Ukrainska Pravda reports that Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Ukrainian prime minister, has claimed that Russia gave the order for their proxy forces in Donetsk to launch today’s offensive as a challenge to world leaders meeting on June 7 for the G7 summit in Germany.
There are reports this morning that, as Russian-backed forces mount heavy attacks around the city of Donetsk, there is a wider escalation in attacks elsewhere on the front lines.
Donetsk awoke in the early hours of this morning to intense artillery and Grad rocket fire as Russian-backed forces launched a major new offensive, assaulting both to the north of the separatist-held city, striking Avdeyevka, and to the south-west, pounding Marinka and shelling Ukrainian positions on the Donetsk-Mariupol highway.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, Jr., federal coordinator for the Open Russia movement, has been diagnosed with “severe kidney malfunction,” his father, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Sr. told RBK.ru (translation by The Interpreter):
The Interpreter’s Editor-in-Chief, Michael Weiss, who is also a senior fellow at the Institute of Modern Russia, has spoken to sources close to opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza. According to the latest news, Kara-Murza was in a coma but has now regained consciousness.
A fire has broken out at the Karabashmed copper-smelting plant in Karabash, around 80 kilometres north-west of Chelyabinsk.
TSN reports that Konstantin Kravchuk, a Ukrainian lawyer for Aleksandr Aleksandrov, a Russian GRU Spetsnaz soldier captured outside Schastye on May 17, has told the television channel that his client will not appeal the decision of a Kiev court to place him under arrest.
A civilian employee of the Pentagon has been detained by Russian officials and brought before a court in St. Petersburg on charges of violating visa regulations.
Ludmila Alexeyeva, the veteran human rights advocate and chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group, the oldest Russian human rights organization, has decided to return to the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, Moscow Times and other Russia media have reported.
Huge news has rocked the world of football (soccer) this morning, as seven people have been arrested and a total of 14 FIFA officials and others associated with them have been indicted on a wide range of charges. The Washington Post reports:
