Ukraine war briefing: Ship carrying ‘looted’ grain seized, Zaluzhnyi starts work as ambassador to UK

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  Ukraine has seized a foreign cargo ship near Odesa and arrested its captain, alleging the vessel illegally exported Ukrainian grain via the annexed Crimean peninsula. Ukrainian prosecutors and the security service (SBU) said the Azerbaijani captain was accused of violating rules on entering occupied territory and had allegedly repeatedly docked at the Crimean sea port of Sevastopol to pick up agricultural products in 2023-24. Prosecutors said that on one of its voyages in November 2023, the Cameroonian-flagged Usko Mfu loaded over 3,000 metric tons of agricultural products in Sevastopol intended for a Turkish company. Igor Delanoe, deputy director of the Franco-Russian Observatory, said this was the first time Ukraine had seized an internationally-flagged vessel over such alleged shipments. An official with the vessel’s Turkey-based ship manager Iyem Asya told Reuters the vessel’s current cargo was loaded in Moldova. “The ship, while under our ownership, did not take any cargoes from Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine and never used Ukrainian ports,” the official said. “Ukrainian soldiers boarded the ship while it was sailing along the Danube with a Romanian pilot present. They forcibly anchored it on their side of the river. Our lawyers are now pursuing the case.”

• The head of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region said on Thursday that Russian forces caused fires on dozen of hectares of Ukrainian land growing grain . The Russians struck a grain storage facility in the region and then attacked firefighters who arrived to extinguish the fire.

• US intelligence services have foiled a Russian plot to assassinate the chief executive of Germany’s leading arms manufacturer, Rheinmetall, in a revenge attack over its arming of Ukraine, according to reports. Rheinmetall has been described as one of the biggest suppliers of weapons that Ukraine uses in its defence against the Russian invasion, Kate Connolly writes from Berlin . The plot against Armin Papperger, the CEO of Rheinmetall, was one of several Russian government plans to kill defence industry executives in Europe, unidentified US and western officials told CNN. German authorities were yet to respond to requests for comment.

• The plot was said to have been in its advanced stages and is the most serious revealed in Moscow’s post-invasion “shadow war” across Europe . Russia has reportedly recruited amateurs to carry out everything from arson attacks on warehouses and shopping centres to smaller actions, including acts of vandalism and graffiti, as well as espionage operations. On Thursday a senior Nato official told reporters the sabotage campaign had been increasing in intensity and had to be taken extremely seriously. “ We’re seeing sabotage, we’re seeing assassination plots, we’re seeing arson . We’re seeing things that have cost in human lives,” he said.

• Ukraine’s former armed forces chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, on Thursday began his job as the Ukrainian ambassador to Britain . Zaluzhnyi, who is very popular at home for leading the armed forces through the first hours of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, was replaced as Ukraine’s top commander in a shake-up in the military in February 2024.

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged Nato allies to lift restrictions on its use of long-range weapons against targets in Russia. Zelenskiy said doing so would be a “game-changer” in its war with Moscow, adding: “If we want to win, if we want to prevail, to save our country and to defend it, we need to lift all the limitations.”

• The Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, has said Ukraine’s right to self-defence includes the right to strike legitimate military targets on Russian territory. Stoltenberg notes that allies have reduced such restrictions on Ukraine, with individual countries varying in their limits.

• Zelenskiy said Ukraine was “very close to our goal” of Nato membership despite the summit in Washington not resulting in a political invitation to join. The next step would be an invitation followed by eventual membership, he said.

• In their final communique , the 32 Nato members meeting in Washington have urged China “to cease all material and political support to Russia’s war effort” , adding that Beijing has become a large-scale supporter of Russia’s “defence industrial base”. Beijing’s mission to the EU said the summit was “filled with cold war mentality and belligerent rhetoric … The China-related paragraphs are provocative with obvious lies and smears.”

• France, Germany, Italy and Poland signed a letter of intent to develop ground-launched cruise missiles with a range beyond 500km (310 miles) , aiming to fill what they say is a gap in European arsenals exposed by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Speaking on the sidelines of the Nato summit in Washington DC after the signing ceremony, French defence minister Sébastien Lecornu said the new missile was meant to serve as a deterrent.

• Norway will donate 1bn Norwegian kroner ($93m) in support to Ukraine for its air defence, prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre said at the Nato summit. The donation comes a day after Norway announced it would give six F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine to help it in defence efforts against Russian air attacks.

• Russia must “urgently withdraw its military and other unauthorized personnel” from Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and return it to the full control of Ukrainian authorities, the UN general assembly demanded in a resolution passed on Thursday.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for a second peace summit this year, which Russia immediately said it would not attend.

• The subheading of this article was amended on 12 July 2024. An earlier version said that it was day 770 of the Ukraine war; instead it is day 870.