Ukraine war: Zelensky fires commander leading troops in east as EU to open Kyiv talks

The head of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s party has posted images of the country’s first underground school as the nation looks to ensure children can still partake of in-person education without the interruption of Russian missile attacks.

Olena Shuliak, head of the Servant of the People political party, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that a second underground school is under construction in Zaporizhzhia. The first, in Kharkiv, is already operational.

“Missiles reach these regions faster than air raid alerts,” she wrote. “But children will have an opportunity to study in safety no matter what. And everyone should have this opportunity.”

Ukraine wants to see a “strong” decision taken at the Nato summit in Washington next month as Kyiv tries to advance its strategic goal of joining the military alliance, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s foreign policy adviser told Reuters.

Ihor Zhovkva, who spoke in an interview before travelling to Luxembourg for a European Union meeting that will formally launch accession talks for Ukraine, said that Kyiv wanted the Nato summit to end with concrete results.

“I think this summit deserves to have a strong decision, including on Ukraine. Because, I mean, if you’re having a lack of strong decisions on Ukraine, the summit will be useless,” he said in Kyiv late on Monday.

He did not specify what he thought such a decision would entail.

Mr Zelensky, who lobbied unsuccessfully for a political invitation to join the alliance at its summit in Vilnius last summer, has said that this year’s summit should resolve the matter of inviting Kyiv to join.

While Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg and Washington have both said they do not expect the alliance’s 32 members at the July 9-11 summit to invite wartime Kyiv to join, Mr Stoltenberg has said he hopes to show Ukraine is moving closer to membership.

Ukraine will start accession talks to the European Union today more than a decade after hundreds of thousands of protesters called for the country to join the bloc.

Ukrainian officials will meet with EU ministers later today in Luxembourg to officially begin the process of joining, though it will take years for the country to eventually become a member.

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock highlighted the meeting as an “important signal”.

“[Vladimir] Putin wanted to annex Ukraine. Instead [the country] is now closer to the EU than ever before,” she said.

A decade ago, hundreds of thousands of pro-western demonstrators flocked to Ukraine’s capital to call for the country to join the bloc, in what became known as the “Maidan Revolution”, after the Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovich pulled out of a closer association agreement with the EU.

He was later ousted after months of protests, before which Putin illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula and launched a war in Donbas, eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has replaced a top military commander after a well-known soldier accused him of having “killed more Ukrainian soldiers than any Russian general”.

In his nightly video message, Mr Zelensky announced that Lt Gen Yuriy Sodol had been replaced by Brig Gen Andriy Hnatov.

He did not elaborate on why the replacement had been made, but Gen Sodol’s removal came shortly after Bohdan Krotevych, the leader of Ukraine’s highly-regarded Azov regiment, accused the general of causing significant military setbacks and major losses in personnel.

Writing on his Telegram channel on 23 June, Mr Krotevych said that he had written a letter to Ukraine’s state bureau of investigation (SBI)  calling for an “an investigation into one military general who, in my opinion, killed more Ukrainian soldiers than any Russian general”.

Below are some of the latest photos coming out of Ukraine.

Ukrainian troops trying to hold their ground on the eastern front in Donetsk region may still be outnumbered by Russian forces, but the “shell hunger” that plagued them for months as ammunitions started to run out is now behind them.

One unit in Donetsk region, the focus of Russian troops’ slow advance along the 1,000-km (600-mile) front, fired its M-109 self-propelled howitzer as needed — there were no further fears of running short of Western-supplied 155 mm shells.

“There was ‘shell hunger’. Ammunition was rationed quite severely. It had an impact on infantry, they (Russians) crept from all sides, it hurt the infantry men,” unit commander Vasyl, 46, told a Reuters TV reporter.

“Now, there is no more ‘shell hunger’ and we work well.”

Demand for 155 mm artillery rounds has soared since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, with Kyiv’s Western allies running down their own stockpiles as they rushed shells to Ukraine where thousands of rounds were needed every day.

Now a fresh influx of ammunition has begun arriving at units like Vasyl’s after the U.S. Congress ended months of delays and approved a $61 billion (£48 bn) aid package.