July 4 (Reuters) – Russia said it had established full control over the Luhansk region after Ukrainian forces pulled out of the bombed-out city of Lysychansk. Governor Serhiy Gaidai said the loss hurt “but it’s not losing the war”.
FIGHTING
* Governor of Luhansk Gaidai says he expects the city of Sloviansk and the town of Bakhmut in particular to come under attack as Russia tries to take full control of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
* The Ukrainian flag has been raised again on Snake Island in the Black Sea, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said on Monday, after Russian troops withdrew from the strategic outpost last week.”The territory (Snake Island) has been returned to the jurisdiction of Ukraine,” Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern military command, told a news conference.
* President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed to regain the lost territory with the help of long-range Western weapons.
* The leader of breakaway Luhansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, said on Rossiya 24 that Ukraine would “probably” try to recapture territory following the capture of Lysychansk, but that separatist forces would not give up any land.
* Zelenskiy’s office said that in the Donetsk region, Russian forces had increased the intensity of their shelling. Over the past day, nine people were killed, including a child, and 25 were wounded, it said.
* Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had carried out attacks on Ukrainian command posts and munitions depots in several locations in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
* At least three people were killed and dozens of residential buildings damaged in the Russian city of Belgorod near the Ukraine border, the regional governor said, in what Moscow said on Sunday was a Ukrainian missile attack. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
* Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.
DIPLOMACY AND ECONOMY
* Russian gas producer Gazprom GAZP.MM has proposed to apply the rouble-for-gas scheme it uses for pipeline gas supplies in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade, Interfax news agency quoted a senior manager as saying on Monday.
* President Vladimir Putin will not congratulate his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden on Monday’s Independence Day because of Washington’s “unfriendly” actions towards Moscow, the Kremlin said.
* France’s Schneider Electric SE has agreed to sell its Russian unit to the local leadership team, it said on Monday, joining a wave of companies divesting their Russian businesses.
* Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany was discussing security guarantees for Ukraine with its allies, in preparation for a time after the war. But these will not be the same as for a member of NATO, he told broadcaster ARD.
* Turkey has halted a Russian-flagged cargo ship off its Black Sea coast and is investigating a Ukrainian allegation that it was carrying stolen grain, a senior Turkish official said on Monday.
QUOTES
* “In terms of the military, it is bad to leave positions, but there is nothing critical. We need to win the war, not the battle for Lysychansk,” Luhansk Governor Gaidai said. “It hurts a lot, but it’s not losing the war.”
(Compiled by Catherine Evans, Simon Cameron-Moore and Alison Williams)
