Russia advances in Ukraine; war gets G20 spotlight

Rescuers inspect residential buildings destroyed by a missile strike in Kharkiv, on July 9, 2022, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine. Pic/AFP

Ukrainian forces battled on Saturday to block Russian military advances into the eastern region of Donbas, a provincial governor said, as Ukraine urged its allies to send it more weapons. Signalling that the Kremlin was in no mood for compromise, President Putin said sanctions against Russia for the invasion it launched in February risked causing "catastrophic" energy price rises.

His top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov, clashed with his Western counterparts at a G20 meeting in Indonesia, where they urged Russia to allow Ukraine to ship its blockaded grain out to an increasingly hungry world. Russia's envoy to Britain, meanwhile, offered little prospect of a pullback from parts of Ukraine under Russian control.

Ambassador Andrei Kelin said that Russian troops would capture the rest of Donbas in eastern Ukraine and were unlikely to withdraw Ukraine would eventually have to strike a peace deal or "continue slipping down this hill" to ruin, he said.

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