• 11:39 a.m.: Russian forces release attacks on Bakhmut to regroup, Kiev says

Russian forces have temporarily relaxed their attacks on the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in order to regroup and build capacity, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Saturday.

The Russian paramilitary group Wagner, which has begun withdrawing its mercenaries in favor of the regular army, claimed responsibility for taking the city last week, after the longest and bloodiest battle since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

Russian forces continue their attacks but "overall offensive activity has decreased," Hanna Maliar said on Telegram. "Yesterday and today there were no active battles, neither in the city nor on the flanks," she said, adding that Russian troops were instead shelling the outskirts and outskirts of Bakhmut.

  • 11:11 a.m.: Mykolaiv mayor defends Ukraine's NATO and EU membership

Mayor of the frontline city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, Oleksandr Sienkevich refuses to dwell on Western doubts about Ukraine's ability to integrate the European Union and NATO. The founder of a tech company in New Jersey, USA, this week donned his elegant businessman's suit to come to Brussels to pressure Western policymakers to support Ukraine's fight to defeat the Russian invader and rebuild the country, including its battered city.

"I know it sounds terrible, but we see this war as a chance to get better," he told AFP after attending a forum of the US think tank German Marshall Fund in Brussels. "We want to finalize many things that happened before the war, such as the possibility of being part of NATO and the European Union," he insists.

  • 11:09 a.m.: A building damaged by drones in the Pskov region, Russia

Two drones have damaged a building administering an oil pipeline in Russia's western Pskov region, the regional governor said Saturday. The blast is the latest in a series of air attacks in Russia in recent weeks.

"Early in the morning, an explosion damaged the administrative building of the pipeline near Litvinovo, in the Nevelsky district," about ten kilometers from the border with Belarus, Governor Mikhail Vedernikov said. Shortly after, he added that, according to initial reports, the building had been "damaged as a result of an attack by two unmanned aerial vehicles." No casualties have been reported and an investigation is ongoing.

  • 10:54 a.m.: Hundreds of German officials forced to leave Russia

Several hundred German civil servants working in particular in the education and culture sectors will have to leave Russia in the coming days at Moscow's request, a German government source told AFP on Saturday.

The move follows a decision by the Russian authorities requiring Germany to sharply reduce its diplomatic staff and public institutions such as the Goethe Institut cultural centre and the German school in Moscow by early June, she added. This source confirmed a report revealed by the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, which speaks of a "diplomatic declaration of war by Moscow" in Berlin.

It is "a unilateral, unjustified and incomprehensible decision," the German Foreign Ministry said.

  • 9:04 a.m.: Kiev asks Germany for cruise missiles

Ukraine has sent the German government an official request for deliveries of air-to-ground cruise missiles, Taurus type with a range of at least 500 km, the German Ministry of Defence told AFP.

"A request from the Ukrainian side has reached us in recent days," the spokeswoman said, without giving details on the quantities. It remains to be seen whether Berlin will accept or not, which should spark heated internal debates.

The German government has significantly increased its arms supplies to Kiev in recent months but has so far been reticent about cruise missiles or support for the Ukrainian air force, for example to help deliver F-16 fighters. The Taurus is an air-to-ground cruise missile, carried by fighters and developed by the German-Swedish company of the same name. Because of its range, it would be able to strike targets far behind the current front line in eastern Ukraine.

  • The essentials of the day of May 26

At least two people were killed and thirty wounded at a clinic in Dnipro, Ukraine, in a bombing by Russian armed forces. President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced a new "war crime". At the same time, Russia reported new Ukrainian bombings in the Russian Belgorod oblast, on the border between Ukraine and Russia.

With AFP

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