Zelenskiy says drive to clean up government to continue
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a decree on Saturday sacking a senior security figure and said separately that his government purge efforts would continue. BATTLE
* Ukrainian forces are holding their defenses along the frontline in eastern Donetsk region, including the besieged town of Bakhmut, with the fiercest fighting around the towns of Vuhledar and Maryinka, Kiev’s top military commander said on Saturday. * Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner Group, said Sunday that the mercenary force had taken the village of Krasna Hora on the northern outskirts of Bakhmut.
* Prigozhin said on Saturday it could be two years before Moscow controls all two eastern Ukrainian regions it has declared the war’s main objective to capture. * Galina Danilchenko, the Russian-installed mayor of Ukraine’s city of Melitopol in southeastern Zaporizhia Region, said on Saturday a civilian was killed and two injured in a nighttime shelling by Ukrainian forces.
* Reuters could not verify the Battlefield accounts. NATO LEADERSHIP
* NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will complete his term in October as planned, an alliance spokesman said after a newspaper reported that another extension was in the works. POWER SUPPLIES
* Ukraine’s capital Kiev and surrounding region, as well as Odessa and Dnipro regions, are able to avoid power outages on Sunday, leading producer DTEK said, as authorities worked to repair power grids damaged by a major Russian strike. DIPLOMACY
* US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov discussed priorities, including air defenses and artillery, for the upcoming meetings of Kiev’s allies in Brussels, both sides said on Saturday. * Russia’s Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin said calls from more than 30 countries to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from the 2024 Olympics are unacceptable, the TASS news agency reported.
* Russian track and field stars are no strangers to being banned from international competitions, and the prospect of missing next year’s Olympics because of the invasion of Ukraine has fueled years of frustration with global sports federations. * NATO should hold an emergency meeting to discuss the latest findings on the explosions at the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said late Saturday. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote last week that US Navy divers blew up the pipelines, a claim denied by the White House.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)