Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 586

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits the Memory Wall of Fallen Defenders of Ukraine to mark Defenders of Ukraine Day [Ukrainian Presidential Press Service via Reuters]

Fighting

• Ukraine said its air defence systems shot down 16 of about 30 drones launched by Russia on Sunday. Authorities said civilian infrastructure and grain storage warehouses were damaged in the Cherkasy region as well as the southern Mykolaiv and eastern Dnipropetrovsk regions.

• Russia’s defence ministry said its forces’ air defences in eastern Ukraine had intercepted five United States-made HIMARS shells, an air-launched JDAM bomb and 37 Ukrainian drones. Kyiv began a counteroffensive in June to retake Ukrainian land occupied by Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

• Russia’s defence ministry said it shot down six Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and two Ukrainian missiles over Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

• Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said five more ships were on their way to Ukrainian seaports using a new corridor for agricultural exports after Moscow withdrew from the United Nations and Turkey-brokered Black Sea grain deal that allowed safe passage for Ukraine’s grain.

• UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak backpedalled on a comment by his defence minister that the United Kingdom could send military instructors to Ukraine. Grant Shapps told the Sunday Telegraph that as well as training Ukrainian troops in the UK, he wanted to deploy British instructors to Ukraine. Hours later, Sunak said there were no such plans. “That’s something for the long term, not the here and now. There are no British soldiers that will be sent to fight in the current conflict,” he said.

• After Shapps’s comments were published, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev who is now deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council, said any UK soldiers training Ukrainian troops in Ukraine would be seen as legitimate targets for Russian forces.

• The UK’s Ministry of Defence said leaked Russian defence spending documents suggested Moscow was “preparing for multiple further years of fighting in Ukraine. The documents said defence spending for 2024 was likely to account for 30 percent of total public expenditure.