May 31, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

There has been a significant drop in hostilities on the ground around the city of Bakhmut as Russian forces rotate in and out of the area, but shelling continues incessantly, Ukrainian officials say.

Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for the Eastern Grouping of the Ukrainian military, said Wednesday there had been only two or three clashes in the area over the last two days. But he said the Russians were covering their rotation of forces with artillery fire, and Ukrainian positions had been shelled 343 times Wednesday. In turn, Ukrainian fire killed 78 Russians and destroyed a variety of weapons and ammunition dumps, he said.

The departure of Wagner units and their replacement with Russian regular forces continued, Cherevatyi said.

Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar told Ukrainian television the south-western outskirts of Bakhmut remain under the control of the Ukrainians. 

"In fact, the enemy's offensive activity in the Bakhmut sector has been stopped. [But] the enemy has increased the number of artillery attacks ... The number of attacks today is equal to the times of the heaviest battles for Bakhmut," Maliar said.

Maliar said Ukrainian troops, for now, were not trying to advance on the Russians' flanks but said "the fight for this direction continues."

One soldier in the Bakhmut area, Yurii Syrotiuk of the 5th separate assault brigade, said that heavy thunderstorms had interrupted air strikes but that "enemy artillery is actively working," as were mortars and rockets.

Syrotiuk said Russian forces tried to counterattack in the past days, but not successfully. 

"The famous Donbas mud does not allow the movement of people nor equipment," he said, adding that this was impeding the Ukrainians' own efforts to push forward.

He also drew a distinction between the Wagner fighters and Russian regular units, which he said "do not fight like Wagnerites, as they are not being sent as cannon fodder under the threat of execution. So they make very languid attempts of attacks, which we repel and then the enemy artillery starts working."

More evacuations of women and children are set to take place this week as the Russian border experiences shelling, Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, some 300 children were already evacuated from Belgorod to the Voronezh area.

Gladkov added that 200 people, including mothers with small children and grandmothers, would be evacuated to Penza on Thursday.

On Saturday, 300 children will be sent from the Grayvoron district to Yaroslavl and 300 from Shebekino district will be sent to Kaluga, Gladkov said.

Gladkov also said he spoke with the governors of the Lipetsk and Tomsk oblasts who agreed to take 200 evacuees each, consisting of families with small children.

Video shot earlier this week in Kyiv shows the remnants of a US-made Patriot PAC-3 missile, indicating that the air defense system was in use Monday when Russian forces fired 11 cruise and ballistic missiles at the Ukrainian capital.

Weapons experts contacted by CNN confirmed that the wreckage — minus a warhead — appeared to be that of the missile type supplied to Ukraine for the recently donated Patriot batteries.

Earlier this month, Russia claimed to have destroyed a Patriot battery in the Kyiv area. US officials said the complex's launcher had suffered minor damage.

The arrival of the Patriot batteries has enabled Ukraine to intercept ballistic missiles and faster cruise missiles.

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will send an estimated $300 million worth of additional weaponry and equipment to Ukraine, focusing the latest military aid package on air defense systems to help Kyiv fend off Russian aerial attacks. 

As part of the package, the US will be providing Ukraine with radar-guided, air-to-air AIM-7 missiles for the first time. It’s unclear if the older air-to-air missiles have been adapted to Ukraine’s Soviet-era fighter jets or if they will be used in conjunction with a ground-based system. 

The package will also include munitions for unmanned aerial systems, which a US official described as mortar-like ammunition that can be dropped from drones. Ukraine has used smaller commercial drones to drop grenades and mortar rounds on Russian troops and positions from above, often posting videos of such jerry-rigged attacks on social media.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the US in a tweet and said the newest assistance is "extremely important and timely" and the latest example of "unflagging American support."

The latest package will protect Ukraine's skies "from Russian missile and drone terror, as well as to bolster the capabilities of the Ukrainian Defense Forces," the tweet said.

The additional drone ammunition comes amid a spate of drone attacks on Russian targets in recent days, including against residential buildings in Moscow and two Russian oil refineries in southern Russia. US officials have not determined who launched those attacks, but US intelligence officials believe Ukrainians were behind a drone attack on the Kremlin earlier this month, CNN has reported. 

The White House reiterated Wednesday that US officials have told Ukraine that the US does not support attacks on Russian territory, especially with US-provided equipment. Two US officials said there is no evidence right now, though, that the drones were provided by the US. 

The US will also be providing Ukraine with additional missiles for Patriot air defense systems, one of which was damaged by a Russian hypersonic missile earlier this month, as well as Avenger air defense systems and additional stinger anti-aircraft systems.

The new package marks the 39th time since August 2021 that the administration has taken equipment directly from DoD inventories to provide to Ukraine, the Pentagon said in a press release. To date, the US has provided more than $37.6 billion in military aid since the start of the war in Ukraine.

The White House voiced support Wednesday for a proposed summit to work toward peace in Ukraine, even if Russia is not involved.

“We've been talking to the Ukrainians for many, many months now,” National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said. “President Zelensky has a 10-point proposal for what he calls a just peace – and we're helping trying to work with his team to help actualize that.” 

The United States supports “moves toward peace,” but any proposal must have the support of the Ukrainian president to be “credible and sustainable,” he said. Russia’s current assault on Ukraine was “not the act of the nation that has any serious design on diplomacy right now," he added.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Ukraine and its allies were planning a peace summit for global leaders without Russian involvement. Asked what the value was in a summit like that without Russia’s participation, Kirby responded that "you've got to work with Ukrainians" before anything else.

“But where and when, or even if the Russians can be brought to the table, that's got to be President Zelensky, his decision,” Kirby said.

He added that Putin “has shown absolutely zero inclination” for peace, calling whether Russia should be at the table a “great academic question.” 

The first groups of children to be evacuated from border areas of the Belgorod region have arrived in the Voronezh area, according to Russian state media and other outlets.

"The first groups of children from Shebekino, Belgorod Oblast, which is being shelled by Ukraine, arrived at a recreation camp near Voronezh," state news agency RIA Novosti said.

The Shebekino area is one of several near the border with Ukraine that has come under more persistent mortar and artillery fire in recent days.

The governor of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said there was renewed shelling of border areas late Wednesday by Ukrainian forces. He said an industrial plant close to the city of Shebekino had been struck.

Gladkov said that some 300 children from the Shebekino and Grayvoron districts would be evacuated to Voronezh.

Ukrainian officials say Russian forces have stepped up shelling in the Kupyansk area of Kharkiv, where the front lines have moved little since last autumn.

Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said Russian strikes had damaged civilian infrastructure and civilian settlements rather than military positions. He said nine people were injured in missile strikes on the settlement of Kivsharivka on Tuesday, and the area had been struck again Wednesday.

"Today the north and north-east direction were fired upon again. 15 settlements have been fired upon," Syniehubov said on Ukrainian television. Northern Kharkiv borders the Russian region of Belgorod, which has come under fire from the Ukrainian side of the frontier.

Syniehubov also claimed that a Russian sabotage group had made an unsuccessful attempt to cross the border in northern Kharkiv.

He said they had been forced to retreat and had suffered losses. 

Russian shelling had also spread to the border town of Vovchansk on Wednesday, Syniehubov said. One man was killed and another person was injured. Vovchansk has regularly come under cross-border fire, while Ukrainian mortar and artillery fire in the other direction has recently increased, according to Russian authorities.

The area on the east bank of the Oskil River, near Kupyansk, has seen considerable combat in recent weeks, but Russian efforts to establish a bridgehead west of the river appear to have failed, Ukrainian officials said.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told CNN on Wednesday that he believes Russia and Ukraine are “committing” to the organization’s five principles for averting a nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhia Power Plant. 

Grossi laid out the “five concrete principles” to ensure the plant’s safety and security on Tuesday at the UN Security Council in New York. They include “no attacks of any kind from or against the plant”, and a commitment against using it as a storage base for heavy weaponry. 

“They [Moscow and Kyiv] haven’t opposed what I said as an indispensable thing, and I am monitoring it,” Grossi told CNN’s Eleni Giokos on Wednesday. 

“So I believe that they are committing to it indeed, yes.” 

Some background: The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant in southern Ukraine is Europe’s largest nuclear power station and has seen frequent military activity in and around the area, sparking concerns of a possible nuclear catastrophe. 

The area, and the nuclear complex, have been under Russian control since the beginning of the war, but the plant is still mostly operated by Ukrainian workers.

From weaponized consumer quadcopters to loitering munitions that can cause devastation from nearly a thousand miles away, UN, NATO and UK Parliament drone adviser Dr James Rogers breaks down the role drones are playing in the war in Ukraine.