Here is the situation as it stands on Monday, May 29, 2023.
Fighting
- Moscow unleashed a wave of air strikes on Kyiv in what officials said appeared to be the largest drone attack on the city since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
- Kyiv said fighting had eased around the besieged city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, the site of the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.
- Ukrainian military intelligence claimed, without offering evidence, that Russia was plotting a “large-scale provocation” at a nuclear power plant it occupies in the southeast of the country, with the aim of disrupting a looming Ukrainian counteroffensive.
- Ukrainian authorities reported artillery fire in the Sumy region on the border with Russia and the town of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
- Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s powerful Wagner Group mercenary force, said he is convinced that senior Kremlin officials have banned reporting about him in state media.
Diplomacy
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned the West was ‘playing with fire’ by agreeing to provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets.
- South African President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed a panel to investigate US allegations that a Russian ship had collected weapons from a naval base near Cape Town last year, the presidency said in a statement.
- US Senator Lindsey Graham visited Kyiv, telling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “Russians are dying … Best money we’ve spent.”