Ukraine war: Putin believes Trump is sincere about ending war

Ukraine’s army has retreated from a neighbourhood in the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important town in the eastern Donetsk region that has been reduced to rubble during a months-long Russian assault, a military spokesperson said yesterday.

Chasiv Yar is a short distance west of Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia last year after a bitter 10-month battle.

The Ukrainian army retreated from a northeastern neighbourhood of the town, Nazar Voloshyn, the spokesperson for the Khortytsia ground forces formation said yesterday.

Ukraine’s defensive positions in the town were “destroyed”, he said, adding that there was a threat of serious casualties if troops remained in the area and that Russia did not leave “a single intact building”.

Months of relentless Russian artillery strikes have devastated Chasiv Yar, with homes and municipal offices charred, and a town that once had a population of 12,000 has been left deserted.

Oleh Shyriaiev, commander of the 255th assault battalion which has been based in the area for six months, said after Russian troops captured the neighbourhood, they burned every building not already destroyed by shelling.

Shyriaiev said Russia is using scorched-earth tactics in an attempt to destroy anything which could be used as a military position in a bid to force Ukranian troops to retreat. “I regret that we are gradually losing territory,” he said, speaking by phone from the Chasiv Yar area, but added, “we cannot hold what is ruined”.

For months, Russian forces have focused on capturing Chasiv Yar, a town which occupies an elevated location. Its fall would put nearby cities in jeopardy, compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes and bring Russia closer to its stated aim of seizing the entire Donetsk region.

Vladimir Putin said he believed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was sincere about wanting to end the war in Ukraine, but expressed ignorance about the former US president’s plan.

“The fact that Mr Trump, as a presidential candidate, declares that he is ready and wants to stop the war in Ukraine, we take this completely seriously,” the Russian president said at a news conference in Kazakhstan.

“I am not, of course, familiar with possible proposals for how he plans to do this. This is the key question. But I have no doubt that he means it sincerely, and we support it” he said when asked about Mr Trump’s statement.

The Washington Post reported in April that Trump had privately spoken about allowing Russia to keep Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and the Donbas area, which Russian forces partially control, in return for peace, something that Trump’s campaign has not confirmed.

Russia’s defence ministry has said its forces are carrying out drills involving mobile nuclear missile launchers, the Interfax news agency reported this morning.

Yars missile launcher crews from two units are set to move over 100 kilometres and practice camouflage and deployment, it said, with more crews joining drills in the future.

Russian strikes killed two people and wounded 26 in Ukrainian regions stretching from the south to the east and northeast, local authorities said yesterday.

A missile strike in southern Odesa region killed a woman, injured seven people and damaged port infrastructure, regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.

In northeastern Kharkiv region, a second woman was killed and a man wounded in a strike by a Russian guided bomb on the village of Ruska Lozova, according to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov.

Nine others, including four children, were wounded in a drone attack and shelling in the town of Novohrodivka, in the frontline Donetsk region, governor Vadym Filashkin said.

Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Serhiy Lysak reported seven wounded in the southern town of Nikopol. He had said earlier that Russian forces had attacked areas near Nikopol with drones and artillery on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning.

Around 190,000 recruits have signed contracts to join the Russian military so far this year, the state-run RIA news agency has quoted former president Dmitry Medvedev as saying.

Mr Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said the current average recruitment rate was about 1,000 people a day.

Russia is encouraging people to sign up for the war in Ukraine by paying them well above average wages.

President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow has no need to enforce a new round of compulsory mobilisation because so many men are signing up on voluntary contracts.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said his preference for Joe Biden as the next US president remained unchanged.

Asked by a state television reporter whether Mr Biden or Mr Trump was better, and whether his publicly stated preference for Mr Biden had changed after the debate, Mr Putin said: “Nothing has changed.”

“Did we not know what could come? We knew,” he added.

Wishing Americans a happy 4 July, he wrote: “We understand what independence means to you, Americans, and you can see that it means the same thing to us, Ukrainians…

“True independence is always the result of won battles, and freedom must be reinforced with victories every time tyranny attempts to destroy it.

“Different generations of Americans and Ukrainians have witnessed this firsthand, and it is critical that current generations pass on a sense of confident independence and guaranteed freedom to their children and grandchildren.”

Chasiv Yar was left in ruins even before Ukrainian troops retreated:

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