 7,189 tanks, 13,809 armored fighting vehicles, 15,563 vehicles and fuel tanks, 11,609 artillery systems, 1,046 multiple launch rocket systems, 759 air defense systems, 347 airplanes, 325 helicopters, 9,277 drones, 26 ships and boats, and one submarine.

Russia was able to destroy a thermal power plant in Kyiv Oblast because Ukraine ran out of missiles to protect it, Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

The Ukrainian president made the comment in an interview with PBS NewsHour published on Wednesday.

“Why? Because there were zero missiles,” the Ukraine president told the outlet. “We have run out of all the missiles that protected the Trypillia TPP.”

Moscow forces destroyed the Trypillia thermal power plant during strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on 11 April.

The US has imposed sanctions on 12 Belarus businesses and 10 individuals with links to Russia’s war machine.

The Department of the Treasury said the sanctions included six revenue-generating state-owned enterprises and one entity and five individuals involved in facilitating transactions for a US-designated major Belarusian defense sector enterprise.

Five entities and five individuals involved in a global arms network doing business with a US-designated Belarusian defence firm were also sanctioned.

“The authoritarian Lukashenka regime continues to rely on revenue from its SOEs to fund its violent suppression of its citizens and to circumvent US sanctions,” Brian E Nelson, under secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

“We will continue to leverage our broad suite of tools to target Belarus’s extensive illicit facilitation networks and hold the regime accountable for its complicity in, and profiteering from, Russia’s unjust war in Ukraine.”

Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz told Chinese leader Xi Jinping who hosted him in Beijing on Tuesday that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine threatens global security.

It was an apparent call for China to apply greater pressure on its neighbour and close strategic partner to resolve the conflict.

Mr Scholz also told Mr Xi at their meeting that the use of nuclear weapons in the two-year-old war should not even be threatened, German media reported.

Russian president Vladimir Putin warned last month that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or independence is threatened, his latest such threat since invading Ukraine.

Mr Scholz told Mr Xi that Germany’s "core interests" were impacted by the war against Ukraine, which has threatened to spread into a regional conflict and has disrupted energy and global food supplies and other trade.

Russia’s actions "violate a principle of the United Nations Charter and the principle of the inviolability of national borders," Mr Scholz was quoted as saying by German media.

China has refused to criticise the invasion and has maintained ties with Russia. While China says it is not sending military aid to Moscow, it has provided it with an economic lifeline to help it cope with sanctions from the West.

The Kremlin reacted coolly on Tuesday to French president Emmanuel Macron’s call for a truce in international conflicts during the Paris Olympics, saying Ukraine might use it as an opportunity to regroup and rearm.

Suspending armed conflicts under an "Olympic truce" is a longstanding tradition of the Games, and Macron said in an interview on Monday that he would work towards achieving one when Paris hosts the Olympics from 26 July to  11 August.

Asked about Macron’s comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that both president Vladimir Putin and the Russian military had "noticed that, as a rule, the Kyiv regime uses such ideas, such initiatives to try to regroup, to try to rearm, and so on and so forth. This, of course, significantly complicates the process of considering such initiatives."

Read the Ministry of Defence’s latest intelligence update on the war in Ukraine below:

Strong winds and heavy rain have left thousands of people in Ukraine without power on Tuesday.

The adverse weather damaged electrical infrastructure, leaving four regions without power supply.

“Due to the bad weather, 173 settlements in four regions are without power supply,” Ukraine’s energy ministry said.

In Dnipropetrovsk, the worst affected area in central Ukraine, over 15,000 people in 96 towns and villages were cut off.

DTEK, one of the main energy providers, said its engineers had worked “all night and in the morning” to restore power to the region.

The US and UK will begin restricting the trade of new Russian-origin metals — including aluminum, copper and nickel — on global metal exchanges and in derivatives trading.

The announcement is meant to follow up on the Group of Seven nations’ commitment in February “to reduce Russia’s revenues from metals” as its invasion into Ukraine has dragged on for more than two years.

Full report:

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Chinese leader Xi Jinping who hosted him in Beijing on Tuesday that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine threatens global security, in an apparent call for China to apply greater pressure on its neighbor and close strategic partner to resolve the conflict.

Scholz also told Xi at their meeting that the use of nuclear weapons in the 2-year-old war should not even be threatened, German media reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned last month that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or independence is threatened, his latest such threat since invading Ukraine.

Full report: